Day 17 - Haunting Memories

Memories came rushing in as I drove in to Sun Valley. This place has a lot of them loaded with many emotions.

I had first come to this place at the insistence of Brynn, who asked me to join her and her family for a few days of skiing and celebration of entering a new year. It was interesting timing given we were not really seeing each other at that point. A few weeks earlier while on a business trip, we had made the decision to cool things off due to our working relationship. That said, I can’t tell you why, but I decided to change my original plans and go to her. Life is a series of decision from the time we have the capability of making them. Some turn out to be good, some bad, others haunt you and certain ones turn out to be the most life altering decision that changes the course of your path, and inevitably you. As I drove towards Sun Valley, passing the Hailey airport, I became flooded with emotions thinking about that life changing decision I had made a few years back that resulted in me flying into this tiny airport. 

I’ve been haunted by many of these images and memories. And over the past several months they started becoming not about the memory itself, but representation of what I no longer had. They amplified the void in my life by reminding me that I will not be able to write new ones with the person who were the co-author of them. This has been a hard reality to accept. And coming to Sun Valley was an important step in me coming to terms with it.

Sun Valley is a particularly loaded place - this is where we learned how to truly play with one another, while discovering new layers of the other person. So many indelible moments, and one of the most beautiful things about being a couple are the shared memories you have together. The way you tell them from your experience that is enhanced by your partner’s. Together they allow an outsider to peer into bond and love you share, while giving a glimpse on the journey you are on. It’s hard to reconcile this about myself. Do I no longer tell these stories about a period of my life that is so important?

What I’ve been discovering along the way through this journey is the healing process has an element of my relationship with these memories. I so desperately wanted to keep extending the story, but those writings did not work as me as the sole author. Sun Valley was a unique place as part of this transition, because I did not know of it before Brynn - it was always ours. And being here allowed me to create new ones that is allowing me to reshape my relationship with it. That is allowing me to think of the place not as what I no longer have, but what I had and continue to be fortunate to have. Sun Valley is about my relationship with all of it.

For me the different states of healing has been about memories becoming less haunting and more about what I am cherishing - about who I will become because of them. But isn’t that valid for all memories - how we want to remember? Our relationship with traumas, memories, and mostly ourselves are based on the stories we tell about them. Throughout this experience, I’ve been trying to release those happy moments from being a prisoner of this life event. I think what I’m really trying to do is release myself from being a prisoner of this event. It’s like nature, it adjusts its topography against all of these elements it goes through. And it discovers more about itself while finding harmony with its environment.

Nature is a pretty good teacher, if you’re willing to listen. In the end, the decision to go to Sun Valley was the best decision I’ve made in my life.

-Troy