I am wearing a tshirt from high school. I didn't do a whole lot of activities in high school that came with a tshirt, but I have a couple. I'm wearing it and realizing that, really, it wasn't that long ago since I was in high school. But so much has happened and I am so changed that I can't imagine still being in that place in life. It was so great and awful, wasn't it? Both, together, back and forth, or at the exact same moment.
Sometimes I'd look back on "the good old days" and miss it. But increasingly I love my current place in life more and more. Look who I am, look what I've done! I want to say to the people in my life who I thought mattered and really didn't.
I want to go back to some moments though, most of them completely divorced from high school, but the occurred in that age range. Theatre, mostly. Now it's been... four years since I've performed and three since I did work on a show at all. In February I will be in the Vagina Monologues. I can't wait to be onstage again.
There is a part of me I left there, in those dark backstage areas that smelled of lumber, under the spotlights and the gobos... and it will always be there for me when I need to remember who I am, if I forget just a little bit. I smell fresh lumber and I remember.