Write About Looking Back

Looking back I can see now how wrong he was for me, but at the time I was sure I had found my soul mate.  It seems the older I get, the more lost I become.  When I was 17, I had all the answers.  I knew who I was, where I was going, and that love would last forever.  Imagine my surprise when it didn't.

It's now 30 years later but I cannot say I am 30 years wiser.  If anything, my present mind-set is murky at best.  When I shake the magic eight ball, the triangle that floats to the top is Reply Hazy, Try Again Later.  Where have all the Definately-s gone?  My belly is flabby and round.  My outline in general has turned lumpy.  Gone are the hard lines of youth.  I look back at photos of me on the beach.  I cannot believe the definition of my thighs, the sunken smoothness of my stomach.  Was I aware of what I had?  Probably not.  But now I am oh so aware of what I have lost.

But time plays tricks with the mind.  It seems only last week that I lay in my bedroom whispering on my phone late into the night hoping my parents would not awake and scold me.  Now trying to say up past 11 takes a herculean effort and I'm rewarded in the morning with drawn eyes and bleary vision.  I remember flying down the road in his car, stereo blasting, windows rolled down, and belting  out a song and the top of my lungs while his hand rested on my thigh.  Ditching the dance chaperons to sneak into the bushed for some deep kissing and roving hands.

But the moment that stands out most vividly in my grown-up mind is the night of prom.  Standing alone on the porch, crying out my broken heart as he drove away for the last time.  I sat there on the cold concrete in all my satin finery and waited in vain.  Straining to see the return of his headlight though the fog, only slowing realizing that my soul had not found its mate after all.  But sitting there in the bitter morning mist, this is my last crisp image I have.  The rest is fuzzy and indistinct at best.  A string of odd roommates and pets, a few dates that fizzled before they began, working though the summer and waiting in the rain for buses that always seemed to run late.

But maybe this is what it means to grow up.  Maybe, like Wendy, we all become too old for nursery stories and trips to Never Never Land.  I think my last night with Pan was spent there on my front porch.  I think after that, the magic of childhood was gone and the reality to living has taken over.  But I will continue to shake the magic 8 ball.  I will Concentrate And Ask Again Later.  Even if the Outlook Is Not So Good.