When does soon become too late?
Where is the line,
The one where what is and what will be meet,
converging at that point where you and I will stand.
Here?
Maybe. Maybe not.
But we'll never know unless we walk.
Forward, though.
Because back there is tragic, sad, full of shadows,
The things we never meant to know and the things we had to forget.


I will be going to three weddings in the next year or so. J and K, M and C, C and K...they say once your friends start getting engaged and married off, you catch a bug. And you want it. I see it a lot in my older friends...that semisweet bitterness. Wanting to be happy, but needing what they've got for yourself. I'm too young for the wedding bug, at least that's what I keep telling myself. I might be weird for thinking too hard about what direction we're headed in, but after two years, it's hard not to. A thinks we're next, and after that nasty April Fool's Joke we pulled...who knows????

What's YOUR Story?

The boy and I were hanging out earlier tonight, channel surfing, and we stopped to watch Hitch. Whether or not any of you all have seen it is utterly irrelevant to the point of this post, so get past that need to go on imbd.com and look it up ;) The movie is important to boy and I because the night we saw it in the theaters was our first official date. Awkward story. More of a "Hey K, ask C if he wants to come see Hitch with us...because I'm too scared to ask him myself," followed by an "oh shit, I can't answer that!" when he called me at home to say that he'd love to go with me, and followed still by an awkward hug and a lingering hand squeeze that kept me smiling the whole way home, professing to S and B (who no longer even SPEAK to one another) in the car that C was it for me.

But even that sappy story isn't what I'm getting at. (Although, I am completely unashamed to admit that I still get goosebumps when I think about how it all happened, and how sure I was of the way things would be between us---guess I was right...haha!).

My point is this: those little triggers, those little moments, those little "a-ha's!" that take you back to where our relationships all began are how we keep our connections with one another afloat. And with that in mind, and with an overwhelming need for me to continue feeling warm and fuzzy, here are some more examples of what I mean:

A and M...twins. Two of my best friends. I'm reminded of them whenever I walk into a stinky bathroom. Odd? Yes. Meaningful for the three of us? You bet. It takes me back to band camp freshman year when the girl's bathroom reeked and I ran in there guns blazing on a dare. We've been inseparable ever since.
K, J, B (whatever I choose to call her at the time). When I think of kindergarten, my thoughts go to her. I played house and grocery store with her in class. We've been friends for almost sixteen years now. One of our favorite things to do is reminisce about all the things we've been fortunate enough to do together. It keeps us going, keeps things fresh while we build new memories.
K...might as well be my little sister. She was a shy little eighth grader when we first met, stepping into the high school world a good two months before she officially became a freshman. Now whenever I see a water fountain, I think of her. She shoved my face in one once, after I had teased her for taking too long on one of our breaks from rehearsal. After that, I knew she'd be one of us. She didn't take my crap, and I admired her for that.

Bonds create tension. It's the inherent fault of our need for companionship, but when I feel the ropes beginning to creak against one another, I look back to where it all began. It helps to remember how you came to love that person in the first place. Our roots are important.

We all have a story...so what's yours? What's ours?

Freedom

In my room, I had a shelf lined with dusty photo albums. They were separated from those on the shelf below, the ones I flipped through frequently. I only took the isolated ones down when I was sad...or when I wanted to reflect on the way things used to be. I'm not such a tough cookie, there are days when I really, really miss what used to be.

But tonight I pulled them off my shelf, and threw them on the floor. I'm over it. I'm happy. I have more memories now to fill up more albums than I ever thought I would have a few years ago. Some of the people in the albums will overlap between the old and the new, and I am so thankful for them...and the others? Forget it. I've found better.

And now I can't stop smiling. Maybe it's time I threw more dusty, dirty memories to the floor and walked away.