Just like that summer packed up her bags, put away her skimpy bikini, tossed in her flip flops and laughed at me as she waved goodbye whipping down the lost highway in her convertible with nary a glance in her rear view mirror. I know she's just a few hundred miles away, basking in her oh so heavenly non-tourist glow that only the locals truly get to enjoy at that favorite beach of mine, but she's most definitely deserted me. Left me here with nothing but polar fleece and my Ugg boots and actual snow flakes falling from gray skies. What kind of tease is she? Didn't she know that I was only kidding when she was forcing me to sweat through 100 degree plus days about wanting her to leave, already? Oh summer, your heart is just so finicky.
Meanwhile, I could probably purchase summer and keep her in a box, letting her out whenever I fancied, if I could only comprise a way in which to monetize the copious amounts of email that currently plague my in-box. I am uncertain how this happened and I'm certain there are others who live in public who must have similar issues, but recently I broke my Gmail account. Broke it.
Yes, Mercury was retrograde, but that was not the issue. Or perhaps it contributed, but the real issue was that I had gone over the space allotted to my account. There was no more room at the Gmail inn for any more mail. The box was full. Could not stuff one more Nigerian in there. Not.a.single.one.
So I did what any reasonable woman would do in such a situation. Any reasonable woman who often does colonics every few months to purge all the stuff that is clogged in her colon, that is.
That huge whooshing sound that you all heard last week was not the tsunami hitting Samoa but me hitting the delete key and purging over 500,000 emails all received, read and archived from before October 2008.
I wasn't choosy. I wasn't particular. I wasn't even careful. I just hit select all and delete. Which means that all correspondence about my life with, my love of, my marriage to David is now gone. Poof!
Gone, too, though are the loving and kind letters of support that came from so very many friends in the aftermath. Also gone are all those emails of hate that I've received over the years for being so very naked on the web. I get lots of those. And then there are the letters that caused me to just pause, think, wonder? I was saving them, I suppose, to perhaps answer some day. But when?
I realized, after it was all gone, particularly all that correspondence with David, how much lighter I felt. How I was breathing more easily. It was old, ancient history in so many ways. History that has most certainly informed the me that I am today, but history that won't change the me that I am today.
Sometimes, as those of us who regularly cleanse our colons know, it is necessary to do a complete cleanse, a full purge, in order to open our hearts, our minds, our souls for the new that is waiting to come.
It was just email, but it was representative of so very much more. A history that was informing me and holding me still.
Summer packed up and drove away. While I pull on my wool sweater, I'll contemplate my purged in-box and start to dream about the very special words that might now fill it, the arms that might wrap around me to hold me close and the heart that will keep me warm.
