Not everything about the past is split between good or bad. Of course, there are memories and times that we keep close to the heart. And, too, there are times when I look back and wonder how I made it out alive.
How do people make it through their adversity?
How does one survive pain? Or wait, in the worst of it all, do we see the future?
Do we think the pain will always hurt?
I think about my first heartbreak. I think about the mix of emotions and the idea that I will never get over this. Nothing will ever be the same.
I remember the hurt and the ideas, or the thoughts that caused me to have rehearsals in my mind.
In fairness to this idea, I can agree that nothing is the same.
Am I over what happened? Of course.
At the same time, I offer the regard that memory has a way of distracting our best efforts.
But now . . .
And with this being said . . .
I never had the chance to dance the way I wanted to. I never had the guts or the courage or the confidence to ask for the next dance.
I can reflect and identify moments when I watched the windows of opportunity close before my eyes.
I remember days and weeks and months of lonesome thinking. As I recall the certainties of summertime, I can see where I was too timid to reach for the impossible.
I’d like to revisit a walk I wish I took with you.
I’d like to imagine the idea of the stars being bright and the air being crisp, just after autumn removed the heat from our previous summer.
I’d like to imagine the pond as it was in my memory, long ago, in a park that is located in a little town, which is not too far away from me.
I’d like to imagine us walking, like two kids, with a great big world ahead of us.
I’d like to think about the smell of November and the fallen leaves.
I’d like to think of me, young as ever, and still capable. I’d like to think of you with the same benefits of hindsight. This way, both of us could be “in” on the trick.
Let’s call this somewhere around the year 1992. Since we are playing with the ideas of fantasy, we can have our own way with this. We can be young and know about what happened and what happened after. We can look at each other and laugh about how young we are in this dream.
I think I’d like that.
I never did walks like this.
I never danced like I wish I could have.
I never told anyone about these things.
But, if I woke up and I found myself here, I would give my all to find you, grab you, and maybe I would jump around, crazy, like a lunatic. But you would know why.
Or maybe you’d be in the middle of the same dream too.
(with me)
And there would be no questions about this magic trick.
I was inspired to write this journal because of the questions I see on social media.
Questions like:
The year is . . .
What’s the first thing that you would do?
I was only sober for a year at that point.
I was able to eat food, like an animal, and I never gained an ounce, no matter how much I ate.
Ah, to have a fast metabolism again.
It’d be nice. You know?
But what would I do?
What would happen if I woke up and it was this same day, back in the year 1992?
I’d hug my Mother, of course.
I’d ask for her chicken cutlets and mashed potatoes.
I’d take a walk on the trails in the land across the street from my house.
I’d show you where I tried to build clubhouses when I was a kid.
This is used to be a vacant lot. This was also some of my hiding places and a keeper of secrets.
I hid here. I ran from the cops here.
I lived here, in a sense.
I would love to look around.
I remember an old man did something like this.
I remember the stories that the empty lot was part of an airfield that closed after the Korean War.
One day . . .
I saw an old man, white haired, burgundy jacket with a white buttoned down collared shirt, khaki pants, and brown penny loafers. He looked around as if he were able to see the airfield as it was.
I was walking by, and he asked me if I knew what this place used to be.
I answered yes. I told him I heard that this was part of an airport.
He told me this was the place he landed when he first came back from Korea.
I wonder how long he thought it would take for Korea to be over for him . . .
I wonder if he thought he would be at war forever.
I suppose my face would be the same as that old man’s if I woke up and it was 1992.
Good or bad. Memories are memories.
Time is time and life is life.
I was very young when I met that old man in the fields across from my house. I suppose this was in the late 70’s or perhaps somewhere around 1980, or 81, or 82.
I still remember him, very well.
Was he real?
Am I?
Are you?
I don’t know, but if the moments allow, and if I wake up and find that I am back to that time, I promise to come and find you — and we could figure all of this out
together.
The Written Addiction 