vinylgirl's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anonymous backdrops of the metropolis I always laugh to myself: I rarely run into someone I know when I am home � home, home the real one where I suffered through an awkward stage and took my first feeble steps into adulthood. Then, when I fade into the anonymous backdrops of the two-million strong metropolis, I run into people I haven't seen for two or more years. I am forced to open the keepsake box tucked in the back of my memory and try to connect photographs, notes and tableaus to the person before me. Usually, after a few minutes of polite small talk on the most recent events of each other's life, I realize that despite a positive correlation between those sepia memories and this person, I really don't know them at all anymore. Me: So are you still with Chris? How is that going? It hits me like a subway car how detached I am from the space I used to inhabit. It's been five years since I lived here for more than a summer and I am trying to reconcile the most recent incarnation of myself with its shadow, which was stuck in the back of closet behind my mother's summer clothes. I have always looked eerily the same as when I was little, but so much has changed otherwise. So much has changed for my friends as well; just as I was experiencing crucial moments out on my own, so were they. I can't remember their birthdays, their program, their boyfriends or their plans for the future. We are nearly strangers whose only connection a tenuous string of shared memories. This realization can make you feel pretty lonely. I was always OK with charting my own course in life. I thrived on change and relished the chance to start fresh � meeting new people in a new place where they don't know all the gory details of my past. Perhaps it is my true entrance in adulthood � graduation � that makes me long for roots. The excitement of constant change has waned and I wish only for the comfort of those who truly understand me and accept me secrets and all. This transient lifestyle allows for many opportunities to reinvent oneself � to render oneself unrecognizable to those in one's past � but the more you reinvent yourself for temporary gains (friends, opportunities, lovers), the less you recognize yourself. So much so that when you run into these people from your past, you don't remember the inside jokes, the situations etc. and you lose your voice. I feel I have lost my voice lately. Not a frog in my throat or a cold, but lost the ability to form words the way I used to. I am scared to death of failing the next stage of my life. I've pinned so many hopes to journalism and if it doesn't work out, I'll be lost, utterly lost. My boyfriend always says I shouldn't fight shadows, so I'll wait for September to decide on my grade � the one I give myself. For now, I'll try to sort the old clothes, bills, knick-knacks and baggage cluttering my bedroom into a version of myself I can accept. <3 Allison 3:49 p.m. - 05/11/2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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