For at least twenty years, I have enjoyed walking labyrinths. Labyrinths are maze-like structures that have been used as spiritual tools for centuries. For the past seven years, I’ve been walking labyrinths throughout the northeastern United States, and blogging about them. To learn more about labyrinths, check out this page at the Labyrinth Society. To find labyrinths near you, try the Worldwide Labyrinth Locator.

This was the sixth and final labyrinth I walked this day. It was the tail-end of my two-week vacation, a time I was spending in pondering. I was thinking of these two weeks as a self-directed retreat entitled “Ponder Anew What the Almighty Can Do,” a reference to a lyric from one of my favorite hymns.

This final labyrinth was in a place that held hazy memories for me, Bryn Mawr College. I had a romance thirty years ago with someone who was a student here at the time. I really didn’t spend all that much time on this campus, but the time I did is encoded in my memory in a very odd way. It feels different, separate. Almost sacred.

There was something unresolved. The romance didn’t end the way I wanted it to, and I have wondered from time to time, “what if.” I don’t exactly wish that things had gone differently. It’s more that I want to know what could have gone differently. I would like to see what might have been. I would like to know who I would have become.

Walking the campus for the first time in decades, it felt like there are secrets here, secrets I will never unearth, secrets of “what if.” What would my life be like if that relationship had gone differently, if we’d stayed together? It felt like touching the edge of a different world, a world in which an alternate version of me exists, a world I will never see, but about which I can ponder. This campus felt like a “liminal space,” where the border between this world and that alternate world is thin.

I was flooded with emotions, and it was hard to tell if I was reliving emotions I’d felt here so long ago, or if the emotions were today’s feelings of being back here, or if it was just the whole strangeness of it. It was so uncomfortable, on the edge of painful, but so attractive as well. It reminded me of the feeling of a scalding hot shower on a poison ivy rash — painful, raw, yet so seductive and good.

This labyrinth is a huge seven-circuit classical, with a mulch path and grass walls. It sits on top of a hill, and feels absolutely right here. I knew that my question had to connect with this thought of unresolved memories — how could I stand here in this place and not take that opportunity? So I asked,

What do I do with parts of my past that are unresolved? Let them go? Hold onto them? Process them?

As I walked, I thought of other similar liminal places, other moments where it felt like my life could have gone down a different path. All these unresolved places, so awash in emotion, tension, and questions. I thought of the places where my suicide attempts occurred. I thought of places where breakups happened. Places I frequented with friends. I thought of places where I walked during painful moments in my life. I could make a list of places that carry unresolved memories.

And I thought of moments when I could have made a different decision, when I could have said a different thing, gone down a different path. Things I wish I could do differently, or just wish I could see differently. I could make a really long list of such things.

All so unresolved. Some people seem so able to let go of these sorts of things. Some people seem able to just move on into the future. Some people don’t seem to live so much in their own history as I do. And that’s what I wanted to learn from this labyrinth: is that because I’m different than them, or because I’m being unhealthy? Should I just let go of things like this? Or should I do the therapeutic work necessary to unpack them and move on from them? Or is it okay that they are there in my mind, in my heart, unresolved and unnerving, painful yet seductive?

As I walked, I thought of all the secrets that are buried here and in other place, secrets about myself and my possible alternate choices. Secrets I can never uncover. Places like this have such gravity over me.

I did not receive a clear answer in the labyrinth — perhaps there is no clear answer to this question. But what I heard more clearly were my own feelings. It was as though the mist of emotions sublimated a bit to let me see.

And I saw that I really don’t want to let go of these unresolved memories, moments, experiences. And I saw that I really don’t believe they can be resolved. No amount of therapy would really allow me to process this, because there’s nothing really for me to dig into. These aren’t traumas to unpack; these are ambiguous, unresolved, emotional memories. And with many of them, the finer details of the memories have faded away, leaving an emotional residue that shimmers like a puddle of oil.

And I think that’s okay. It’s okay that there are places and memories that overwhelm me with melancholy and yearning, so long as I don’t stay there. As long as I don’t build myself a home there. I can spend some time in Unresolvedland every now and then, but then I have to go back to regular life, and let the memories be what they are.

But I am glad they are here. I am glad they are. I am glad there are parts of me, parts of my memory and my personality, that are undiscovered and undiscoverable, that resist easy answers, that are tender to the touch. And I am glad I can visit them from time to time. This is an important side of me, and I don’t want to lose it. And so long as I never lose myself in it, I think that’s okay.

Bryn Mawr can stay unresolved. I’m glad it’s here.