existential-hour-posts-blog

[existential-hour-posts-blog]

Future Dread

Is it just me or does everyone have that feeling of eturnal dread at the thought of collage?

Not in the sense of ‘Oh no more school’, but in the sense of everything is changing all at once and you just want to resist it because even if things aren’t great, it’s better then heading into the unknown, alone and unprepared.

You just feel your stomach twist when when think about it. You might love where your going and all and is not that you aren’t pumped to start learning your craft, it’s just...the change.

A new place. Practically living away from home for the first time ever. Having to relearn how to care for yourself on your own. Driving freeways. But the thing that’s got your freaked out (and frankly me too) is that your friends just might not remember you anymore.

Imagine this, you have about five or six close friends, one of which you are dating, you don’t talk to anyone outside this group. And you don’t really make friends easily either, since your antisocial. It starts to get harder and harder as the summer comes to a close. Your friends are drawing closer to their schools and...you’ll just be stuck where you are. Because, unlike them, your school starts in January and not next month.

Which is fine. Your happy for them. All of them. You really really are, no matter what, you wouldn’t change that they get to go to their dreams schools. You are just so damn proud of them. But you just can’t help but feel this massive weight hanging over you, like an anvil hanging by a thread like in a Road Runner Cartoon.

If you think too much about it, it gets you down. Really fast. You get uninspired and just feel hollow. Like your suddenly swimming in a pool of cold ink and no light can reach you and no one can find you in it.

You’re gonna miss them. You’re so used to seeing their faces or hearing their voices or getting a random meme from one of them, but next month, that’s gonna stop. Maybe once and awhile you’ll get a text or call to hang out or just to talk, but not often...not enough.

You’ll be at work, doing your best till school. The holidays pass, but they’re busy with their families, like you’re busy spending time with yours. Time will pass and you start to wonder if they even remember what you look like.

And then school starts for you. You finally have something to do again, you’re mind if off it, but before you know it. You’re home. It’s summer. You wait penitently by your phone after texting everyone if they want to hang out.

You wait five minutes.

Then five hours.

Then a few days.

But no one responds.

Then, that expo you and your significant other always get excited for is coming up again. You text them and they say let’s go talk.

So you do.

You meet them and smile so wide because right there. Standing in front of you is the person you love. Their adorable smile makes your heart do summersaults and you run over to give them a hug. They take it, but lightly, almost half heartedly, but they let you hug them.

After talking for awhile, they finally say what they brought out out here for and you try to process their words,

“It just isn’t the same anymore...it’s been too long, I...I found someone else.”

Your heart catches in your throat and you swallow back tears, forcing a broken smile as you say you’re happy for them, wishing them the best. You get in your car and half way home you have to pull over because your crying so hard you can’t see anymore. You finally get home and you immediately go to bed with everything you’ve been thinking about for the last few months and you cry yourself to sleep.

And you know.

That’s really damn scary to me.

[existential-hour-posts-blog]

Time

When you are up at 2:00am did you wake up early or stay up late?

[existential-hour-posts-blog]

Little Things We Forget

Did you ever notice that we forget the little things that once made us so happy? Maybe it’s a stuffed animal that’s you used to hold when you had a nightmare late at night or even an old friend that you used to be really close with until you drifted apart.

We forget these things. All the memories. The good and bad times. We just forget them and one day, while your cleaning out your room for collage or maybe you just outgrew the decorations for your room and decided to change it, you find one of these things.

Maybe it’s a photo frame with a picture of little you and someone vaguely familiar hugging you or a raggity stuffed animal that was shoved into a shoebox in your closet when you had a ‘cool’ friend coming over and you didn’t want them to see it. After you pick it up, maybe you recognize it immediately and all the memories that came with it, or maybe a few come to mind after a bit of thinking, or maybe it’s been so long you didn’t even remember this thing or how it got into your room.

Nonetheless, now it’s in your arms, it’s staring right at you, but you can’t place that strange feeling that makes you want to hold onto this thing. You stare at it and it stares back, that weird feeling not leaving.

Maybe you just shrug the feeling away and put it in the bag for your parent to look over to see if they’ll keep it, or maybe you’ll donate it for someone else to enjoy.

Or Maybe you keep coming back to it as you pick up your room, like it’s a magnet that is dragging you back because you so badly want to remember how this little thing used to make you feel.

Maybe you even put it up after recognizing it or asking a friend or parent about it. You smile at it and a little spark or that feeling returns, or maybe it doesn’t.

I try to always show these little things some respect when I find them. You might call me sentimental. And I am. I am because sometimes, even if I don’t remember how or why, it meant something to me, little me would’ve picked it up and been so happy to look at it or play with it or wait to give it back to that person who always made you smile.

But whoever or whatever it was is gone now. And thats okay, but it did used to mean something. So I always smile when I find these little things. I keep some of them and give away others, but we all have that sort of ‘greving period’ for these objects.

For some it could just be a few minutes and then they never think about it again. For others maybe a few hours or days. Or you’ll put it away and then find a new Love for it all over again. Some people take years to part with these things and some never do.

Say, someday, you are around fifty years old living with who you married or maybe even just a great friend and a dog, and you look over at that little, slightly torn stuffed animal that you had since you were little. You can’t place all the memories, maybe just a few, or just even one that makes you smile, but that’s really all you need at that moment.

We all have little things we forget and that’s okay, maybe next time you find something or someone you forgot about, offer a little smile to it. Maybe, for a minute, you’ll remember just how special that thing was to you.

And that might just make your day.