Fragments: Ends and Starts

The hardest thing to do as a writer is to try and capture those things that no amount of writing can ever do. Even the act of explaining your silence to the paper turns itself into a cliché, as if it is defying any effort you could ever put towards making any of it legible to the rest of the world.

But nothing can ever be read the way you mean it to. Every single mind that drinks it in will take it from the vessel of their own lives, and its taste will be altered by the experience in which it's found.

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My friends enjoy drinks filled with alcohol that taste like forgotten childhoods, and I can't help but wonder if maybe we all want things to act like wheels—carrying us forward while returning to the same spot again and again. Perhaps we do what we do because we're hoping that repeating our actions will somehow bring us peace. As if replicating happiness will cause it to stay.

A mark of experience is recognizing these motivations.

Another is realizing that even wheels move on as they circle back

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It's hard, contemplating the idea of leaving all these beautiful souls behind. There are so many people I've been promising to see this summer, and I know I can't follow through on all of those promises. I have two and a half months, and for some of that, I'll already be gone.

Still, the idea that my choice to go away to school means losing these connections temporarily... it's a scary thing. I feel like, perhaps, without their influence, what makes me a better person might fade. They are such a part of who I am, and they have been for so long. I have to wonder if I can be who I am now without them.

And then there are the people who I just started to know, people like the one who left poems (which you can find at the end of this post) tucked into the back of my yearbook, who I stayed up with until odd hours last night, discussing philosophy in metaphor so thick, I'm shocked either of us got out alive.

It has always been the idea of letting go that scares me.

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So this is what it feels like to start—infinite potential plus infinite choice, fanning out like so much awe ahead of you, to be compressed one step and one choice at a time.

It's fragile. Potential is only valued if you can use it, and sometimes choices slip away before you get a grip on them. But it is also beautiful. Can you see it shimmer at midnight, trembling lightly with the sound of laughter from the backseat of an over-crowded car?

This is your life. This is your life, spread out like gossamer dreams behind the darkness of your eyelids. You only need to shut your eyes to see what you're becoming. Take a deep breath. Let it out.

You have your entire life ahead of you.

Start moving forward.

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These are the two poems left in my yearbook. The author gave me permission to link to his blog. Aaron, has other pieces on his blog. You should read them. They are beautiful.

Prism and Passage by Aaron.