Reflections

So I was just looking at some pictures on JB's myspace page, of her sitting in some kind of fancy black formalish dress, on a swing, and she looks about 15 or 16 years old. She looks all melancholy in the picture, and it made me stop and ponder things. I looked like that at one point during that period in my life. Hell, there was even a time when I could be found in the middle of the night, swinging on a park swing, thinking what I'm sure I believed were deep, meaningful thoughts. Not so sure now that they were deep in and meaningful, but back then I probably thought they were.

But it strikes me, looking at that picture of her, that there are no such photographs of me. No such evidence of me. I was never that innocent. I might have spent time swinging on a swing, thinking deep thoughts at night, but the innocence wasn't there. And there were no friends around to catch it on film. And by the point that there might have been someone around with a camera? Chances are, by that time, there were enough drugs to float a barge, and enough alcohol to float a cruise ship.But nobody to care. Party hearty, right? Not the best of decision making on my part then. And I doubt I even cared. Nobody to answer to, and nobody to care what I did.

And that's a trait I always kept. If you don't let anyone close, there's no one to hurt you. Oh, there are always people around. Looking back, scores of people around, in fact. To the outside eye, my place seemed like a revolving door most of the time. I was the local teenage runaway halfway house. In my mind I guess I was trying to save someone, the way no one ever tried to save me? Something along those lines at any rate. At some point, you have to stop fighting to save everyone else, and save yourself, and I eventually did that. I don't have a halfway house anymore. Not for wayward teens. Not for anyone.

And it's easier to not let anyone in, not really. Some wounds don't heal. They scar over, but the cuts remain. Some things you learn, and those lessons stay with you.

Sometimes you forget. And sometimes you remember. And sometimes you need to remember, and you fight for the memories.