i know this blog is one of the many things i have let slip however i am hoping that the post is the first step in the right direction and hopefully a mark of tangible progress.
...
Who am I? Really...
Who am I? This question seems so ridiculously obvious, I am Patrick Farris, a white kid from Texas, yet I have found myself asking it a lot lately. Where, or in what do I find my identity? To be honest this question is even bigger than the first (mostly because it encompasses the first) and more over it is a question that has been bouncing around in my head for a little while.
When I first graduated and moved to the Alamo City I knew what I wanted to be, what I liked, what kind of jokes I made, what kind of tea I liked (unsweetened), I even knew every time of day that Family Guy came on. Everyday at lunch I would watch Paula Dean and make Ramen and toast, I would clean dishes and sit on the futon I shared with my roommate. I went to the gym almost every night with Isac, Mark, and Blake not to get buff but to hangout and play amateur racquetball; I skated every night; I listen to MosDef and talked on the phone until 6 a.m. I was reckless, and claimed safety, I drove 91 in a sixty but I always used a blinker. I was a lot of things and now I'm recognizing how much I've changed. I have both lost and gained spirit, while I'm no longer 18 I still wish I wasn't turning 21; it just seems there is so much that has changed I don't even know where to begin.
Is there anyway to get these things back... the memories you miss, the convenience you no longer have, the friends you wish had never left, the bridges you wished you never burned... If there is someone needs to let me in on it.
I really feel like there was a time when things felt more simple.
When the days never went by so fast.
Yes, these are all things I cannot change, but I wish I could.
I wish that I knew who I was back then and how to introduce him to who I am now.
I wonder if they would trade stories, I wonder if the old me remembers things that I've forgotten.
I wonder if he could decode and translate everything that I have lost in the process of growing up a little.
I don't mean to sound depressing or anything I've just been thinking about it.
The other day someone asked me how I am today in comparison to when I first got to San Antonio and it got me thinking, and then today when I was mowing someone's yard I realized there's going to be a day when I realize I am 45 and I can no longer stalk golf course police, or stay up at starbucks spending 3 hours just trying to pick something to do.
...maybe he was no different at all, maybe he was just young and immature. Maybe I'm romanticizing him like the lead role in a fictional movie made to make me look good. Maybe I have lost him, maybe I haven't, maybe he can be found hiding in the spine of a Ginsberg poem, maybe he can be found in the red letters of leather bound truths, maybe he can be found on the broken concrete of an apartment lot, sitting, thinking, writing, dreaming... maybe he never existed, maybe I'm homesick,
maybe I don't even know what for...
every day there's a boy in the mirror
asking me
what are you doing here
finding all my previous motives
growing increasingly unclear
I travelled far and I burned all the bridges
I believed as soon as I hit land
all the other
options held before me
will wither in the light of my plan
a song for
someone who needs somewhere
to long for
homesick
cause I no longer know
what home is
...
I think I know what you mean, Patrick. I spend a lot of time thinking about the things I feel I missed out on in my younger years. I have wasted so much time being shy & pushing people away, but I think the best thing you can do is look forward. We are still young and there are so many memories still waiting to be made. You are building new bridges and making new friends everyday. It's your job to use the misfires of your past to your advantage and keep those bridges standing tall and those friendships lasting, and it's important to remember that things, and people sometimes do fall by the wayside, but the thing that matters most is that you made an effort to keep your history from repeating.
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i like it!
ReplyDeleteI find it hard to believe that you used your blinker.
ReplyDeleteHAHA! I was thinking the same thing, jen.
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