A year ago. That's not so long ago, is it? But the length of time is really dependent on who is asking, and when they're asking. It could be so close nothing's changed and you can touch it with your finger, feel that it's just right there next to you. Or it could be ages ago, a world so far away you might not be able to dream of its existence. Who knows, in some ways a year ago might be farther away than two years ago, or ten years ago. We only think time is linear.
A year ago, I was at the beach. I love the Gulf Coast. Warm waters stretching out forever. Clean sand. Dark nights. I'd go with a group of friends, we'd get a house together. It was one of the best weekends of the year. I mean, it's hard to beat Utopiafest, even with the water. But we'd gotten a house together two years in a row, and we'd hang out all day and then head to the beach at night, just us and the sand, the waves, the stars. It's times like that that you hope you remember when you're older. The freedom and the joy and the whatever-it-is that makes it different than today and yesterday and the day before.
The danger in remembering the good times, though, is that you sometimes forget that there were bad times, too. I don't remember quite what they were, I don't remember the unhappiness exactly, but I know it was there. It always is. And you want to forget about that part, because it didn't matter, it wasn't real, it's over, it's history, and it wasn't so bad anyway, in retrospect. But you also don't want to forget it. Because it's dangerous to think that any other time was better than this time, the time you're having right now, in this very instance, except right now, you're living it, the good and the bad, and you haven't been able to log the part of it down that you want to save yet, you haven't been able to throw the rest away. But soon you will, this time right now will be the past, and you'll look back and you'll compare it to that other time and those two times will both seem equally as great, for whatever reason. Or they won't.
It's hard to say, without hindsight.
At this moment, I feel like I was more care-free a year ago. Fewer stresses, fewer worries, like I had things figured out, mostly. I had a plan, and it was working, and that was good, or good enough. I had a lot of confidence about the future, even though it was so unknown at the time. I really could have headed in any direction at the time. The whole world was an open body of water, and I had jumped right in.
But even then, free to do whatever I wanted, I saw this future. That's a weird thing, if you think the future is unwritten, to know that you write it before it happens. So it is written, after all? You see this road before you and you choose to take it and there's just this knowing feeling you have when you're on it. I've felt that knowing feeling my whole life, though I mostly didn't understand what it meant. I still debate about fate: does it exist? Is everything already written? Or is every thing — every single possibility, every single past and every single future, happening out there somewhere? Honestly, I'm heading toward no and yes. Choose your own adventure, but choose wisely.
Me? I'm yearning to head east, even if it's just for a weekend. Or west. North. South. But I'm feeling this stronger urge right this moment to stay put. Right here. Because when it's all said and done, this is good. And I'm grateful for that.
But man. I just want to see some stars.