You want scary...I'll give you scary.

Today was one of those fall afternoons that are gray, and dreary, and particularly beautiful here in the midwest. There is a chill in the air, and mist that seems to come all day from no where. Being here in the latter part of October, there is a certain attitude that is expected from all that partake of the gloom and eerieness that abound from the dawn to the witching hour. Halloween. You have to love it.
I was thinking about my childhood. Something about this time of year makes me very nostalgic for the days of high school. Innocent fondling underneath the heavy wool blankets of football season. The smell of leaves burning in the background. The thermos of snuck liquor in the back of the Volvo station wagon. The hay rides. The excitement of your first time driving the car without your parents...it makes me long for simplicity.
I started to think of those I had lost in my past. Crushes, and friends. Enemies, and people who I didn't really take the time to get to know that may have been an intrinsic part of my life had a given them the five minutes I plead for now. It was then I did the unthinkable. The thing one should only do in times of terminal illness, or blind drunkenness. I went on "classmates.com".
Why? I'm not quite sure. Self-loathing? The hope for clarity in a place that proved to only keep me unsure of anything for 4 years? I can't really give you an answer. I only know that it was very late, I was very confused, and somewhere in my psyche Gabriel Byrne was screaming, "Same as it ever was" over and over until I had enter the required information to successfully delve into the stalker friendly world of the internet.
What was it? Was it the hope that I could find this illusive rabbit hole that would drag me back to the last place I had any hope for the future? Was it a need to clarify these dreams I seem to have every other night lately that involve those people long since lost? What mark has the past left on me that is so indellible that I can not seem to erase it no matter how much I try? Could the answer really be that I am starting to figure it out?
I tried so desperatly to be something in those days. The cool of autumn seeming to lead me one step closer to leaving that place where I was chained. Truth be known, I did do it. I got out. I made it, but no where close to where I wanted to be. I became the person I had hoped I would be. I had become independant. I had become important to those that love me. I had left, but I had forgotten my innocence as the cost.
I sat there and looked at that website for some time. I looked up those who I had loved. Maybe I still do. Always wanting to know where they are? How they look? What they do? If they are somehow happier than you?....Unfortunatly it's not that easy. There is no answer in an online profile. You can't see the extreme joy of the birth of a child, or the devestation at the loss of a loved one on a website. You can't see the struggles of adulthood on computer, and you can't download laughter or a smile. It's the day to day bullshit that makes us all a little more who we really are each day.
Somewhere in the past are millions of teenagers just like myself. They're listening to Def Leppard. They're spraying their bangs into the oblivion of the ozone. They are cruising around town on gas that's $.97 a gallon. They are living in the cool October of hope waiting for the winter of life that will bring the spring of who they really are meant to be, but now they have no clue. They are sailing headlong into the uncertainty of reality. That's the real horror of Halloween...of growing up...of life. We have to see the gore and the terror before we leave the evil castle with the prince or princess. We have to see the bloody, rotting carcass of the things we believed to be able to breathe life into the things that make us who we really are.
I sat back and thought of those people. I thought of the past and the future. I thought of who they were...who we all were...and I realized that if the time ever came to know those people as the human beings they are now, and not the ghosts of the past, our paths would cross. I deleted my information and left the internet graveyard still feeling haunted none the less.
Life. It doesn't get much more terrifying than reality.