Shadows

Everything old is new again.
Wait a few years and it will come back into fashion.
The trite phrases that invite shadows back into our lives

Shadows we thought we'd conquered and moved on from.

Yet, here they are once again

Brought back this time by the playing of old songs
Co-workers from the year I turned 21 and had to work on my birthday instead of getting to party. 

Best friends' brothers who were oddly possessive, but never got ballsy enough to ask me out.

Dirty old man chat rooms and running away from home because somehow my name ended up in one of them

Same old shadows returning in the same old light

Telling me that I've never really moved on from this place. 

What new lesson is here?
I see nothing. 

In a whole 15 years I haven't "grown" one iota.

I want to run away again, but to where? 

I was braver then I guess... back when I almost didn't come back. 

Now, I don't even try to leave... the money isn't there... 

Isn't it a shame? How the older you get, the more something as vapid as money comes into prominence in your decision making strategy?

I must've been braver then.
Had right up next to nothing and nowhere to go, but I sure as hell wasn't staying.
Couldn't have been too brave though... I came back.
I didn't last one single day.
Yes - I did what all good girls do.
I came back to face the music... only to find that it had left to sing its song somewhere else... with some other voice... and just as I was beginning to find mine. 

This world I exist in breaks my heart daily.
I find myself stir crazy for a place I'm certain I've never been.
No.
Not a place. 

Many.
It is places... with an "s"... 

I want to see the world... and I can't do it on this salary... at least not until I'm out from under these cock-eyed loans.
Hateful baggage. 

I close my eyes and fantasize about situations I long to be in
with people I long to know
not carnally - nothing that lewd

just acquaintances will do
enough so that when I pass them by they stop me to say
"Hey! I know you! How's things?"
That is enough for me.

I have adventures in my blood though.
I feel them percolating, warm and vibrant beneath the invisible goose-flesh on my arms.

I want to climb rock walls everyday.
I want to sit on a beach with a tumbler of really smooth whiskey and a laptop that isn't busted and balance accounting ledgers. I like seeing the numbers match up. 

I want to write a billion stories... one for every star I can see.

I want to stand on a precipice and look down fearlessly while the wind tangles my hair in warm zephyrs, teasing me to jump.

I want to watch glorious sunsets extinguishing themselves in endless ocean on all sides for months of nights.
I want to wake up to Miles Davis' "Blue in Green" every morning. 

I want to be able to nap in a bath full of bubbles and not have anyone worry that I may drown. 

Or maybe I want them to worry
Doesn't that mean someone cares about you if they worry about things like that?
Isn't that the equivalent of telling someone, "I love you -- don't you dare die on me!"
I guess that would be nice too.

I want to be loved. 

I can't think of a single person who doesn't want that.

But he isn't here... not in this place.
But he could've been... once.

There is a certain reverie about a boy I used to know
I thought he was it, that "one" everyone keeps talking about. 

He cared for my person more than anyone else seemed to. 

He helped me stand when I would fall.
He encouraged the me inside me that he saw. 

He took the time to find out what was wrong every time I stopped talking. 

No one else cared that much.
No one else worked that hard.
No one else made that effort.
Just him.
And he died on me.
One more shadow in this sad and empty place. 

Why do they come back around?
What can shadows teach us?
They are too silent... too ominous... too attached.

They are comprised of the dark threads that knit us together I suppose.
They knit us together and diffuse themselves through the light of our hearts -- like nightmares melding into our dreams.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that I like rainstorms. 

Rain is an escape.
You do not see your own shadows when the entire world is overcast. 
No one sees your tears in a downpour.