Waiting For October
Reminiscing about a life once had...
It was just a job: that’s what I keep telling myself. A temporary means until I figure out what I want. I guess the sad part is I stopped looking and just waited for something, anything to find me.
You know, I remember when I was a child it was so easy. I guess everyone felt that way, but as I look back I can’t quite pinpoint where I lost control. I remember those nights that I would get lost in October’s fog, off on my own somewhere between the falling leaves and the cool breeze that showed the first signs of winter. Shouting in the park and music in the dark, that’s the way it was. Close my eyes and lay on my back, arms stretched wide and everything was mine. Some things are better left as memories, but I miss those old nights. I’m crucified to my memories that seem to fade a bit more and more everyday, like a picture forgotten in the sun.
With each passing year I forgot a little more, I started giving in: I grew up. But I promise if I knew then what being an adult entitled, I would have continued running through the fog until my legs gave out. Eventually I did try to out run it, but it was a little too late. I ran as fast as I could, but somehow things still caught up and I sit on the back of my truck under the bright moon and neon sign of this job, trying to pinpoint the moment I lost control.
See, my life is made up of screw ups: the first girl, the first car, the first job… the second girl, you see where this is going. But this, this was the biggest screw up I could have ever committed. I gave up my dreams; I gave up my youth and may have very well given up my soul for a job that cared nothing about me.
Three years of commitment to the company. It’s bad to admit but I’ve never kept a woman for that long and even then at least I could see the ending coming. Always some typical things that I did, like spending too much time looking to the future. But at the same time I got the same looks and the same talk when I spent too long looking to the past. You catch my drift though. Besides, everyone says that nothing will remain the same, that everything changes; live in the now. That’s what they say, anyways.
My denial in all of this is that I believe that if I try hard enough I can fight off the course of fate, destiny or whatever it may be. That I alone can change everything that society says. If I do my best, I will succeed. That’s still the kid in me, I know, because the adult in me is trying to get out. I whisper solemn phrases to myself, I whisper because I’m too afraid to truly hear. But no matter how loud or soft anything is said it still carries the same effect. But I still whisper, though, at least then I can pretend that I didn’t hear it. Turn a deaf ear to it and wait for the next time it’s whispered. I hear it more and more now though; it gets hard to tune it out. .. “Give up.”
How are you supposed to react to a destructive force that you created? I can close my eyes and shut my ears to everything negative in my life, but my mind is always speaking. Always speaking but never really telling me anything. Self destruction is acceptance and maybe running wasn’t such a childish thing to do after all.
To be a child again after the time is already lost. Is it possible to ever go back? People say there’s is nothing worse then the loss of a child, nothing can be compared to that. Isn’t that the truth? All the heart and soul and love you put into them. The knowledge that the child is the best of everything you have: unconditional love. If my dreams are my childhood, then what evil man am I? I’ve forsaken them, disowned them like a bastard child and yet I pray that they will come back to me now. Come back and lift me from this dark place or at least shine a little light to show me the way.
Back to the present and I’m still sitting in the dark on the back of my truck. I hear in the distance a kid shouting in joy and I almost launch back into the same thoughts I had been thinking all night. That kid that was destined to be me, he knew it too but he just didn’t realize it yet. The funny thing was that he was in just the position to make all right decisions that I made wrong.
I walk to the cab of my truck and turn on the radio as loud as it could go. The tune hangs heavy on the wind. I sing the best I can with that song, for the night time sky and for the kid somewhere out there in the dark. The thought makes me smile because out of nowhere I remembered the first time I heard the music. It was a moment where I knew everything would eventually work out and be fine. I believed in it and for some reason, I knew that kid would too. One day, maybe when the first cool fog starts to roll in, things will make sense again. But until then, I’ll let the music play in the dark and wait for October.