This has been the wackiest year.
I started grad school. I became a social work intern at a non-profit here in town. I watched Boys Don't Cry (and cried) I learned what "gender identity" really means. I became a teacher and a student and a new friend. I started training for a half marathon and I ran 14 miles for fun. I, the ever shy flower, sang a LOT of karaoke. I reconnected with old friends. I lost touch. I regained focus. I ate Ramen and salad and felt sunny and sad and every gradation in between.
And let's face it. Everybody in my life is facing crisis. Divorce, death, illness--you name it, someone I know is going through it.
And (surprise), it all has me a'thinkin'.
How do I want to spend my life? Like so many quarters and endless vending machines, I am faced with this quandry: time well spent, is spent...where? How? And with whom?
I used to be the kind of gal who hoped to meet one guy, marry one guy, and that was that. Any additional relationships would sully my innocence and take away from the magic. But now I'm not so sure. Can I, at 26, really know what I want? Will want? Or is that just my Generation-"Y"-ness talking? You know...the part of me that was raised in a quick-fix/internet/tv-on-dvd world and can't stand the thought of doing the same thing for 20 minutes--let alone a lifetime. At the same time, I am goal-oriented by nature (perhaps to a fault), and the thought of wasting my time with someone who is going to be a mere memory in who-knows-when isn't that appealing either.
On the other hand, I can't stand to think of anyone as a waste of my time.
On the other hand, I can't stomach being with someone who is biding their time until the next best thing comes along. Which is, historically, how I end up feeling when I make the mistake of over-thinking (which, historically, I always do).
I am the next best thing, damnit.
And yes, I am dwelling too much on the past. As much as I don't like to admit it, my past relationships have taken their toll on me...and here I am again, late at night, rememory...izing.
Memory is an odd thing, the way it lopes and shifts and splits apart with the telling. Memory in my head is entirely different from memory spoken aloud, and still even more different from memory written down. When I write a memory, I alter it indefinitely--it is no longer the innocent memory of old. It is reshaped, formatted by that all-knowing entity called retrospect.
Hindsight is 20/20.
Take relationships for example. At the time, mine all seemed good and well, lovely even. Eventually though, these relationships faded, became marred by cynicism, by the simplest things--a misplaced word, a misread look--any combination of things that signalled the inevitable beginning of the end, tiny infractions that converted the "what could have beens" into the "what never was". Goodbye. Farewell. Nice knowing you. All that work for nothing.
It is odd the transition from seeing a person every day to never seeing them, to move from sharing everything to sharing nothing.
Frankly, it has left me a little disillusioned.
And yet not, in retrospect, I can see that mistakes that were made. I can reread the misread tone. I can reinterpret the "he said, she said". If love is blind, retrospect has x-ray vision. I can safely say that most things I did to end my relationships I would never have done again...in retrospect. I can see my mistakes and mentally I can repair them, reposition my relationships, gather the fragments, and put them back together again. Hypothetically.
But what does that mean? The hard truth is I can't go back. And if I could, would I? Would I want to come back with the proverbial "knowledge of good and evil"? Wouldn't that ruin the innocence of my memories, sour my experiences by intellectualizing them?
Because really, there is something to be said for mistakes. For taking chances and failing. Sorely. For realizing through experience that you were wrong, you can be an asshole, and that not everything you say gets interpreted how you intended it. Maybe it all happened for a reason. Maybe you needed to learn a lesson. Maybe you needed to fail.
Maybe some things were just not meant to be.
Or were they?
What do I do with the things of my past? The people of my past? The feelings of my past? It seems odd to be able to discard human emotion so quickly, as though it were nothing, is nothing. Became nothing? How can emotion evaporate completely? Or can it? Is it always a part of you somehow?
I apologize for this infuriatingly sparse and random piece of writing. Lately, I have been increasingly lost in thought, caught within the cyclical maze of memory and rememory, of past and present. I am where I am supposed to be. I know that, and that should be good enough. But as wonderful as the present may be, I cannot seem to escape the sneaking suspicion that the past has never quite left me, that it is always skulking somewhere along the periphery of my psyche, waiting for its second chance to shine.
And really? Where do emotions go when they die? Do they die? Or are they just reinvested into something else? The big question is, how divorced are we from our pasts? Can we ever truly move on, or are our past always a part of us?
I think so. In a noncreepy way. I think our pasts help create our present, that our mistakes and triumphs help mold us into who we are today. We can transform, but we can never discard the elements that compose us. Once we experience something or someone, it becomes a part of us forever. In a noncreepy way. We can change and mold and adapt, but we are who we are.
...We are who we are who we are.
