Hallmark Card of the Day: Every Ending is a New Beginning

My first livejournal entry was about how much I disliked LJ. Alas, my first impressions held true and here I return to the blog I started. No eulogies please. It's a resurrection.

It was an established community of high school friends and acquaintances that first drew me to LJ. I had my own corner of the world wide web carefully arranged, but what use if no one came to visit? Driven to fits of nostalgia by the impending end of high school, I longed to cling to those last memories. Yes, we will separate, but we'll always keep in touch through the wonderful thing called the Internet.

It's now deep into the summer--the end of June--and I can feel all my high school connections dying. The strongest connections are stretching, fraying at the edges as we all tug in the divergent directions of college. The tenuous ones have already snapped, like string pulled too thin and too tight. But distance always grows during the summer; it's a natural consequence of things done alone and time spent apart. Usually though, we have September to retie those strings, double knot them, and become one again for the school year. We giggle and gossip and suddenly we are all friends again. Our different experiences during the summer are tantalizing exotica to share in conversation. Our differences made us unique, but it was our similarities that bound us together.

This year, there will be no September, or at least no September together. This year, distance will continue to grow. Our college experiences will become occasional wall posts, status messages, LJ entries, phone calls, and maybe anecdotes to tell at get togethers, but they will always have a foreign tang. With no more mutual experiences, the glue that bonds us dries and cracks, and we have only the past to bring us together. Our pasts may be shared, but we look toward the future and see divergent paths.

I admit to not really trying with LJ. I kinda just cowardly gave on trying to friend more people because by that time, I really was ready to move on from high school. I write about friendships fading and connections snapping, which regardless of the connotations of those words, I find to be liberating. I will go longer be bound by the expectations of my friends, classmates, and acquaintances. I am sad that the people I have shared the last 6 years with will not be with me, but I have accepted that as all right.

High School Revisited

Kate was wearing her red prom dress. "C'mon, let's go!" she yelled across the room, "It's for Acadec!"

Acadec? What the hell? Isn't it over? Isn't it summer? More importantly, aren't we graduated seniors? These thoughts raced through my head as she tugged on my hand, pulling me toward the door. "Well Crick wanted to give us a heads up on next year. Some practical experience -- ya know? We're going jet-skiing!"

Suddenly it all made sense to me. I couldn't really follow the logic, but I trusted the logic to flow smoothly. I believed I understood, and that was all that mattered. Kate opened the door to a motley group of AB students on deck, all of whom I recognized but none of whom I knew. Then a whiplash crack, and ahoy! We were off to sea.

The vessel we boarded was not especially seaworthy for the frigid North Sea we were jet skiing in. No matter, we had a trusty chaperon in tow who would surely look out for our safety. A few hours into the trip however, we realized that we had overestimate dthe chaperon. The North Sea was true to it's reputation in serving up a mighty hurricane comparable to Hollywood spectacles of The Perfect Storm. Through the torrential rain and gray skies, our chaperon was nowhere to be found. I took this task upon myself and ventured deep into the creaking ship. As I stumbled through the hallways, a door opened to a looming hall. A lavish feast sat on the long table that filled the hall. At the head of the table, in perfect imitation of Pan's Labyrinth's Pale Man, sat Andrew Crick, frozen and ramrod straight.

Before I could yell any accusatory expletives, the ship lurched and like old movie screens, everything faded to black. Next thing know, I was waking up from a fluffy white bed complete with a fluffy white canopy. My brother had somehow found his way into my bed in the last night/nights. But ah! Who's face is that leering at me? Scrabbling for my glasses, I finally regained my vision
*****

I never finished recounting this dream, and now it's but a hazy memory. I remember the scenes that startled my dreaming doppelganger: waking up to see Green's middle-aged Asian wife, being dumped at a sketchy strip mall, and the line I wanted to end this dream and this entry with: I woke up, and I realized how much I missed school.