Title: Yearn
Today, in a desperate attempt to do positively anything but edit my article, I diverted my attention to a photo I stumbled upon online of someone I haven't seen or spoken to in years. I saw this person's arms and nose and the focused eyes and somehow I was able to put it all together.
If memories are pieces to a larger puzzle built of every thought, it was like viewing the puzzle pieces after they had morphed and molded so that they almost don't fit together anymore. The face had changed to form the portrait of a man. I saw his nose and his yellow honey eyes, and I remembered. I could still make out the boy I kept buried under all the books I had read since then. All the people I've met and all the friendships I've lost. I remembered the soapy smell and the blackness and the dried blood.
I once again diverted my thoughts to search for all the others I had lost. I went on Myspace--the dreadful abyss of drunken teenagers and self-absorbed has-beens--and followed a chain of vaguely familiar faces to an end I hadn't specified in my mind.
As I'm sure is the case with any one person's memory, and as I'm sure anyone must be reminded over and over again, I realized that ending one memory of one person leaves that person just in the state I left them. They are stuck in time, never changing, never aging. To be reminded that their faces have indeed evolved, become more tired or more aware, is always an awakening, and, in this particular case, a disheartening arrival.
Before there was Myspace or Facebook, people didn't have to age in the memories of those who would leave them. They didn't have to be missed. One could leave their barely-acquaintances and never be reminded of what they lost. Does Facebook help people stay in touch who would normally lose sight of each other? Or merely remind people of those they are going to lose, no matter what?
I searched through the eyes of my former friends, not knowing whether I wished to meet them again or to visit our past and swim through our memories. Which is more real-- the memories of them as teenagers which exist forever, or the truth of what is actually happening to my friends (their marriages, their beards, their diplomas, their babies, their new goals, new jobs)?
I felt a strong yearning for my past. How do I yearn for the past at 20 years of age? I felt my heart in my throat and I wanted to apologize. I wanted to laugh and I wanted to scream. I wanted to lay claim upon all the people I used to know. For another: That's my friend. I know those blue eyes better than anyone could. I've kissed those lips and touched those shoulders a million times. I know him. But it isn't true. He lives with his girlfriend a few hundred miles away and I don't know him anymore. This is definitely not to say that I want to get together with my past boyfriends. I don't yearn for anyone but Sean, and I really don't intend on yearning for anyone else for, well, ever. What I refer to is a yearning for this childish familiarity I shared with my old friends. I yearn for the limited/unlimited life I used to lead. When my parents controlled my every move, but nothing "counted" yet. Not knowing anything/knowing everything.
This is turning into a note about nostalgia, but it's more than that. My yearning for the past is slowly transitioning into a fear of the same thing happening over again, once college is over. My ocean of friends might/will turn into a lake of acquaintance coworkers and later a small residential pool of my immediate family. I fear becoming a half-empty glass. A widow living in her memories every day, knowing tomorrow threatens to drink her up.
Enough pessimism. I can't stand sinking in pessimism.
But seriously. Does anyone ever feel the way I do? Or am I shouting into a void?
If memories are pieces to a larger puzzle built of every thought, it was like viewing the puzzle pieces after they had morphed and molded so that they almost don't fit together anymore. The face had changed to form the portrait of a man. I saw his nose and his yellow honey eyes, and I remembered. I could still make out the boy I kept buried under all the books I had read since then. All the people I've met and all the friendships I've lost. I remembered the soapy smell and the blackness and the dried blood.
I once again diverted my thoughts to search for all the others I had lost. I went on Myspace--the dreadful abyss of drunken teenagers and self-absorbed has-beens--and followed a chain of vaguely familiar faces to an end I hadn't specified in my mind.
As I'm sure is the case with any one person's memory, and as I'm sure anyone must be reminded over and over again, I realized that ending one memory of one person leaves that person just in the state I left them. They are stuck in time, never changing, never aging. To be reminded that their faces have indeed evolved, become more tired or more aware, is always an awakening, and, in this particular case, a disheartening arrival.
Before there was Myspace or Facebook, people didn't have to age in the memories of those who would leave them. They didn't have to be missed. One could leave their barely-acquaintances and never be reminded of what they lost. Does Facebook help people stay in touch who would normally lose sight of each other? Or merely remind people of those they are going to lose, no matter what?
I searched through the eyes of my former friends, not knowing whether I wished to meet them again or to visit our past and swim through our memories. Which is more real-- the memories of them as teenagers which exist forever, or the truth of what is actually happening to my friends (their marriages, their beards, their diplomas, their babies, their new goals, new jobs)?
I felt a strong yearning for my past. How do I yearn for the past at 20 years of age? I felt my heart in my throat and I wanted to apologize. I wanted to laugh and I wanted to scream. I wanted to lay claim upon all the people I used to know. For another: That's my friend. I know those blue eyes better than anyone could. I've kissed those lips and touched those shoulders a million times. I know him. But it isn't true. He lives with his girlfriend a few hundred miles away and I don't know him anymore. This is definitely not to say that I want to get together with my past boyfriends. I don't yearn for anyone but Sean, and I really don't intend on yearning for anyone else for, well, ever. What I refer to is a yearning for this childish familiarity I shared with my old friends. I yearn for the limited/unlimited life I used to lead. When my parents controlled my every move, but nothing "counted" yet. Not knowing anything/knowing everything.
This is turning into a note about nostalgia, but it's more than that. My yearning for the past is slowly transitioning into a fear of the same thing happening over again, once college is over. My ocean of friends might/will turn into a lake of acquaintance coworkers and later a small residential pool of my immediate family. I fear becoming a half-empty glass. A widow living in her memories every day, knowing tomorrow threatens to drink her up.
Enough pessimism. I can't stand sinking in pessimism.
But seriously. Does anyone ever feel the way I do? Or am I shouting into a void?