How many old stories do you carry around?

A woman walks along a country path.  She is weary and burdened by the bags on her back.  Why does she carry them, they are so many?  What is in the bags?

Stories.  The stories of her life.  Stories reaching back to her childhood.  They weigh her down.  If she could only put the bags down, she could enjoy the day.  Live in this wonderful moment.

But she does not want to put them down.  They are the stories of her sadness.  Of the times when she was hurt and she clings to them.  She believes they protect her from ever being hurt again.

But they do not protect her.  How can bags filled with sad stories protect her?  They just burden her.  Make the walk slower and more painful.  Yet she will not let them go.

She stops for a rest and some food.  Placing her bags on the floor around her, she reaches in and takes out one of the books.  Its’ covers are worn.  She has read it many times.

As she bites on her sandwich, she opens the book and begins to read.  Emotions swirl round her as the story takes her back to her past.  The sadness in her heart, the pain in her stomach, once more awakened and brought back to life.  And she remembers why she hates them, as if it had just happened yesterday.

The date on the book reads 1971.  The year now is 2010.  It is almost forty years old.  Forty years old!  Has she been reading the same story for so long?  The realisation shocks her.  Surely not forty years.  She lifts her head out of the book and looks at the world around her.

So much had changed in all those years.  Her looks have faded.  The world has become computerised.  This book, the one she held in her hand, had been hand-written.  Her newest stories were all in clean clear type.  So much had changed.  Except for her stories.

She looked in the bag again.  There were stories that were even older – some even sixty years old.  Some were of happy days, but she had not read them in so long.  It was the sad stories that she had read the most.  It was the sad stories that had their covers bent and were soft at the edges.

For so long, these stories had been part of her.  Part of who she was and yet now, looking down at them, she could see they were just old stories.  Little books.  Little chapters of her life.  She only remembered them because she’d read them so often.  What would happen if she threw them away?

A vision popped into her mind: she could see herself walking freely along the path, almost as if she were a young girl again.  Though the same age as she was now, she looked younger – maybe even twenty years younger.  The weight, from the bags full of stories had gone.  She could see herself and she looked happy, almost bouncing as she walked.  Free of cares and worries.  Younger and more alive somehow.

“Tonight, I shall throw them away,” she vowed.

And that night she did.  She emptied out the books, all of them, onto the living room floor and began to sort them – placing the sad stories on one side, the happy stories on the other.

And that night, she picked up the sad stories and took them outside to the garden.  And lit a bonfire.  And burned them all.

_________________________

A few nights later, her husband came home from a business trip.  As he opened the door, he could hear his wife laughing.  He was pleased.

“What are you so happy about?” he said, poking his head round the door, and seeing his wife sitting on the sofa, glee in her eyes, holding open an immaculate book.

“It’s these stories,” she giggled, “They’re hilarious.  I haven’t read them in years.”  She placed the book down and went to greet her husband, kissed him on the cheek, and then said, “I love you,” before going into the kitchen.

Her husband stood bemused.  Not quite sure what to make of her sudden outbreak of affection.  It wasn’t like her at all.

“Er…” he stuttered, not entirely sure what to say.  “I love you too,” he mumbled and walked over to the computer table, his usual spot for the evening.

And from that day on, there was a change in her for the better and he never really understood why.  But she knew; she was free now – free from the stories, from the ghosts in the stories.  Free to live her life, now, not in the past.