Soured

When I was little - littler, honestly - I used to - well, I still do - hold on to treats longer than I should. I used to save chocolate til it frosted over with that white flaky powder old chocolate gets. I would save cotton candy until it inevitably absorbed water from the air and turned into a hard semi-chewy ball of sugar. Fruit would get mushy, bread would go dry, the filling of egg tarts would slowly pull away from the flaky crust. Even now, I saved the chocolate-covered strawberries I loved so much until the berries pulled from the coating and dripped juice when I bit into them.

I wanted things to last. I wanted good things to last. But I wanted them to last so badly, they soured in my hands.

It was only recently I realized I do the same with memories. Late nights, car rides, time spent... Replayed so many times and loved so hard that once the opportunity came back to have them... Somehow they weren't the same. Not sour, really, but not sweet. Not right. Not what they should be. Because the passage of time had, like so many other things, slowly warped and morphed and changed these into something different. Something not right. Something not what it should be. And so the sense of loss pervades, because in being afraid of loss, I lost what little I had to keep.

And so what do you do? You let go.