I want to be done with school. I want to go to theme parks and baseball games and carnivals. I don’t want work to consume me or to worry about things like money. I want to go downtown for non-school related reasons and I want to have more barbecues with my family and more time spent with my friends. I want days spent enjoying the weather and nights at the drive-in movie theater. I want to travel and go somewhere, even if it’s just for a weekend.
Why do these things never live up to expectations?
Beyond pumped, I really need to get out of here for a while.
I failed and forgot to keep track of some… Gonna try to stay more on top of it this year.
You were always impulsive. Your thoughts and tastes and beliefs changed with the wind. Everything about you altered quickly, you were never the same you that you were the day before. Days were years, decades, in your mindset. So when the hours between our silences became days which became weeks, I lost sight of who you were. Encased inside the body of my friend was a stranger. Pearls, stars revealing themselves in blinding, gleaming light. A stranger’s smile.
I found your ability to change and grow and morph into a new beautiful version of yourself so inspiring; the person I aimed to be. But through time and distances and missed opportunities, I find myself longing for who you were, once upon a time, ages ago. You have grown and evolved into such a new, beautiful person and here I sit, the same as ever. The weight I carry on my shoulders crushing, yours virtually gone. The world’s smallest violin.
My greatest wish forever ago: to transform myself alongside you. To have that sturdy crutch to lean upon throughout the stumbles and falls of shedding my old skin and becoming accustomed to the new. All signs show that I was nothing more than a stepping stone for your own growth. I was there when you needed me most and discarded when I became of no use.
More than bitterness or disdain or anger, I am overwhelmed with remorse that I could not find my footing to evolve in such ways that you have. Stuck in the mud. Walking in circles. A stranger’s smile.
I accepted long ago that I would be forgotten and fade from the memories of many: a bitter reality that I was forced to swallow. Along the way, we believe we find kindred souls, those that we are forever tied to and connected with; those that leave an imprint on our lives, fingerprints and lipstick stains to our hearts. But could these connections, could these attachments be unrequited? Could we need someone more than they need us? The balance of life may be skewed by such a reality. Where is there fairness or kindness in making those feelings of wholeness unreciprocated? What have we done as humans to deserve the ache and hurt that comes along with the realization that you are not needed in the way that you so desperately need?
Perhaps unreturned feelings are not the case. Perhaps we must look deeper, into the overwhelming pride and humility that overcomes some of us. Does the longing for someone make us weak, incompetent? Society may tell us this but no person can honestly stroll through their entire life and claim that at no point did they find themselves wanting companionship and lifelong accompaniment from someone. So perhaps these lost souls that we find ourselves drawn towards and forever tied to, who seem to not share our feelings of connectivity, simply force themselves to forget what the feeling is. We are forgotten and fade from memories. But at one time, we meant something to someone. We were a kindred soul, a piece of them. Eventually muscle and skin overgrew our place and forced us out on our own, leaving us with no heart to complete, no life to forever be a part of except our own.
Until we stumble upon another.
