I feel like I've been sitting in silence for the better part of a year. My last semester of college was a blur of homework and trying to have a good time. Since graduation, life has been a blur of fear and uncertainty and I guess I didn't know what to say about any of it. I still don't, to be honest, but I do have something to say finally, so here it goes.
Tuesday is trash day. It's one of the few constants in my ever changing life. Today when I got off of work I walked to the front to bring the trashcan to the backyard. While I was walking from my car to the front yard, I inhaled the crisp cool air and looked over at my front yard and I was taken back to a different time and place . Scent is one of our main memory sensors. A certain scent can trigger a dozen or more memories all at once, and that's what happened to me today.
All of the sudden I could smell summer's retreat and the steady creep of fall. The kiss of a breeze whispered a promise of cooler weather and suddenly, I was 16 again. It was a Friday night and the whole town was over at the school watching the Gladiators battle it out with the opposing team. I was laughing and walking around with my best friends without a care in the world. Then we'd walk to my house and stay up all night outside when we weren't supposed to, never getting caught but always liking the thrill of knowing we might. Then the memory changes and I'm laying down in my front yard looking at the stars, talking on the phone to that special someone and relishing in the fact that somehow, without me noticing, he'd become my best friend.
And then I blink and I'm in college. I'm out in my friends pasture with a bonfire blazing in front of us. I no longer go to football games or talk to that person on the phone. I have a whole new set of friends and a new certain someone. We're laughing and dancing to my iPod and some of them are a little tipsy. I feel safe for the first time in along time. The Crew makes me feel wanted and supported and capable. They give me strength.
And now here I am without the Crew, school, football games, or wishing on stars with the boy I liked half my life. Everything is different and I've let go of those parts of my life that I know I can't get back. Some parts I don't want back. But even though it's over, those memories are as much a part of me as the color of my eyes and the sound of my voice. That one breeze on some random Tuesday made me trace the strands that form the tapestry of my life and briefly see how each of these events have somehow become part of my identity. Without each of those memories, each of those strands, I wouldn't be who I am at this moment.
Lately I feel like I'm dangling from one of those strands. I have no direction and no idea what I am going to do with myself in the future. I used to think that I'd cut all of the ties that bound me to a past so out of my reach, but I can't. I will never be able to be rid of it simply because the past helped form the whole picture. Without those events, without that life, I'd be a blank or incomplete canvas. I simply need to learn how to add to the painting. I need to mix new colors.
Those snapshots or strands of string all helped build the home I now find myself a residence. I feel the future knocking on my door and I don't know what will be on the other side of the door when I finally figure out how to open it. But when I look back on all the places I've been and things that I've gone through, I know I'll be okay eventually.
I can't go back to those Friday nights and long phone calls. I don't want to. But one thing that hasn't changed since I was 16 years old is my belief that I am meant for something more. I'm not bound by the anger and hurt from my past. I choose to look at the good times as well as bad and appreciate them for what they were.
Because of you from my past, I still go stand in my yard from time to time to see the stars. Thank you. Without you, I wouldn't understand the power and wonder of the nighttime sky. I wouldn't still be wishing on stars.
Seeing Stars
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