A Borrowed Imagination

I was going through some old writing and blogs and I found a bunch of things that reminded me of who I was and where I was and how far I've come in some ways (and not in others).

A Borrowed Imagination

One of the problems with a love for reading is that every time something sad happens, something falls apart, you are left with all the possibilities that could have been. Not just possibilities from your imagination, but from the imagination of every author you ever read. You think to yourself, she would have worn two sweaters each day so as to not feel cold, I would have cycled to work, we would have taken walks on weekend, the house would have been full of books, compliments would have been saved for birthdays and anniversaries and so on. A borrowed imagination, never to be returned.

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Read Me Sadness

Today I want to read sad, beautiful poems and lie curled up in my bed. Today I want to ignore the greedy pull of living. I don't want to think of what I have to do, only of what could have been. I want to go back in time and walk across that bridge, sit at the table, dream of things that could have been. I want to invent sentences that will hold me when people won't, I want laughter, I want jokes. I want.

I can't have any of it right now, whether I want it or not. I must do what I have to. But today, for some strange sad reasons, I want it so much, I feel like I can reach out and touch those happy imaginary people, if I just tried hard enough.

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Tell Me, Why?

I want to understand why there is such a sense of satisfaction, rather pure happiness, in being able to correctly articulate what made a moment/period in the past happy. To be able to string together all the elements of that happiness, it makes everything in the present feel a bit easier to bear. Strange.

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And perhaps, most pertinently, this piece of writing about being late. I was always late, so who is to say I am any later today than I was four years ago.

Forever Late

It's strange when you feel that you should have been smarter, faster, as fiercely determined two years ago as you are today and also know that you wouldn't change too much about your life so far. I can't decide if I am on track or behind schedule. Not that it matters, except to me. But sometimes I feel like I could have changed gears a while back, but then I consider it carefully and know that I wasn't ready.  So then that should mean it's fine? How do people answer these questions? Maybe they don't, maybe the answer is to not have such questions, which can probably have no right or wrong answer.