i am megan's sense of longing.

Sometimes I find myself longing for places from my childhood. A coworker recently took a weekend trip to visit Hawk Mountain (a location near my family home), and when she told me about it I just had the most intense longing to be there. I don't know if it is the place, or if it is the place as it is secured in my early memories of it... you know, viewed though the eyes of youth, where everything is just a little more perfect then it really is.

I think its the sense of ease that accompanies these locations in my mind. Just thinking of a really good day you had "once upon a time" can make you feel very relaxed, nostgalic in that really nicce way, satisfied. Why wouldn't you want that all the time? Its easy to forget the trials of childhood, that felt so very real then. They were real then. I was very depressed during high school. I cried a lot, I had very bleak thoughts, I did some bad things to myself. I never did drugs, smoked, had sex, and hardly drank. But I things to myself that were just as bad. I'm certainly not longing for that again. But when you get caught up in a place... well its easy to forget all the rest and just remember one really good time there. Or an overall feeling created by a bunch of really good times... and want to be there again.

Sometimes its easier to want to be there then to want to stay here. The longing can be intense.

But those are all just memories, and its better to remember that then to get caught up in them.

Sometimes when I lay in bed at night, unable to sleep, unable to slow my mind down I think about the past... or I play my game that I've played since I was a little girl, "building" the future. I don't know why I do it, other then the fact that at 1 in the morning, when you've already been laying in bed for 3 hours, there isn't much you can do to control where your mind goes. The thing is, building the future is even less reliable then that longing for the past. I know that I'm not where I thought I would be when I imagined the future as a little girl... not in bad way, I just couldn't imagine exactly where life choose to take me. The love I imagined as a little girl doesn't even compare to what I have with Travis. I just couldn't imagine it until I lived it.

I know the same is true of my future now. I can't imagine what is in store for me. I don't know what might happen with my job, our house, or what marriage will be like. I can try to imagine having a child, but I know that I can't even begin to understand until I go thru it.

But in the same way that my mind travels backward, it still travels forward. I can't really stop either. I can't control either. My mind is what it is... uncontrollable as that may be sometimes. It's hard not to spend time longing.

Luckily I am not that same girl I was in high school. I still get depressed sometimes, but instead of the longing taking over, I have so much more appreciation for the here and now. Weekends like this past one that just make you happy to be alive. That make you happy to be exactly where you are. Good friends, loving family, and of course, an incredible fiance... I have the best support system. I have a great life.

I want this, so that I can look at it sometimes... reread it... absorb it, when I need to. When job stuff or wedding stuff is getting me down, when it feels too overwhelming to stay "here", I just need to read this again and remind myself that here is exactly where I need to be.