& more retrospection

>>> turning 23 {a monologue} 4/11/23 this year, like every other, feels very different from the last. reflecting and looking back. an odd thing. an odd feeling. like flipping through an old photo album. faces, places, emotions. an attempt to capture my life's experiences, freeze them in time. some are distant, some faded, some blurred or smudged. i grasp at loose strings of threaded moments, each one a thread nonetheless making up my odd tangled tapestry, dynamic, constantly changing. always finding and gaining different perspectives yet always failing to get a full view, sections now untouchable, patches always out of reach. peoples voices, mannerisms, expressions, now muted, muddled, muddied. places that held significance, rooms, rivers, roads, once vivid, now vague. an odd feeling. recognising how things change, acknowledging how things are lost and swallowed by time. not a sadness but a reminder. we're all just travellers. all footprints eventually disappear. the future is open-ended and uncertain. a tale yet to be written. lore yet to unfold. there are no guarantees, no directions signs, snow with no imprints, fields with no partings. no one has walked my path before, and no one will again. and for all the what ifs, the weight of big dreams, the pressures of made up finish lines and forevers, what if it all worked out? or maybe things won't work out for right now. but maybe a year, maybe two, maybe ten years down the line we see something we can't see right now. bird's eye view and gained perspective reveals many things, and maybe everything is working itself out the way it should, having taken us to where we are so far, taking us to where we need to be. the past offers lessons, the present offers choices, the future remains a passage yet to be made. it's a complex tapestry. threads of joys and sorrows, regrets and celebrations. and i wait to see what 23 holds.