Time Grows.

...it grows, expands, multiplies, gathers moss, rumples, waves, echoes and haunts... I am setting out on a new chapter in my life. One that I hope will be prosperous and stable and a lot less worrisome than my previous chapters. Until now I was looking ahead, optimistic, full of the idea of change for the better this time instead of change merely for the sake of change alone. And then I started looking back at pictures from a couple of years ago. I am shocked at how different I feel now than I did then. There is always a certain element of me-ness that travels wherever I go, of course, but it's really become so clear how much the past two years have thoroughly beaten me down; I'm not sure I even look like me anymore, let alone feel like me. Now, that me has never been the greatest to ever walk the Earth, but it's a me I've known pretty well and been comfortable with. This new me is unfamiliar and altogether scary, to be honest with you. As desperately as I long to turn the page and truly start fresh, I sure do miss a lot of things that I had before. I feel like I have just drifted along from one bad event to the next for the past two years, and it has simply cleaned me out of anything I ever really enjoyed about myself, so I am left to examine the scraps of who I once was. I guess I didn't realize how bad it was till this very instant when I was looking at those pictures. Maybe the Amish have it right after all... taking pictures of yourself is a sin... as I'm not sure that remembering how I was before these terrible times have passed has done me more harm than good...