I shared this video and the lyrics to this Missy Higgins song once before. Since the beginning of my awakenings this song has spoken directly to my experience on every possible level, and this new video makes my connection to the song even more poignant – especially considering my post from last night.

There’s an ache that never leaves me, the tears spill over now without warning. Driving down the freeway, lying between cool white sheets in bed at night, standing at the sink staring into space while scrubbing dried oatmeal off of abandoned breakfast dishes… the mindlessness of the activity allows the vortex of my memories to begin that perilous spin. I imagine that if tears could carve a path, there would be well worn furrows down my cheeks by now; rivers and streams and tributaries born of loss and regret. I cannot stop thinking of what was and what can never be again, not because I wish to go backwards, but because I must grieve for what had to be lost along the way.

In the past year I have begun the process of stepping fully into myself, of accepting who I am, of embracing myself and my truth. There was a tendency, in the beginning, to think that this negated all that came before. My recent journey has been all about understanding that my past – the woman that I was and the life that I led – was no less me. My life till that point was no less valid or authentic or right – it was just not the complete story. Who I am now does not eclipse who I used to be – this life no more legitimate than that one. The fact that this is so very right does not need to make all that came before wrong. I do not need to view my life with a harsh divide separating my before and my after. Indeed these are just different parts of the very same journey, MY journey.

It is clear to me that this part of my path is as much about looking back as it is about looking forward. I mourn deeply the loss of my past, my husband and best friend, my intact and happy family. I need to give myself permission to do this, and I need to learn to do it in a way that does not detract from moving forward into a future with my love, with our children, toward a level of independence and personal growth that has little to do with sexuality and everything to do with owning my experience and creating a fully authentic life.

Yes, I am sad right now. It is not a sadness that leads to the sort of dramatic breakdowns that have been all too frequent over the past year. It’s not about guilt or fear or denial or breathless sobbing and raging into the night. It is a quiet, deep, seemingly bottomless sadness. It is a sadness that lives in the memories of happier days, of the loss of the part of my heart that will always belong to him, of the disappearance of a planned future and a life mapped out together. It is realizing that the joy of beginning this life does not have the power to wipe out the grief of losing that life, and of knowing that there is nothing that can be done but let this sadness fall down on me, and cloak me in its shadows.

It is the sadness of acceptance, and I somehow think that it might be the hardest to bear.

What do you do with the pictures? What happens to eleven years of snapshots and cheesy portrait studio enlargements, wedding albums and vacation pictures? Horrid Walmart engagement photos that stand as a forever reminder of a very bad hair day, murky underwater snorkeling shots of unidentified fish in Hawaii, precious photos of the first moments of parenthood?

What do you do with the shriveled balloons he bought you on your first valentines day, the souvenirs from your trip to NYC in the spring of 1999, with the birthday cards filled with sappy handwritten notes? How do you split up a decades worth of personalized Christmas tree ornaments, carefully chosen during a holiday shopping trip each year - even the pets’ names carefully added in with permanent marker. Who gets the home videos - hours upon hours beginning with teary eyed ‘I do’s’ and extending through first breaths and birthday parties and wobbly steps and Christmas mornings?

Who keeps the locks of hair lovingly saved from the first hair cut? How can you divide the stick figure drawing of your family of four, proudly rendered at preschool in bright crayola marker? What about wedding rings engraved with words of forever and partially filled in baby books and anniversary gifts and ticket stubs and random shoeboxes full of 11 years worth of collected nostalgia?

When you are faced with separating two lives that have been wholly intertwined for so long you discover that you are surrounded by representations of that relationship, both concrete and symbolic. Your house is filled with a million symbols of the bonds, of the happy times when anything seemed possible, of the family you built and the history you shared and the plans you made.

When all is said and done, and it all comes down to the final weeks of living under the same roof, those mementos are all that remain of both dream and reality. Keepsakes of a life that no longer exists, they are both more priceless and more meaningless than you ever thought possible.

And the final question lingers…what on earth do you do with the memories?