At least a few times a month, I think about where I was exactly a year before. I read a poem once that described it as a sprawling roll of film, like you could reach your arm out of the window of a moving car and feel last year and the year before it glide under your fingertips. But I don’t feel it like that.
I see it as time travel.
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I have this one pair of black converse. I bought them three years ago and the first day I wore them I met Justin Bieber. I still wear them (my feet stopped growing I guess) and the soles are very worn down, but their energy has all the places that they’ve been. They have the pressure in the tops of when I went on my tippy toes to lean into Justin’s hug. They have been jumped, stomped and ran in at Twenty One Pilots concerts, Paramore concerts, and more. They traveled to one of the most important destinations on earth to me: Operation Snowball. They’ve been sunkissed and scuffed, written on and wiped off, half worn (ya know when you stick your feet in but you don’t untie them so you’re stepping on the backs?) and kicked off.
In my room they look like an unassuming pair of well worn shoes, shoes that are really not great for walking long distances, but the way that the bottoms don’t touch the ground but instead curve up give away how many times I’ve ignored that.
All around my room are unobtrusive things like that. My room is like a collection of my life, with old things, new things and borrowed things (cough, K-Fed’s camera, cough).
Amy Poehler describes it like, as a kid, there are things that bring you comfort and warm memories. Whether it be a stuffed animal, a piano, a book, or a person. Then when you’re older you can return to some of those things and feel a huge sense of safety, strengthened by time.
For example, my grandpa was one of the most important people in my life. When I was little, I was told how strict he was to my mom and her siblings growing up, how feared he had been. But when I was around, his eyes lit up and he turned into a big softy who always had new games to play with me and things planned to go out and do. When he and my gramma moved to Florida, he would type me letters on his typewriter with stories, jokes, words of the day and quickly end with how much he loved me and wanted to see me soon so he could beat the mailman. He never questioned my knowledge or made me feel like I couldn’t do something. In 2008, he had a stroke that completely debilitated him. I felt horrible and sick like it was incredibly unfair. I should’ve loved him better, or shown him that I did. He was a brilliant and kind person that more people should’ve been introduced to. In 2015 he passed away, finally out of his pain. In the confusion of living in a world without him, all I wanted to do was write him again. Talk to someone who would understand how I was feeling, learn something from his weathered mind one more time.
This summer as I’ve been cleaning out my room, I found a stash of letters. The last time I’d opened and read these was elementary school. As my tears fell on the pages I imagined how he had touched them too, so long ago. How once when our lifetimes overlapped the ink had been fresh, the paper unfolded before his feet beat the hot Florida pavement to get to a mailbox. When the sun that shined on the earth shined on him too.
There are so many times in my life I have felt unworthy of attention or love. But my grandpa, a grown man, took the time to write to me and hope that I would respond when I was in third grade. These letters traveled through time with me, just waiting in a box under my bed, for me to open and be reminded that I am loved, and that his love is still here with me. To remind that that’s the unconditional love I have always deserved.
The one thing that feels the most like time travel is myself. I look at my hands and my arms and know they have hugged some people who mean the most to me. My skin has sweat in good types of panic and my heart has pounded in bad types of panic. My head has laid to sleep in different locations in North America and with different things on my mind.
Two summers ago, I felt like I walked on clouds. One summer ago, my heart was confused and scared and I laughed at every chance I could. This summer, all I can think about is the vast expanse of future I potentially have before me and the free rein I have with what I am given.
I want to keep traveling through time; to keep living and changing my mind. To forget some things just so when they hit me in the face later I remember them harder. To let the things I’m passionate about grow in new forms. To look back and see what lasts through time.
