Rumination

I just want to warn you that this blog post is not as lighthearted as most of the others I've written lately.  I also want to warn you that the chances of me looking like garbage in pictures included in this post are high.

For the past couple of days I've been thinking about growing up and how my life is changing.  There are heaps of benefits to growing up.  In fact, I posted a facebook status expressing my gratitude not to be in high school anymore.  Don't get me wrong, there were some good things in high school.  I had some decent friend groups even though I often acted ridiculous in more ways than one (not all of them friendly or harmless).  There were some great teachers that influenced me, and I did some growing up.

Now I've graduated from college and I'm certified to teach children (though being able to find a teaching job is another story all together).  All of this is a little bit of me rambling to avoid the point.  Sometimes I wish I could go back to some of my previous ways of thinking.

Thinking that brought me here on my own money and choice.

(No, I don't hold any delusions that EFY works miracles or is the only productive place for youth to be in the summer.)

There was easier thinking that led to taking pictures like this for a very specific purpose (a purpose I'm not sure I fully or possibly even partially agree with anymore).

Something like this was fun, not lame and possibly mortifying.  Not to mention I had no trouble admitting it.  

I went here as often as I could manage it.  

And I sincerely loved doing the fun, serious and silly here.  It was one of the things I most looked forward to every year (despite the sweltering heat and obnoxious humidity and inevitable drama).  

All of that is a way for me to say that I lost something that I can't get back.  The person in the pictures up there cried on vacation one time because she accidentally said damn (I realize this is outrageous and isn't something I particularly want to go back to).  I wasn't perfect and neither was my life.  In a lot of ways my life was really crappy then, but something's missing now and I wish it wasn't.  Thing is, I think I've perhaps gone past a point where I can return to the one thing that seemed to be functional during that time of my life.  It's not a matter of choosing it.  That would be too easy.  I think after a certain level of exposure and thinking in a different way, there's no way back.  

I know that I'm rambling in an insane way.  Let me sum it all up: I lost something and I miss it and I wish I could have it back and in a way I think that's just the nature of childhood and parts of childhood and as much as a person can miss and even crave the comforts of that time, you can't return.  Can you?  Not to mention I've begun to resent and even hate the things that in my view ruined a degree of my innocence.  

Did any of that even make any sense at all?