My life recently has been a small multitude of lifetimes. How long ago it seems, when I proudly strolled across campus, or more likely biking illegally through the bike dismount zone (they ticket you if you're caught). Fortunately, I found that while they had cops on either end of campus they never posted one through the section of campus between Eddie and the library. This allowed me to zoom across both sides of campus easily. Now I wheel myself around now, knowing it will be along time before I can stroll in any way through those grounds. It's not that these things aren't attainable, but the memory of my life from before flood back.
So I survived a week in NC with the folks. Tenuous at times, but what 21 year old doesn't have with his folks. More interesting was our trip cross country, 1800 miles. I'll post more on these two things later, but for right now be satisfied that the whole trip was tiring as hell. But I survived.
And now I'm back, set up in an apartment not far from my local haunts. I remember walking, biking, driving these roads. While I know I'll get into routines, patterns, and develop new haunts; but it is strange to have dreamed about a place for so long to find it again, especially when it doesn't fit neatly into memory. Lives have moved, new bonds were broken and others forged, the city refuses to stop for a returned son. It would have been far stranger if things had stopped, but I can't say that some part of me secreted away for so long half wished it had.
I've come to terms with life, God, and the nature of fate. I accepted the person I had become. I can't honestly that there aren't certain parts of me I had to let die, and I've mourned the old me. It's hard to avoid. But like any death, time eventually and you notice that you subconsciously have switched to talking about the loss as something from the past rather than the present. You've blinked and months have passed. It's like any death, the deep longing within your self lessens, though when you think you still think with intensity.
It's like walking down a path, only to realize that you and your late best friend or lover used to walk there lifetimes ago. You feel a longing for that place and time, when things were simple. 'This too will pass and change,' you tell your conscious self, knowing that it still doesn't quite believe you.