9 years

I'm watching music videos. Feeling nostalgic. Rum on the rocks. And Akon's "I wanna love you" comes on.

Such a simple melody and beat. "I wanna love you....but you already kno-ow." Somehow it epitomizes 2004. The years run together. I remember the song, the voice, the ding.

I am taken back in time. 29. Devastated. Hurt. Alone. Rejected. Angry.

I want...something back. Something I lost. Determined.
It's not a good time. Clubs here and there. Dancing. Big city nights. Top Deck. Never trouble.
But I am still drowning. Grasping for a branch.

Dancing. Getting a number. Feeling reassured. Better. Knowing I wasn't pariah. I throw the number away. It did its job. Temporarily. Dangerous though. Stupid.

And Akon plays in the background somehow. Maybe because he came at the beginning of the change. 9 years ago.

Gradually balance sets in. Maturity. Self Control. The clubs are done. Back to normal.
But the time passes.

30.
31.

I am now 32. So freaking young. A 28 year old sister seems appropriate. Close to my age.
But no. Not to be. And she is now gone. Just a momentary crush. But later I find the emails and realize how long it's been. 28 is now too young.

33.
35.
37.
39.

I suddenly realize....
...all of my 30's a single dad. Movies and dinner with Connor in Grand Junction. Building a popsicle stick Ark. Drives to Monticello, to Ouray. Getting my boy on the weekends and cramming as much activity in.
3 am departures for parent teacher conferences.
...all of my 30's...alone.

39.
And then I hear Akon and Snoop. "I wanna love you". I hear it. And I am transported.

What happened? I was 29. 32. 36, 38. So very young. And now....Why do I think about this? Why are these the last times I felt....a young person. Not physically. Or even mentally. But I feel I lost an innocence of sorts. A naivete. A glimmer of hope. And I feel disconnected from that guy,

I feel like I lost myself.

And the song plays.
"I wanna love you...."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I am no longer a Jehovah's Witness

Image
So...I sit down ready to write and suddenly I am unsure how to proceed. After a moment of thought, I guess I can go on. This is my confession, after all. I suppose there's no wrong way to do it. So in the end, I am not addressing this to anyone in particular. I don’t know who you are or how our lives crossed paths. Perhaps we are strangers. Perhaps we were lifelong friends until that no longer became possible. Perhaps I was in your congregation or was in your circuit. Or maybe we worked together. I cannot know who you are, but I have an image in my mind of the people I am writing to. The people I loved- still love- and respected. I suspect you may read this with trepidation, or even critically, given the constant warnings we all grew up with against listening to those who have left the organization. I understand that, truly. Trust me. Even after I was disfellowshipped 6 years ago, it was 5 years before I let myself even think about listening to or getting to know those who
Read more

Resurrecting a Dead Language- Part 1

Image
       So I’ve written in the past about the evolution of language and how linguistics attempts to make sense of all this. What I’d like to do now is to explain how a dead language- a language no one speaks today (and hasn’t for the past 3,000 years!); a language that was not written down or preserved for us in any form- can be resurrected from across the lost millennia. The process itself is fascinating, like a mystery where every clue contributes to the ultimate answer. It also provides insight into the migration patterns of these ancient peoples and their descendants. But more than that, once those descendants have been identified and the mother language has been reconstructed, its culture, and even some of its mythology, can be retrieved from the mists of time. To me, this is the most fascinating aspect of historical linguistics, the ability peer deep into the past and catch a glimpse of an ancient people whose only legacy is in the daughter languages and cultures they left behin
Read more

Calculation

I sat in the class listening to the teacher talk about Rorschach Tests, as well as the method of showing a picture and then asking the patient to tell a story based on the picture. The idea is to let the person's subconscious thoughts and feelings influence the response, to give a window into what they are really thinking or feeling, what is going on behind the facade that they put up. It didn't make sense to me. It still doesn't. I raised my hand and asked a question. To the best of my recollection, it was something like this. "How do you deal with people who are self conscious enough to guess, or know, the purpose of the exercise and, rather than give a raw and unedited answer, would be wondering at what they were inadvertently revealing with their answer and thus self edit?" To me, this seemed like a no-brainer. I wasn't about to reveal to someone else things that I wasn't even sure of myself. I would be self-reflecting at my answers, trying to determ
Read more