The Girl I Used To Be

Nostalgia.

The daydreams of a past captured in a sight, a smell, a song.

A whimsical child, a melancholy teen, memories of a life that is no more.

The person I used to be, the dreams I dreamt and lives I imagined.

One song brings it all back. A flood of emotions, memories, daydreams. A writer, an artist, a singer. Sunsets, rooftop musings. The summer days she swam alone, the deep blue sky so near, a wind rustling the cottonwood leaves.

Those years, I was someone else. Someone different than I am now.

But am I so different?

That girl. Her dreams for the future, her love for her family, her desire to say something worth saying. Is she so far from what I am now?

She imagined worlds, worlds where she could be anything, do anything. Some she read about, others she created and wrote down herself. The things she wanted to do, to say, to share with others in what she wrote.

If only she could capture on paper and canvas what she wanted to say in her mind. The scenes she wanted to paint, the pictures she would share with the world. The possibilities seemed endless, her imagination a bottomless pit of inspiration.

Life seemed so easy then, so full of potential. And it was.

Before the realities set in, before responsibilities become the norm.

Can part of that innocence be captured, put in a capsule, brought out again when life seems to become too much to bear? Can those dreams be dreamt again, and imaginings brought to life?

There is no backward button, only forward, marching solidly with time. That person, that girl, she is captured in a moment. A moment impossible to get back.

For a moment, for a song, I relived that girl. I dreamed her dreams and felt what she felt. I knew her emotions, the moments the song brought to the forefront. She was real.

That girl was me.