confessions.

so. i've been watching lifehouse videos with amaya on youtube (youtube is evil) and becoming nostalgic. for what, i don't know. i've blocked out most of those four years. i really have no distinct recollections or fond memories of high school. it's not because i didn't have a good time then -- i had a great time. but all the good times i had were had in spite of my circumstances. i had a good time as a giant fuck off to all the crap i was going through.

and i'll be honest. my experience in high school wasn't the worst thing to ever happen to anybody. but it certainly wasn't the best, and even at this point in my life, if i had the chance to do it all again i might do things differently. but there's always the trade-off: if i went back and did things differently, i wouldn't be who i am now. of course.

if i wanted to go back, what would i have done differently? i don't know. when i was 15, 16, 17, i didn't know anything. my world was tiny and wrapped up in certain things and certain people. these things and people were my everything, and when anything shifted, my world literally fell apart.

i don't like to think about these things. i live in a state of denial when it comes to these things. i pretend that this era of my life had no impact on me whatsoever, that i'm immune to adolescence and pre-adolescence and all the crap that comes with it -- tard boyfriends/not-boyfriends, plastic friends, shit talking, low self-esteem, uncertainty. especially living somewhere like winnemucca, whenever we found anything or anyone worth holding onto, we grabbed on and fought like hell to keep it. it didn't matter if it was a person, a teacher, a band, a poem, a novel, a film, a quote. if it got us through the day, that was enough. if it got us through the night without crying on the floor for hours, that was enough.

but i look back at those times, all those nights spent driving around with whomever talking, crying, yelling, all those nights on top of winnemucca mountain where everything was put into perspective, all those lunch hours spent hanging out with setzer after AP, even all those nights crying, and that's what i'm nostalgic for. that lethal mix of desperation and hope and longing and love and reaching. that feeling of infinite possibility stretching out in front of us. it was large and overwhelming and something we were completely head over heels for.

i look back at those times, and i don't remember what it felt like to feel all that. i don't remember it until i listen to silly bands like lifehouse and everything comes flooding back. my adolescent experience is woven into those chords, the voice inflections. i remember what it was like to feel desperately in love and have the future be the only thing holding us up. i don't feel it anymore, but i remember it, and tonight it's enough to fill that void where i remember nothing.

if given the opportunity, i wouldn't go back, and i wouldn't change anything. sometimes, i wish that i could, but then i wouldn't know this evolution of being simultaneously happy and sad. instead of longing for what i don't have yet and what is in my future, i long for what i already have. it's a difficult thing to explain, and until you know what i'm talking about, you won't know what i'm talking about. but it's a tremendous flood of that lethal mix, but perhaps a little more grown up, or a little more mature. whatever all that means.

so thanks, adolescence and every bastard who made me cry. i'm here in spite of you. i breathe and i love semi-functionally. take that, assholes.




yes, all this from listening to lifehouse, a white trash band.

it reminds me of this:
mario: "i don't get it. you're so pop. you're so pop, but you write amazing poetry. it's like eating cheetos and having them come out of you healthy."