Untitled Feelings
In 1996 Bloomington, IN became my home. A place where I would learn about myself as an adult and let go of myself as a teenager. Indiana University is a large campus and I was one little tiny person (pre late night pizza and beer nights). I haven't been back to my alma mater in 10 years. A lot of people consider college a place you should remain tied to, a place to visit often, and remember with fondness. But only a portion of my memories there make me smile. The other make me wonder if I can go back without hearing the voices of those I once knew and situations that changed me. Forever.
When you think back on your life, at the person you were and the person you have become, everyone wishes certain points had gone differently, certain friendships had ended nicely, or that we had not been so cautious or worried so much about what everyone thought of us. The situations I speak of are minute in the grand scheme of my life now. If I could have known then that the things that were happening were for the right reasons, I might have not left that town with a promise to myself to never return. It was silly promise, one that I'll be breaking in two days, when my girlfriends and I go back to our college stomping grounds.
I don't know what it is about the way you remember things. If I smell a certain scent I can remember a specific time or person in my life...see something that makes you think of a moment that you miss or you wish you could do over as the person you are now. Now that I'm in my thirties, it all looks so different to me now. I laugh with ease about those years and I actually give thanks to all the lessons it brought me, the way that I changed because I lost and failed, only now to fully understand who I am.
I tell my girlfriends I am ecstatic about going back. The fun we will have, the laughs that await, the places we will visit and possibly prank. Our old dorms, the frat houses, the bars, the campus-it will all be there and we plan to reminisce. But deep down, it is more than that for me. It is time to put closure on a place I ran away from long ago because I thought all I went through was for nothing. But it was for everything possible to be.
When you think back on your life, at the person you were and the person you have become, everyone wishes certain points had gone differently, certain friendships had ended nicely, or that we had not been so cautious or worried so much about what everyone thought of us. The situations I speak of are minute in the grand scheme of my life now. If I could have known then that the things that were happening were for the right reasons, I might have not left that town with a promise to myself to never return. It was silly promise, one that I'll be breaking in two days, when my girlfriends and I go back to our college stomping grounds.
I don't know what it is about the way you remember things. If I smell a certain scent I can remember a specific time or person in my life...see something that makes you think of a moment that you miss or you wish you could do over as the person you are now. Now that I'm in my thirties, it all looks so different to me now. I laugh with ease about those years and I actually give thanks to all the lessons it brought me, the way that I changed because I lost and failed, only now to fully understand who I am.
I tell my girlfriends I am ecstatic about going back. The fun we will have, the laughs that await, the places we will visit and possibly prank. Our old dorms, the frat houses, the bars, the campus-it will all be there and we plan to reminisce. But deep down, it is more than that for me. It is time to put closure on a place I ran away from long ago because I thought all I went through was for nothing. But it was for everything possible to be.
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