When I'm left alone in a small apartment with plans to leave tomorrow for Lyon (yay!!!) but nothing much to do in the meantime, this is what happens...
I recently came across something I'd written about a year and a half ago (for no other purpose than writing it...not for a class or anything). The funny thing is, it's about how quickly I've changed over the last few years, and I feel like I'm already very different from how I was when I wrote it. At the time, I was thinking a lot about leaving New Orleans for college and reflecting on how Hurricane Katrina changed my life. Now I feel like I've grown up a little more and I've become a lot better at holding on to connections with other people, rather than choosing to forget about them when they're gone. I'm still a kind of like that, but I've gotten a lot better. Anyways, it's all about goodbyes, connections, and change. Read on...
Looking backwards is a strange experience. Whether recalling events, slippery memories, or flipping back through old facebook photos (which, I admit, is what prompted this line of thought), the nostalgia I feel is a tricky misrepresentation of the past. In the photos I flip through almost everyone is smiling. We look happy. I look fairly good in all of them, having untagged the photos I did not appear...physically appealing would be the phrase. Don’t I really look like that? Not all the time. It’s a moment stilled, preserved because it looks nice. We, the ones in the photos, are showing the best of that moment. Other things, grievances and difficult times, do not show up in those photos, although I can remember them. In fact, photos from the most difficult year of my life are almost non-existent. There weren’t enough happy times during that year.
However, sometimes seeing is so much stronger than remembering. I look at a photo of two friends and myself. We look so happy and connected. People I do not even know anymore, not really. We do not talk. We live in different places. Growing up does that, as do strange, incomprehensible events that happen even when they shouldn’t. Even when we thought such things never would happen to us because of the distance between tragedy and everyday life, until the moment tragedy became everyday and we simply learned to live with that. We became different people. Growing up is that distance between me and the different people I’ve been. I’ve changed so many times that I have trouble keeping track of who I am. I look at old photographs and can hardly recognize myself. Only a year or two’s difference even. I’m young, aren’t I? How can a person change so quickly?
I change and my friends change too. That’s why we drift apart. I forget those connections I once treasured. Sometimes I feel selfish, remote from other people. How can a person be so important to me for so many years and then forgotten not long after? I have brief periods of remembering. Looking through old photos. A short outing together. Hello, how’s life? Good, me too. Bye, see you in another year. My goodbyes are always quick, the real misery of separation coming afterwards, when I’m all alone and I realize (again) what that feels like. Then I forget, because I’ve become very good at making new friends, going to new places. My life is full of that. Maybe better for it too. I know to treasure the present because I won’t be here forever, they won’t be here forever, and we won’t be here forever. There is only now and, perhaps, the chance of remembering.
...
Today:
Well, my goodbyes have somehow become a lot more drawn out (and a tad melodramatic).
I know there's also tomorrow. There's Xie Miao, Mi Ting, Gao, Crystal, Ellie, Jake, Rebecca, and Lexi over the summer in China. There Dad and Kathleen in August, and there's my Wheaton friends in the Fall. Perhaps Illinois for Thanksgiving. And there's all the millions of possibilities that extend beyond that.
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