Memories

Memories can be bittersweet or they can be memories of something bittersweet like when your dad told you the next "home run" meant you'd go inside and on the very first pitch you launched one out of the yard and over the street and into the neighbor's yard across the way, your farthest ever home run and a crowning achievement but already then it meant time to go inside.

Memories are now all you have of the people in the hostel in Chicago and drunkenly talking to them and making connections and laughing, laughing, laughing and sharing stories and talking about life and other things, and the vodka bottle still lingers like the sunrise you saw that morning as you crawled into bed only to wake up a few hours later.

Memories can be sad and frustrating like the time you were hit or choked or yanked or made fun of. Memories of school and friends who weren't really friends but who you hung out with any way because it's all you knew and had.

Memories can be of missed opportunities like the time in Austin, Texas when the girl said she liked you and took your glasses and walked inside the bar and proclaimed she was "way too fucked up" and you could have followed her and her friends and who knows what could have happened but you were embarrassed and said you had work the next day and that was true but now you wonder.

Memories can stir up feelings of self-worth and possibilities but also melancholy and feelings of youth and time lost and things that will never happen again and they'll haunt you forever until you're old and memories are all that you have but time blurs them together.

Memories are what you should try to make but perpetually avoid because living in the past does no good and how can you make memories unless you're living in the present and preparing for the future but sometimes it becomes too much and the past swallows you whole anyways and now the memories lead to tears and that's ok because at least then you know that something real and beautiful happened.