I turn twenty in three months exactly (though the day is almost over, so maybe it's a little less).
For some reason, lately I've been thinking a lot about things that don't normally cross my mind. I journal a lot—I've got about fifty pages left in my current one, and I've been writing in it since I got it for my sixteenth birthday—so the years encompassed on those pages aren't going anywhere, but I don't think a lot about the time before high school. What little I do think about usually involves my horse in some way or another, and that's about it.
Lately, though?
Lately I can't stop thinking about the things that I remember from a long time ago. They're flashes, little pieces, not fully-fledged, just tiny images that are snapshots of the past, but I'd forgotten how important they were to me.
I get flashes of my grandmother telling me stories, holding me up so I could play with the bubbles in the sink when she did the dishes, playing with me out on the porch or on the floor of her living room, of the way the light looked when it filtered through the curtains in her bedroom.
I get flashes of my best friend from elementary school, of us playing make-believe in her backyard or the stories we made up with her massive Playmobil collection, of sitting in the kitchen at her house drinking smoothies that her mom made for us, of all the times we used to check out every book on horses from the school library and pour over them during recess and the drawings we did together and all those things that we came up with because it was just us and our thoughts.
I get flashes of my other best friend from elementary school, of seven years of birthdays and sleepovers, of that time we pretended that we were twins at CMU's carnival, of when he got his dogs and when I stayed over at his family's cabin for a few days, of all those trips that we took to Flat Rock and that hike up to Wolf Rocks and that one day before our riding lesson when we had a little bit of an incident with his brother. I get flashes of those times I sat in the kitchen at his house and watched him cook and listened to him talk about how he wanted to be a chef when he grew up, of how he got me hooked on Runescape and Age of Mythology, of the rats and the guinea pigs and every stupid adventure we went on together.
I get flashes of all those times that I felt so insignificant and wrong because I didn't really fit in outside of them and I didn't know why. I get flashes of how lost I felt, how unimportant, how the years I spent at that school were marked by days when I didn't want to go and the time that I almost switched schools right before eighth grade. I get flashes of arguments and things that seemed so important when I was twelve and thirteen that are so stupid now.
I get flashes of all those things, and then I remember how much they've changed.
My grandmother isn't here anymore. My grandfather isn't here either. That little house is no longer ours to visit, though we do drive past every now and then to make sure that it's still there and see what it looks like. My best friend's mother is no longer with us, and I didn't even know until months after it happened. My other best friend and I haven't spoken since our junior year of high school. His mother doesn't recognize me when I see her on campus. I see those people that I went to school with when I felt so strange—I have classes with them again now—and while I'm still strange, I've grown into myself.
Those friendships were everything to me when I was younger. Those two were the people I counted on for years, and while we might not speak beyond a happy birthday here and there, or the occasional like on Instagram, they still matter because they are laced through so many important memories from when we were still figuring ourselves out. I don't know if we'd still be friends if we'd all stayed together, gone to the same high school, lived through it with each other. We might have grown apart anyway, and that's okay.
That's okay because I still have those flashes. I still remember so many of the days when we didn't know any better and the world still seemed simple and we thought that we could save things with a lemonade stand. I still need those moments when things seem a little bit too scary and I don't want to grow up, because they remind me of when all of it was easy. I get glimpses of their lives every now and then, and they get glimpses of mine, and maybe that's enough now.
I have other people to make memories with now. I have that one absurd afternoon at Ross Park Mall from freshman year, which I'm still mad about, that basement after prom sophomore year when we all got pissed off because someone insisted on making the rest of us watch a horror movie when we didn't want to, those last days on the quad under the sun before my friends graduated my junior year, trips to Panera and running across campus serenading people at the top of our lungs and the sunset over the dining hall during the camp-out senior year. I have weekends filled with movies and video games and great friends from that last summer before we all went our separate ways.
I have laughing until my face hurt and staying up talking way later than we intended to with my current roommate, silly mornings in that coffee shop that I pretty much live in at this point, stupid Facebook conversations with that girl that I love who is so close and yet so far away, flying to Florida to meet another friend who is basically my other half and her visit to me, museum trips and conversations about the stars and those moments with people who let me ramble to them about human evolution and the things that I learn about in my anthropology classes.
I have a lot now, and I've grown into myself, even if it doesn't always feel like it. I've figured myself out. I know how to take advantage of everything that I have going for myself, even if I don't always succeed in doing so. I know how to remember the good parts of my past and ignore the bad ones, because it's been six, eight, ten years since those moments and we've all grown up and changed and I can't hold those things that hurt me against people who might not even remember them anymore.
I can't hold those things against them, because we've all changed, and I don't know who's changed for the better and who's changed for the worse. What I do know is that I hope everyone is doing well. Becca, if you see this, I hope that you're having the best time at Wesleyan and I hope you know that I remember so many things from when we were little and it's all important still. Josh, you were the biggest pain in the ass sometimes, and I know that I was too, but there are so many important memories there, and while I'm sure you already know, your hedgehog is really cute and I love seeing the pictures of it.
And to all my current friends—to all the people who make me laugh until I cry, and tackle-hug me when they haven't seen me in a while, and remind me regularly that I am important and I do matter, and give me new memories every single day—you are the best thing in my life, and I don't know where I'd be without you. I don't know where I'd be without the little things—the throwaway comments over our shoulders that leave me laughing for ages, the inside jokes that were a complete and utter accident in their formation, the conversations that take place through nothing but weird facial expressions, the reminders that we have each other even when it gets hard.
I've got almost two full decades of memories to go through, and while there are plenty of bad ones, there is so much good.
I don't pay enough attention to that, so maybe it's time that I started to.
Until next time x
