Lifetimes

Sometimes it feels like I've had more than one life in twenty-one years. Like, if you were to track me through the tail end of high school up until now, you could easily see where one part of me left off and the other started. It's a little harder to see what brought me here, the stuff that's on the inside and doesn't see the light of day except in extreme circumstances. It's hard to see the bad stuff because there doesn't seem to be a camera present when it all goes down the tubes. Why? Mostly because it's not a pretty picture. No pun intended.



Maybe it's because I realized this morning was the last morning I was going to register for fall undergraduate courses, and, well, that's got me more than a little freaked out and tooling through a bit of memory lane. The stages of me, not the pieces, because the important pieces don't fall off anymore. They chip - sometimes really easily - but they don't actually come off anymore.



I might have learned how to bend a little easier, instead of outright fracturing. Or I might have just morphed into stronger stuff. I don't know. And if I don't know, you people must not have a clue.



What I do know is that I can see the journey - the part of the journey - I've taken. I can the see the ways I've changed, both physically and in the ways that aren't so obvious.



Looking back might be a way to look ahead, too. I don't know where I'm goin', but I know where I come from, and I'm just fine with knowing only that. As for the rest of it? Well, I'll deal with it as it comes. One day at a time.