finding my path to the future intertwined with my past

a playlist dedicated to the year we graduated from high school:

i have long suspected that long portions of my life... significant portions have been lost to the sands of time... i don't really know what i mean by lost. perhaps those days have been blocked from my memory, perhaps the indiscretions of those years has done some sort of permanent damage or perhaps it is the natural progression of things... to forget our childhood and our past as we grow into something bigger and sometimes better.

i think back to those times and cringe. i think about all the things i didn't know. i think about all the things that were looming in my future. i think about all the shit that lays between where i am now and those days.

i suppose that the most accurate thing to say is that i survived those years. barely. i attempted and almost succeeded at self destruction. now it seems so strange. how painful and real the demons and dragons were. i'm surprised i made it. i'm surprised that i am who i am.

those things... a string of bad boyfriends that did their best to perpetuate my unhealthy ideas about myself, a string of bad choices that left me estranged from my family and my roots, a string of circumstances that were so in my control and yet so far from my control... a string of years that i've chosen to put behind me because i couldn't quite figure out how to go through them.

on this side of things and on the cusp of returning to the places of my near spiritual, emotional and mental demise i feel something creeping up. i feel regret, embarrassment and an urge to put things to right. could i go back in time and find all those old things and undo them? could i go back and face those demons? could i perhaps put them behind me for good and become closer to being the person i've wanted to be all these years?

things are uncertain from where i sit... in des moines with the threat of snow keeping me here... all i can do is move forward as i have always done.... hope that after all these years when the memories come floating back that all the places i've gone - inside myself and geographically have prepared me for my next step.