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By spiritwic Date: 2005 Sep 14 Comment on this Work [[2005.09.14.19.56.16043]] |
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July 7, 2004 Dear past, I thought of you tonight. Of course, it's not the first time, and it's never a surprise. You seem to have had a profound impact on me, which is strange, considering the mechanics of it all. It was never supposed to amount to much, and I guess it is a lot easier for me to see that now. I was younger then, and had the idealistic view that I could change your mind. Just like all the ones before you, really. But I never could change them, or you, for that matter. I've made a kind of peace with it, I think. That doesn't stop me from thinking about you, though. Or any of the others. Each of you gave me something worth remembering, even if it was only a few moments of happiness. Even the pain I brought upon myself is worth remembering. So much of it has made me who I am today. Of course, that is the eternal quest, to find out who I am. I still haven't reached the end of that road. I have found out a few things I'm not, though. I'm not a wife. I found that out the hard way, and caused too many people pain along the way. No one deserved that revelation, except maybe me. I guess I always knew that I wasn't meant for the long term commitment. Of course, the only way to really know these things is to experience them, and I tried to explain that to him, but he doesn't agree, or understand. Would you? Sometimes I want so badly to call you, but who should I call? None of you remember me, at least not as I remember me, in each of those periods. And the numbers are all gone, either changed or forgotten. And who really calls 411 to look up the past? I wouldn't even know where to begin. I miss you all, in one way or another. I'm not the same as I was then. Well, perhaps some things haven't changed. But I'm not so prone to fall head over heels any more. I honestly don't think that sort of thing exists, not in real life. And I have put most of my fairy tale endings away. We all have to grow up sooner or later. I just feel that it happened so fast, and when I wasn't paying attention. One morning I woke up and you were all gone, and nothing looked for me in the future. I was caught in a kind of limbo, where nothing really mattered. I am still part way there, I think. Look at me - writing a letter to someone who only exists in my memories. You've all moved on, and have lives of your own. Perhaps you spare me a thought every once in a while, but I wouldn't hold it against you if you didn't. But what to do if we saw each other again? Would we perform the ritual of idle chit-chat, while trying to manage a smooth escape? Would we fall back into old patterns? Do any of us even need that? I have dreams about beaches, kissing men in the pounding surf. I dream about flea markets, and sleeping in the back seat of a white mustang. There are talking dogs in my neighbors yard, and two-headed snakes in mine. The past and the present get jumbled up around a blue thunderbird, and everything seems so real when I nap in the afternoon, that it's hard to pull the two apart. I've run out of things to say to put myself to sleep, so I just stare at the numbers on the clock, saying that I'll get up if I haven't fallen asleep in the next fifteen minutes. The voices are slowly drifting away, leaving nothing but silence in their wake, a silence that I am having trouble filling. I try to stand still and breathe, but feel like the harder I try, the faster the world spins, and I am falling, falling, too fast to right myself. Then my eyes focus and I am standing where I was before I started to lose my mind. I don't know where here is, and I don't know how I got here, or how I can leave. I'm just so tired, all of the time, and it doesn't seem like there will ever be enough sleep for me to be rested. |