Just like the monsoons that roll mysteriously into the valley every late summer, so have I found myself strangely unsettled back in Phoenix.
So many memories lurking around every corner, despite new developments that have sprung up since my last visit. What might render the city foreign and unrecognizable is merely a front. A short smoke screen that quickly clears and shifts me back to my high school and college years. It’s a time-space continuum.
That place where you told me you loved me for the first time.
That place we all went skinny dipping on a dare.
That place where ten years of friendship slipped through our fingers in ten minutes over a cup of coffee.
That place where you married another girl.
That place where we all used to meet up for a late night or early morning snacks.
That place we all went drinking.
That place we all met before our adventure road trips.
The places we used to crash when no one could drive home.
That place you kissed me.
That place I found out you had died.
It’s all here. So many moments of bliss, but mostly moments of extreme pain and just the shlepping off of past layers as you grow up and your grow out of people’s lives. I’ve been forcing myself to return to these places. Trying to purge out the past, for it to lose its hold on me. But memory is a terrible thing, when you use it right. And the tactile stimulus of these places leaves me feeling out of place. Like I’m in a dream. Running fast but going nowhere, stuck in a permanent state of adolescent wonder.
