From far away

The air is so hot all around me. All I see are the familiar views: the same trees out the window, the same lonely parking lot, the same dull little road, the same thoughts running through my tired mind again and again.

Old pictures. The time that seemed would never end, stretching for forever into my future, forever in that place, forever with those people. Images caught, posed, stuck forever in that moment before change. Faces smiling bravely as our bodies lean toward each other, faces composed, eyes pale, anticipation but ignorance in our faces. Or a genuine moment, a trapped glimpse of that happiness, our grins, our arms reaching towards each other. Both moments so impossibly, irreversibly long ago. So over that I am frightened by the extent to which they will never be back again.

Frightened still to think that my life has changed so, that the days of exhilaration driving with newly acquired licenses and the sunny afternoons and heavy backpacks, crowded lunches, evenings spent at a friend's house are all over. So over.

Perhaps this is what really accounts for my racing mind? My feeling of panic. My anxiety for my future. My uncertainty over my life here, my choices now, my existence in Ohio, my happiness.

"But everything looks perfect from far away, come down now... but we'll stay..." go the words, playing in the background.

And maybe it does all look perfect from far away, perfect in retrospect, perfect when moments and fears and worries fade into the canvas of the past and all we see are sunny afternoons and hugs and joyous laughter.

The air is hot in my room. I am trapped by the unfortunate present, the worry about the future, the fixed smiles of the past. Projected forward into the future on the expectations of my middle class life, born by the certainty that it is right and the unquestionability of everything familiar.

There are so few things I know with certainty about myself, about what makes me happy. I know that I love my family. I love my friends. I know I love running and losing myself dancing to music and being in nature. I know I love trying to understand things about the world. I know I love travel. Beyond that? Do I know what career I want? What I even want to study? What makes me happy right here right now? No. I don't. But I am still carried unending into the future, forced still to choose and decide and know, even though I am not done figuring out that the past is over and the present is different and difficult and the future is coming way faster than I realized.