I have been Thinking…
Over the last few days I have been feeling really nostalgic…
I look into the past with weathered eyes and I recall all the moments and events, feelings and hard ships I have endured and endured with others. I think about others who I lost to the past and those who I left in the past.
Why are memories so important to us?
We tend to do these flash backs in our own time and reminisce on pain and happiness… awkwardness, missteps, all the good all the bad.
I find myself flipping through old photographs and listening to songs I grew up with, ingesting everything I could to bring more and more of it back but not knowing what the whole story was and what’s been fragmented. I look at the person who was 18 years old and all the experiences I had by then and I remember...”damn what’s going to happen when I make it past 21?” when I hit 21, I then think to myself “Damn what’s going to happen when I hit 26?”
I find myself thinking about a lot of firsts I had in my life. The first time I picked up a skateboard, I remember the first time I fell and how bad it hurt, but also my resolve to get back up.
I remember
The first time I did something really bad…
The first time I kissed a girl…
The first time I did something meaningful for someone else…
The first time I lost someone…
There have been so many firsts and still so many more to this day. It hits you hard to realize you have quite a history. A history of definition that speaks to us in a way that is known by all but only understood by yourself. You are the only person that carries that full history, others have pieces of that shared history but you are the one that’s shaped by it, molded by the choices you have made in life, stronger and weaker all at the same time because memories are mirrors of a past self that use to be.
I want to share a secret with. A defining moment in my life. When I came to terms with the idea of life and death. Loss is real and is one of the most heartbreaking experiences we all share. I lost a good friend once to suicide and to this day it’s always stuck with me. I always wrestle with the idea of could I have done more? Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t she reach out? I think we remember to know that it was real and it did happen. This is a secret I held very close for most of my life. I guess it’s why I’m a very accommodating person even for people I barely know.
Now I didn’t say these things to make you sad but I’m saying them to point out that memories are the paper trail of who we are and they keep us accountable. They keep us happy in moments where we feel low and they tell us we can keep going even in the face of extreme odds because we have been there before.
Thank you for reading my little thought I wanted to put out there into the wide world.