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In the center of my queen-sized bed I sit with my legs crossed, holding a journal. I found it today while cleaning out my parent’s attic. It was in the last of a pile of boxes that I was contemplating just throwing out without even looking in. I couldn’t imagine that there would be anything of great importance to be discovered in a room largely filled with stuffed animals that had lost their filling and board games with half the pieces missing. Due mainly to my Mom’s persistent “encouragement” I began digging through the piles of broken toys that I once considered my prized possessions. Just when I was about to comment on the time we had wasted searching for a salvageable item amid the junk, I saw only the corner of it, but knew immediately what I had found. There it was just lying there waiting to be reclaimed, tucked among various letters that I had saved from high school. Long since resigned to the thought that my younger sister had thrown it out when she moved into my old room seven years ago, I was not only amazed to come across it, but also somehow calmed that it was again back in my possession. I run my fingers tenderly over the hard cover, quietly noticing the dulling effect the years have taken on the once bright shimmer of the blue and green design. Peculiar how my mind works, I always seem to think of everything remaining as it was, never wanting to take into consideration how time changes all it touches, myself included. For with the change of time also comes letting go and moving on, two tasks that I admit to not being particularly good at. But as I sit here, scarcely able to recognize my own faded handwriting or the passion that fueled the journals creation, the change in myself is undeniable and the confusion of that realization far outweighs any other emotion. I’m confused because my progression from past to present seemed so subtle to me that it passed almost completely unnoticed until now. It’s difficult to explain why I dispute change so much, especially when I’m obviously much happier now then I was during the time this diary was created. Realize I stated that it’s difficult to explain, not necessarily for me to understand. Change and time go hand in hand, with one inevitably comes the other. Time has long been my unspoken enemy, sweeping me away from places and people I didn’t feel I was ready to leave. I couldn’t rightfully be angry with those that had left me, since for the most part, it wasn’t their decision to go, therefore time itself was the only place to lay blame. There’s a passage that was written shortly prior to my fifteenth birthday. I vaguely remember being unable to find a pen that night, which explains why it’s carelessly scribbled out in pencil that has since severely paled. And although I do recall the day, the only way I can touch upon the emotions that I must have been feeling is to actually read over what I myself had written. The words depict a mixture of feelings that range from pure self-pity to an innocent misunderstanding of life itself, neither I am very proud of. I wrote of how I fought sleep, somehow hoping that maybe if I did, tomorrow simply wouldn’t come and I would remain closer to the past. I wrote of how I longed to go back to the place I knew before this pain that I had never wanted was given to me. I wrote of how my only desire was to have life as it was before and that I couldn’t understand how I was expected to continue as if nothing had happened. Clearly, a lot of time has passed since that was written, over ten years to be precise, but this book explains in painstaking detail from where I have come. I’ve become what I had feared so many years ago would happen to me and I fight the disappointment I want to feel in myself only because I know I have no right to feel it. It’s wrong to feel shame in continuing to live simply because others did not. It’s wrong to question why the tears that use to be uncontrollable have ceased. And it’s wrong to judge myself and think that I loved them any less because the grieving has ended for me. I’ve learned that the past is exactly that, the past. And no amount of tears, hope or wishes will ever give me the opportunity to relive it. I can only be thankful that I was given the opportunity to be there the first time. I enjoy being here and having the chance to do anything and everything I may decide I want to do because I am still among the living. All of the sleepless nights that I endured brought me to a realization. It didn’t matter how great my desire was to remain in the past with those that had failed to follow me in with the sunrise, I would be brought into tomorrow anyway until it is my time to remain behind. As I close the journal and find a home for it on my bookshelf, I can also finally close that chapter of my life. I recognize that time may not have been my enemy after all. In fact, time along with change has brought me here, so far from the sad and frightened girl that fought them both so fervently. And with the sunrise I no longer feel the pain of being brought further from those left in the past, but appreciation that I was once again brought into tomorrow.
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