12/26/2021
"Red truck driveway. Watching the world drive past me. Yellow bus with the door unlocked and we're kissing in the backseat. Fences are made for climbing and every gas station on this street was built for us to live in. The lake up the road holds 180 afternoons worth of bikini dips- smoke billowing off our boat in the middle of it."
My old life wants me back so bad. It calls me almost everyday, and I hear the rings within the gunshots sounds of my ex-boyfriend‘s car every time he drives past my house and through the leftover smell of smoke burned into my favorite top and the urge to turn one street too early on the way to pick up my sister from school.
and sometimes I want to accept the call- to go back to the safety found within the thoughtlessness of my old existence.
Sometimes I just want to scream because of how badly I wish I were sitting in someone's garage on a torn up couch thinking about nothing.
Life goes by slower when you’re sober. Now I know how much more meaningful and heartbreaking it all is when you have to think about it as it happens for you. It's bittersweet being so aware.
I spent a lot of time in the past year or so comparing my current self to the old one, and craving to be back where I once was, in the comfortable recklessness of my old life- which is, obviously foolish of me to ever wish for. I've spent so much time growing into the person I'd like to become, and unlearning things I wish I didn't know in the first place. But with that means the loss of the life I was so used to.
A life that at the time, seemed like the best it could ever be. A life of carefree days and sleepless nights. A life of packed living room parties, and rooftop summers, and crushed can backyards. I now know that in reality, it was a life filled with friends who’d do anything in the world for me except stand up to their brother- who taught me so much about all the things I shouldn't need to know- who led me to danger and then made it seem as though they were protecting me within it. Coming out of it, and becoming aware that what I used to believe to be true was actually only part of the story was hard to recognize. Yet even despite the realization of the truth to it all, the memory of picnics surrounded by baby bunnies, and of hopping fences to save time, and of having no where to go except circle k and nothing to do except hang out around the picnic table out back eating star crunches and hot pockets, feels so overwhelmingly safe.
It's like the way that sometimes you crave crappy diner food even though you have a fresh homemade dinner waiting for you at home.
Life now is peaceful and free and genuinely happy- not just surface level. It's real, and I'm living it. The people I spend my days with have shown me some of the greatest friendship I've ever known. It's reminded me how easy it is to love so hard. I hate who I used to be, but sometimes I miss her. She taught me everything that I don't want to be. She made me reckless so I could remember what it's like to be gentle. She taught me to have compassion for those who don't seem to deserve it, and reminded me what it's like to be carefree. I try to be nice when I talk about her because I know if she heard me saying mean things aimed towards her, her feelings would be so hurt. I'm thankful for all she taught me, and even more thankful that I am not that person any longer. I know I could not be who I am today without that time in my life.
It was wild and dreamy and as much as I sometimes wish to be within those memories again, I think it'll be okay if I decline the call this time, finally.
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