mutantfest is coming up fast. 11 days.
I want to go because I know they'll be there. the people I used to love. the people who left me behind and then crashed back into my world just when I thought I was learning to make sense of it. I want to go because I want to prove to myself that I can sit in their circles, drink their beer, wear their stupid patches. belong. that it wasn't just some random fluke that made us feel like some kind of a family again.
I don't want to go because I hate myself for needing the validation of a next time. because I can't stand to be one of those people that lives in the "then" to the exclusion of the "now". I don't want to go because I know no matter how time has healed the wounds we inflicted we'll never fit together like we used to, and I'll be the only person who can't fake it quite as well as the rest, and the memories of better times will only exaggerate the flaws of the present with their imagined perfection.
I wish everyone could see the past the way it really was, sometimes. without the flattering lens of time and nostalgia and the way it always seems to sandblast the flaws from the surfaces of your recollections. turn them into something shiny and reflective and beautiful. maybe we're all just trying to mask the anticlimax of our adult lives by imagining that during our adolescence, we were happy. even if we never paused to acknowledge it at the time, we were happy then. maybe that thought - no matter how false - makes the rest easier to bear.
the grass is greener, you know. but only in the future - which is unpredictable, and past - which is unattainable. it always seems that in the present the grass is yellow and dying, scratchy and full of thorns.
it seems that no matter what choice I make it will be with the intention of proving something. if I go, it will be to prove that I still belong; if I don't go, it will be to prove that I don't care whether I belong or not.
either way it's a lie.
I want to go because I know they'll be there. the people I used to love. the people who left me behind and then crashed back into my world just when I thought I was learning to make sense of it. I want to go because I want to prove to myself that I can sit in their circles, drink their beer, wear their stupid patches. belong. that it wasn't just some random fluke that made us feel like some kind of a family again.
I don't want to go because I hate myself for needing the validation of a next time. because I can't stand to be one of those people that lives in the "then" to the exclusion of the "now". I don't want to go because I know no matter how time has healed the wounds we inflicted we'll never fit together like we used to, and I'll be the only person who can't fake it quite as well as the rest, and the memories of better times will only exaggerate the flaws of the present with their imagined perfection.
I wish everyone could see the past the way it really was, sometimes. without the flattering lens of time and nostalgia and the way it always seems to sandblast the flaws from the surfaces of your recollections. turn them into something shiny and reflective and beautiful. maybe we're all just trying to mask the anticlimax of our adult lives by imagining that during our adolescence, we were happy. even if we never paused to acknowledge it at the time, we were happy then. maybe that thought - no matter how false - makes the rest easier to bear.
the grass is greener, you know. but only in the future - which is unpredictable, and past - which is unattainable. it always seems that in the present the grass is yellow and dying, scratchy and full of thorns.
it seems that no matter what choice I make it will be with the intention of proving something. if I go, it will be to prove that I still belong; if I don't go, it will be to prove that I don't care whether I belong or not.
either way it's a lie.
