Young Writers Society

The only real journey I ever went on, I didn’t go anywhere. I was at camp. Cause like all the things in my life that’s where the most metaphorical things happen to me.

My outlooks on everything changed in just two short months. I grew up and I don’t know if I like it as much as I should.

I'm a completely different person then I was almost a year ago. I like the fact that I’ve miraculously grown a backbone and can stand up for myself, and that I’m legitimately ok with myself for the first time in awhile. But at the same time I’m not myself the Mack everyone knew seems to have up and vanished.

I remember when I began to think about this. I was relaxing in the sun listening to some generic music when I realized: I don’t like rap. The funny thing is now my I pod’s full of it. This was what prompted my ponderings.

I remember the last time I felt like me. Well the old me anyways. I was standing barefoot on grass by the beach at camp. My flip flops in my hand. I felt like an infant that has finally become aware of itself. I remember the sensation as I rolled up my jeans and walked onto the sand. The feeling of the thousands of grains under my feet, and between my toes. It was warm; surprisingly warm for this early in the morning. It was like six o’clock. I remember the sight of the calmness of the water. Like an icy sheet of glass. I remember a lot but nothing as much as when I walked up to my ankles into the water, the shocking sensation of the icy cold water on my warm feet.

Yes, that was the last time I truly felt like me. My friends used to always tell me that my eyes would always remind them of a child’s because of the joy they would see in them. But now they tell me they remind them of a cold icy graveyard.

I realize now how important the journey I went on was. But I feel like I wasn’t there for it.

I thought my journey was over. It’s not. Not even close. I don’t know when the end is, or even if there is one. I act like I know all the answers when the seldom few I know only lead me to so many more questions, important ones. The only answers I know are that when this demented, delusional, pointless, self hatred educing journey is over … home is the last place I think I could go.

The old Me is long gone. And no one seems to care that much; or notice. He is where I left him. At echo lake on that beach. With his bare feet in the icy waters and the mud running through his toes. He’s holding his flip flops in hand looking out at the sheet of icy glass as it’s shattered by the ripples of his actions.

The old me is gone I can’t go home I never think I truly can again. It’s not my home well not anymore anyway …