Cursive in the Ocean

Once I decide not to [____], I have an incredible amount of willpower and will never [____] again.

For example, I have photos that I've been asked not to share, I have photos that I no longer want to share.
They are not the same photos. They are not of the same people.

And there are many. I am referencing nothing or no one in particular.
(That there are many, of course, means that there is also one.)

Though it's not the same, I often remove photos once they're posted.
Sometimes I screengrab the images and the words, mostly not. Probably I should not admit that to you.
It's my dirty little secret except that it's not a secret.

* * *

Today I woke up thinking about my displeasure with narrative flashback.
I find it overused and ineffective. Literally, for me on an aesthetic basis, never effective.

Because the Flashback generally answers the Why, and I don't like my Whys answered for me.
I barely can stand an artist telling me what to ask, much less telling me how to answer.

Couple that with my disbelief in a 1:1 correlation between the weight of the psychological past and the challenges of the present.

Artists (especially artists, certainly not only) tend to believe that our pasts have shovels and knives for hands.
They continuously hunt us through a humid forest, and the forest is on a conveyor belt (often called, The Present).

I suppose I'm guilty of thinking we're in a forest too.
Except that the trees are the past, and all that's following me in the forest is my joy at being followed in the forest.

To solve or simply appreciate my own complexity, how could I point out those demons in the dark?
Moreover, how could I possibly know how to stop them?

* * *

Perhaps I've combined these pet peeves of mine, these tools turned back on themselves, these dogmas --
I've drawn two lines in the sand --

one says, if you've genuinely decided for/against an action, there's no need to remake the decision every time the impulse arrives

one says, the 'crucial backstory' is always being retold and therefore doesn't need explicit flashback or explanation

I cross my own lines in the sand sometimes. I have impulses and a fluctuating heartbeat, after all.

But I like to write these ideas. Though my finger's drawing cursive in the ocean.