blasts from the past

In the last month, I've noticed myself re-discovering things from the past. And also becoming aware of things I never noticed before, yet were in front of me all along.

It started when I was cleaning off my desk and found some old photos my Aunt had given me last year, mainly of me & my cousins & a few with my grandmother who had died recently. I went to put them away with the other photographs I have, I discovered something - with the exception of those few photos I had just been given & maybe a half dozen more, all the pictures I had were of me & only me. Now, being an only child kind of makes that statement seem logical, but it's also sort of unsettling to me that pictures through the years that I have are just me doing various activities or at different ages. There's the occasional friend or parent, but mostly I'm alone. I'm not sure what that means, but I will bet some money that it means something. I think it does, NO, I know it does.

Last weekend I hung out with friends from High School that I don't get to see terribly often due to work & whatever else occupies our lives. 3 of them I had lunch with & another I met for coffee later in the afternoon. I've known all 4 of them for about half of my life (wow, that's crazy to say) but it dawned on me that as much as we grow up, start our own lives, change names, locations, jobs, hair color or socks, none of us really have changed at all. We can not see each other for a month, or a year or several, and even though we do the 'catch up on life' thing, nothing else feels different. I can honestly say that those girls I met in Homeroom freshman year or 3rd period Spanish or Global Studies are still my friends now because of that. Yeah, we've lost touch at various times over the years & we don't see each other everyday like we did back in HS but that doesn't seem to matter. I'm truly thankful for them being in my life and I'm so glad they still are.

I've been watching My So-Called Life on DVD lately. If you haven't heard of it or seen an episode (there's only 1 season), it was a hour long show that showed how life was being a teenager in today's society (in the early to mid 90s), which at the time was when I was exactly a teenager. I loved Angela (Claire Danes). Hell, I loved Claire Danes for that matter. And of course Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto). GOD I loved that show. It was ahead of it's time, or maybe was starting just at the right time...
In every episode, I see all the clothes & hear the music and remember... because it brings me back to high school & growing up. I think I appreciate watching it even more now because I look at my life and see how much high school, even with it's god awful experiences, wasn't really as bad as teenagers make it out to be (I blame the hormones for all the dramatics). Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want to go back in time & do it all over again, but I see how important those years were to shaping your soul & yourself as a person. I still have a bit of Angela in me, for good & bad, but I don't think I would change that. Then I wouldn't be who I was today.

All of this remembrance & nostalgia, none of this was intentional, it's mainly just happened by coincidence that it's all been happening together but it's strange - strange to look back and see pieces of yourself have, or maybe haven't, changed.

I tend to get stuck on things.
The past is a big one... but at least not all of it is bad.