From Here the Days Get Longer and Brighter

Took the day off work today. Took it as a religious holiday. So what kind of religious holiday can an atheist take? The Winter Solstice, for while no one can necessarily agree on what the truth is. We cannot argue where the Earth is around the Sun. The nice thing about making your own holiday is you can choose how to celebrate it.

I used it to let go. I have spent a long time grieving over breaking up with a girlfriend, one name she goes by is Lady Isis. I spent a long time in the grief stage of bargaining. If only she would return to me. If only she would do X we could continue on. Over time the concept of what X is kept changing, pretty much picture something in spirit some thing similar to the climax of the movie Secretary. Then finally the realization has come that nothing is enough. I have a woman who I still love but no longer respect. It is time to let go.

When we first got together she gave me a polished stone. It was nothing of value, but was something good to keep in a pocket and hold on to when I needed to be reminded of her. I think she imbued with some mystical properties in her own mind. In my mind it is just a rock, but it is a nice symbolic piece. I have over the course of this year been wanted to get rid of it, mail it back to her perhaps. But just could not do it, knowing the day I did meant I would have giving up on ever trying to rekindle a relationship.

Today was that day. Today is the shortest day of the year. After today the days get longer again. It is a time of endings and beginnings. It also in some ways seems appropriate. I had forgotten Lady Isis' birthday is the 26th of December, and that the goddess Isis' birthday was celebrated on December 25th long ago. So today is time to remember and then move on.

I took the stone she gave me and took at walk in a park by the Big Darby Creek. Then I said goodbye and took the stone and threw it into the creek. It has been cold so I watched it skip across the ice and settle in the middle of creek. And I think I can now move on. Traveling back in the car I was listening to Alan Parsons' The Time Machine and the song No Future in the Past just seemed very fitting.

So much as many of us done want to carry stuff into the New Year the Winter Solstice seems a good time to let go from items in the past, and it is a fact that the days get longer and brighter from here.