How many blue cars to get to the center of Dale Mabry?

Tripping hard, falling down onto the ground
Because I can't stand up
and I can't fall down,
Because I'm somewhere in the middle of this...

The afternoon was hot and stuck to my skin like a dirty Band-Aid. I always loved summer, but I hated the humidity and burning metal on the sides of sunglasses. I had been itching to come home and enjoy the everythingness of those precious months away from demanding syllabi and playing catch-up when I "forgot" to keep up-to-date with assignments, and here it was, the sweltering glitter that blanketed May, June, July, and August, and here I was, stunned by just how... hot it was.

I was on my way to work - you know, the old three-to-nine shift - when I decided the radio wasn't doing it for me. I popped in a CD without looking to see what it was, hoping I could surprise myself again. The first track started slow and soft and immediately I was brought back to my freshman year of high school, perhaps four years ago to the date.

I thought of that concert we went to and the incredible shirt-shaped sunburn with which I left, those pictures we took and the T-shirts we had every group sign. I thought of how loud it got when the night crept in and the headline band began its awesome performance. I thought of the ride back home and your dad and Kathy and how much you hated her, and presently I began to wonder if you still hated her. That got me to thinking about how we don't talk these days, and then, naturally, my mind wandered to that sentence that has lately been Sharpied upon most of my thoughts:

Look at how much I've changed since then.

It's incredible, really, to look back a mere four years into the past and discover you are someone you truly were not. I always imagine it like this: if my then self were to meet my present self, would my then self really believe me? Would I know I was actually the same me?

Since I burned that CD, I have done a lot of growing up, diagonally, and horizontally (but never down). I have experienced a lot, done a lot, and had a lot happen to me that my then self would have deemed out of the realm of possibilities, such as that most unfortunate accident last January, going commando to a job interview, giving a speech in front of several thousand strangers, presenting a report in a foreign language on someone very near and dear to my heart without ever choking on my words, and boys. My sister has graduated college and I am forced to accept the fact that she is a real, live adult, my parents are actually my friends, I understand how credit cards work, and I have decided exactly where the line is drawn between "I should laugh" and "I shouldn't laugh, but I can't help it." I have learned that taking action (or not taking action) that you are politically, morally, socially, relgiously, or otherwise not supposed to take (or not not take) can be justified if you learn even the tiniest thing from said action (or non-action) by my own experience (or lack of experience). Most specifically, I have suffered through a severely broken heart, several inhibiting obsessions, and inumerable bottomless pits of despair which, despite all preconceived notions regarding bottomless pits of despair, in fact turned out to have a most tightly stretched trampoline at the bottom, waiting in sheer anticipation to emotionally bounce me right back to the place I had been before.

I guess my point is this: I know I've been writing a lot of similar things lately (at least that's how it seems to me), but life has really picked up somewhere between those blooming days of high school and the following four summers.

I am proud of who I am. I am making my own way.