We cant cling to the past anymore

The fireflies skittered among the night sky as the grass glittered around us from the moon. Our Fizzy pops stuck into the grass and twizzlers bags were scattered all around us. The field was open and wide as we lay among the stars laughing, singing along to old school hip hop and joking over old times. We were uninhibited, we were best friends and we were home.

This summer when I went home and lived among my old best friends it seemed like everything shifted back into place. The old jokes still made us laugh, the old couples still had flames and the warmth of the bonfire still brought us together. We had only spent a year apart, enough for us to find more identity but still have enough in common to bring us together.

When I went home for Christmas break I thought I would be met with a similar experience, and maybe it was the inability to have a fire, but  when we were together we all realized we really had nothing in common anymore than the old times that we still held onto. We were like a lifetime movie uncomfortable and broken, sharing stories of college that none of us could connect with. We had moved on, and in the end moved past each other.

I left broken and crushed, feeling like I kept trying to make something out of what's just not there anymore. I poured myself over old photos of road trips, proms, homecomings and powder puff games. I found myself staring at one photo. It was taken on our last road trip together in an old lake house. We are all standing there freely holding onto each other as if we felt it would last forever. Staring at that picture I couldn't even recognize those people anymore. I couldn't even recognize myself. I had changed, we had all changed. And instead of trying to embrace the people they had become, I couldn't let go of what we use to be.

I couldn't grasp how we had evolved. It seemed we were so sure who we were in high school. How could we have changed so much, so fast?

Don't we all find ourselves in these situations, at home and unsure of how to deal with the change? Whether our bedroom has become a gym, or our parents have become  use to us being gone freaks us out? Or like me, you find yourself among a group of people who know you better than you know yourself, but you don't recognize them anymore? We will all find ourselves in these situations in our lives, wanting to cling to the past as we stand in the future, but you have to let it go. It's the only way to move forward. They are not those people in that photo, and I'm not that girl either. We have all grown and we could either stay pretending things would never change or realize they had. Now we have all the time in the world to catch up, no matter how gut-busting, shocking and crazy some of the stories may be, and that's the beauty of it.

Contact Krysalea Burns at burns116@marshall.edu.