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Growing up and Growing Old
Something in me needed to reach into my past last night - so I decided to read some of my old journal entries (this is from back in the olden days when I actually took a pen to paper and wrote down my innermost thoughts). I thought I would get all caught up in the romance and wild abandon of my younger days. When I think back on my life five years ago I remember a lot of adventure, a lot of new experiences, a lot of reckless loving, and a lot of devil-may-care attitude. What I discovered, as I skimmed through my journals from those times, is that the memory really does put soft focus touches on past experiences. If I was happy back then, you wouldn't have known it by what I was writing. For some reason the best experiences - the memories that I have that are guaranteed to lift my heart out of the deepest slump - aren't documented in there at all. That makes me sort of sad. But what makes me the saddest of all is how lost I was then. I read back to May of 1999 when I met my first "serious" boyfriend. My jaw dropped and my eyes sort of teared up when I read about the way my mind was working when I lost my virginity. When I read about the way he treated me after we were sleeping together. Older and wiser me would have kicked him in the head and sent him packing before he'd have even had the chance to cop a feel. Unfortunately younger and more naive me didn't know what was coming. I feel so sad for younger me. Especially because I know how that story ends, and I know that younger, more naive me will die as a result of that relationship. I lost my breath a little bit and found myself shaking my head angrily while reading this: "I wonder if he's just using me. He says he is - which is why I don't think that he is. I mean, if he really was, he wouldn't tell me that he was, right? Unless that's exactly how he wants me to think and I'm playing right into his hands. Yeah. Y'know what that man taught me? To always...always listen to what people are saying to you. Actions do not always speak louder than words. And love should not mean always second guessing yourself. I've left most of that so far behind, it was amazing to me the stuff I'd forgotten. The bad stuff mostly - which I guess is a good thing. I took the good that was given to me and ran with it - the rest of it remains buried in my heart, those journal pages are just a map to get to the hiding place. Along those same lines - isn't it a funny feeling when you watch a friendship just drift apart? There's no anger, no big fight, no dramatic breakup. You just sit still and watch as your lives take you in different directions - you both make new friends and discover new interests and the attempts to reach out to each other are fewer and fewer. Even when you connect anymore, you're not sure what to say to each other so you talk about stupid things and both of you hate the conversation so much you want to poke your own eyes out because it never used to be this way. You waffle around in your discomfort and say some wrong things and exasperatedly blame the other for not working harder on your friendship and then one day...it just falls away. It's so sad to me. But then, I never really was good at saying goodbye. |
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