Change

Life has changed so much. It has changed so much even in the past few months. I feel as if I have grown up. As if my mind has been opened to the world around me and I see how much bigger the world is. How people live. How people communicate. How they do relationships. How they talk, speak, laugh, cry, and respond with nothing but their raw soul. I have seen how such small choices or actions can have such a huge impact on someone or myself. I have met people, new people, and I have gone on adventures with yet others. I have experienced true acceptance. I have experienced community and friends. I have experienced what it means to walk, to breath, to laugh, to cry, to care so deeply for someone, to be excited, to wait in anticipation, to not care about people’s opinions, to be free, to sneak out late at night, to stick your hands out of a car with all the windows down driving on a road through the woods with the mountains in view. I have experienced for just a short time in my life- happiness. I looked forward to the days ahead and to the people I could be with. Depression was something in the back of my mind; still there, but not nearly as forefront. I yearn for that again. I yearn for the warm summer days and the bustling summer nights. They seem so far away now and yet still in the forefront of my mind. I genuinely miss every single person who was apart of that because now it seems so far away. It seems as if we have all moved on with our lives and college and significant others. I am saddened and I’m scared. . . I’m scared of growing up. Of having to have my life planned out, and having to pay attention to bigger things. What ever happened to those days when I could have my hair down, flowing in the wind, short shorts, loose t-shirts, bare feet, warm air, sun on my face, not a care in the world, jumping into wooded lakes, running on railroad tracks, drunken midnight fishing and casino visits, dancing crazily with my friends, running through the rain, long walks through the beaten down trails in the woods, biking half way across town because you had nothing better to do, country drives, planning our futures, discussing life as if it will never change. What happened to freedom? Now I feel like a captured fish. One who swam the seas but now sits wearily in a bowl on the counter. I am truly melancholy. I feel as if I enjoyed the days but they went by way too fast. And I feel like it was a summer never to be repeated because now. . . now I am expected to grow up. I am expected to have plans, to work, to graduate from college, to go to graduate school, to think of a future. And I’m going to make a confession. That’s boring. I don’t want to do that. I want to travel, to go on adventures, to drive and not look back. I have so many things I want to do. The last thing I want to do is stay in one spot.

I’m sitting here staring at my floor in my room right now. It is full of boxes and items strewn everywhere. I move out in 3 days. Saturday. Am I scared? A little. Scared of how the process is going to work. Am I excited? Exceedingly. Am I worried? A little. Of being alone mostly and of having no one there. That is my only worry; that I will be completely abandoned. The funny thing is that when I was younger I always fantasized about leaving and dropping everything and starting fresh and honestly, last year I would have been able to do that. I was ready to do that. Then the spring semester hit and everything changed. I met so many new people and actually lived. Now the two people I still have from all of that, I am afraid to leave. I am afraid to lose. But I learned, this summer, how hard it is to just leave. I had the adventure I thought I would never have until I left this stupid state. . . and I had them right here in this stupid state and town. Quite ironic actually. But now I find I cling to those memories because I am afraid to create new ones. I need to remember that life isn't over. . . it has just begun. And I have many days until it's over. . . and in reality. Life will only last as long as I decide to pursue it. . . that is something I have come to realize. 

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts 

are conscious of our treasures.”

-Thornton Wilder