Do Not Mourn For The Past, For The Future Is Promising.

Do not mourn for the past, for the future is promising.

- an anonymous literature teacher on someone's last day of school.

life is a silly thing to be afraid of

i'm someone who meant the world to you

who meant to love you and then forgot...

sadness didn't have a shape before you came along.

now it does, and it's the shape of your absence.

maybe we'll sink our roots deep into the earth and become lampposts together...

And maybe nothing will ever be enough to fill up this hole inside my chest, the feeling of unease I get with the laughter of those that lived the rest.

And I ask myself why, why I stayed on the sidelines, wrote about life instead of living it. I suppose I was too afraid to go out and float, to make drunken memories and spend nights sharing coats.

Truth be told, I was never one for dancing, never one for sharing a smoke, never one for doing the things you're supposed to do while you're young.

But if I was happy on the sidelines then, why do I regret not regretting now?

God, I wish I'd made moments I could laugh about now, made mistakes and made regrets I could smile and shake my head about.

Wish I'd gotten lost on city streets long after dark, gotten known the places everyone else seemed to know by heart, but that I only ever knew by name.

I wish I hadn't stayed the same, hadn't tried to be sane while everyone else was being wild. I wish I'd let myself be loose and loved, that I had memories I could be proudly embarrassed of.

But nothing comes to mind because I never did do much; I had a world within my head and never cared much for the one without. I thought that quiet moments would always be enough for me; now I realize I only got a taste of what everyone else got to be.

I went from child to adult and never got to be the mess in between; my mess was cleaning up the messes that sprung up around me. I hid behind the curtain, too afraid to go onstage, and now with age I realize I'm no better for having played it safe.

I've become an empty page, with no version of myself seasoned by a willingness to change. I changed because I had to, broken into better shape, not remade by my own doing, my undoing of mistakes.

I thought I knew just what I wanted, so I never tried anything else; I suppose it changes nothing but the way I've stayed the same.

And I'm to blame. Sure, the world's to blame. The world took everything away when I finally dared to walk onstage. But if I hadn't taken so long to learn to play the fool, I might've had better tools to build myself up with back then.

Will the bitterness ever end? Will I ever feel like I haven't lost my youth again every time someone's got a story to tell?

Will I ever learn to let go of everything I never did?

Will I ever forgive the little kid who hid?

Could I live my life all over, could I learn to start anew?

Or will I always carry the half-hearted weight

of all the living I was too afraid to do?