Excitement and Trepidation and Trying to Let Go of the Pain

I'm going to Santa Barbara tomorrow, with my husband, for a wedding. And I'm SO happy to be going, so excited for my friends getting married, it's going to be great to see them and others, and it's going to be fun to be in Santa Barbara with my husband, because we spent a lot of time there when we were first dating, him coming down from Alaska and later Seattle to visit me the last months that I lived there. I know we're going to have a great time...everything about this trip is going to be happy and positive. 

But.

Santa Barbara's where I lived with my brother. It's where he was killed. It's a place I didn't want to leave, but felt like I had to. This is kind of hard to describe, but in a lot of ways, when my brother died, I felt like I died too, like we had both been exiled from this place and this life that we loved.

I've fought hard to build back a new life for myself, and it's a good life, but it's drastically different from the one that I had, and it's hard to be reminded of that old life, you know? I usually do a pretty good job keeping the hurt I still feel over my brother's death and the loss of Santa Barbara and my beach-y California girl surfer lifestyle under wraps. But going there...it can't help but come to the surface.

I keep thinking about this quote from the TV show Six Feet Under--I love love love that show, by the way...I'm going to do a post about it one of these days--that I read on the fabulous blog Mocking Bird over the weekend:

(David is talking to his dead father, Nathaniel.)

Nathaniel Sr.: You aren't ever grateful, are you?

David: Grateful? For the worst fucking experience of my life?

Nathaniel Sr.: You hang onto your pain like it means something, like it's worth something. Well, let me tell ya, it's not worth shit. Let it go. Infinite possibilites, and all he can do is whine.

David: Well, what am I supposed to do?

Nathaniel Sr.: What do you think? You can do anything, you lucky bastard, you're alive! What's a little pain compared to that?

David: It can't be that simple.

Nathaniel Sr. (putting his arm around David and pulling him closer): What if it is?

I'm trying to let the pain go. I swear. 

P.S. The last of our plans for the weekend just fell into place. I truly am sooooo incredibly excited to see so many people I love.

Back Monday.

XOXO