I don't miss being young. However, I do miss the excitement of believing in what the future holds and the time when past events were seen as inconsequential. Perhaps with age comes wisdom and, for certain, a hardening of the soul. The end of a relationship, though no longer devastating, is balanced by limitations on the height of achievable feelings, and labeled as a mature love. After Nina, I welcomed this hardening.
Once upon a time, my thoughts and writings on love provided inspiration. Today, those same words seem hollow and distant, and raise memories that once were lucid, now seem obscure. That version of me lacks truth and invokes a melancholy that I involuntarily push away—A vague likeness that is a struggle to retain.
It was a blissfully-sappy delusion; a fantasy held onto for much too long.
I imagine that most of us, as we look back on our lives, pause on certain actions taken. These moments may have appeared erratic or out of character at the time, but when reviewed from the present, provide a seemingly predictable map to who we are today. For most, the insecurity of youth is quieted by even the most modest successes achieved. Volatility gives way to stability. We travel through life thinking we know who we are but are still confused as to why.
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Navel Gazing
Non-FictionI didn't want to be without her... Her beautiful face, infectious smile, her long, lean body, and the way she made me feel. But as time passed, and in the cruel way that familiarity and knowledge can sometimes work together against your dreams, the...
