my mind is a tomato field

My Mind is a Tomato Field

I wish I could decide what I remember. There are many things I would be fine with forgetting: things that have hurt me, and that continue to hurt me because I remember them; but, they always seem to stick around. The things that I want to remember? They just float away into my synapses. When I look back at my life, it is easy to pick out the bad memories. It is like my mind is a field of tomatoes, and all of them are rotten. I have to pick and pick and pick away to find that one ripe fruit, and even then, it is relatively feeble. 

No matter how much tending I do to my garden, I cannot dispose of the rotten tomatoes. I cannot throw them, stomp on them, or hide them--they will always be there. Throwing them would put them in a place so I could rediscover them along my journey. Stomping on them would break them into many pieces, and those many pieces are much worse than the one. Hiding them would allow me to find them, when I am hoping to find the good. Every logical option would never rid my life of the rotten tomatoes. I could eat them, and have the vile juice moisten my lips with the power of overcoming my past-- but surely, I would not eat a rotten tomato. And so it seems my only option is to step outside the confines of normality, and continue on through the garden, with fire under my feet: to burn the tomatoes with each passionate step; to see my horrors demolished, to feel the warmth of rebirth, to hear peace, to taste and smell the smoke of my triumph. 

So I walk, past the field that once was rotten tomatoes, unto anew. The bad memories shaped me, but do not control me. They give me the power, courage and strength to overcome adversity and move onward.