'tis the season of nostalgia

I miss things altogether too much. I think it is because I care too much -- it's my downfall -- I attach too much meaning to certain moments and then they pass me by and I'm left missing them. Sometimes it's worse than others, and right now, at the onslaught of winter, it's pretty bad.

I miss soccer. I miss the game and the aggression -- you can't really purposefully slam into people in a race without deterring yourself as well -- but mostly I miss the team. I miss going to Starbucks in between games at tournaments, I miss laughing inexplicably during scrimmages at practice, and I miss that first year I joined my new team, back in seventh grade, when we made it all the way to Western District in Corpus Christi and won second place. 

I miss summer. I miss walking around Spain taking pictures and watching the Olympics every night and that time we went to the Cheesecake Factory and had to ask if the bread was free because we're all cheapskates. I just miss the potential of it all, the possibilities that the season encompasses, the way it makes me dream of afternoons at Barton Springs and sleepovers devoid of sleep even though I never really did that. 

I even miss fall, a little, too, perhaps prematurely. Fall was good, it was change, it was growth, it was fun, but now I'm worried that winter means slipping back into my shell and hibernating for a while. Maybe that's what I need, I don't know, but it's not really want I want.

I especially miss random people I haven't really talked to in a while. These recollections won't mean much to people who don't know who I'm talking about, but I do.

I miss one of my good friends from middle school, how everyone said we looked alike and all of our shenanigans in art class and how at her birthday party one year I stayed up later than I ever had before and I still remember some inside joke about toasters.

I miss my old best friend from third grade, how we'd used to play dress up and make commercials and jingles ("Bess's Dresses, they're the best!"). I see her around school and I'm fairly certain she's going to be very successful today and it makes me kind of sad that we grew apart, but you know, c'est la vie.

It's weird to think they're both graduating in a matter of months.

I miss my best friend from sixth grade who lived down the street from me. We were only really friends for about a year, but we were close. She introduced me to a bunch of movies my mom probably wouldn't have let me watch and we had a bunch of adventures, like our encounters with our strange neighbor who tried to shoot me with a pellet gun after I dumped water on his head one Fourth of July. We failed completely trying to bake a rainbow cake and went to the midnight release of the last Harry Potter book and were going to write a book together. Once I read a quote that said something like, "You never have any friends like the ones you have when you're twelve," and I think that's kind of true.

I miss my two best friends from fifth grade. When one of my friend's sister died of cancer, I skipped school to go to the funeral. And it was the first funeral I ever went to and it was for a teenager and I cried so much even though I hadn't known her all that well, only glimpses of her and her room. And I remember how they played "How To Save a Life" and I still want to cry every time I hear that song. That wasn't the defining feature of our friendship or anything but it's what sticks out when I think about it now. I saw my friend a month or so ago at a cross country meet and we talked a little and it was nice.

Heck, I even miss my first best friend, who I shared a nanny with when I was a baby. If I wanted to, I could pull out any number of fading pictures from our shared childhood, but that's too much effort. Instead, I'll just rely on the faulty narrative of my memories. I still clearly remember the layout of his house, his room, his backyard. I remember one year at his birthday party I won a whole jar of Skittles in a guessing contest and it was the greatest thing ever until my mom threw it away.  

+ + + 

Winter's never been my season. I love summer and I love fall and spring is more like almost-summer, anyway, but winter is just darkness and death and missing things right and left. That doesn't mean that I'm going to be completely depressed throughout it all, but rather that I just have to work a little harder to surround myself with things that make me happy. It's a conscious effort.

Everything's going to be okay.

That's what I end most days repeating to myself. Everything is okay, and if it's not, it's going to be. I'd like to think I'm starting to believe it.

And for the record, after writing all of this, I feel like I should say that for the most part, while I miss these people and these memories, I'm at peace with the fact that they had to move on in order for to make room for other people and other memories in my life. I'm glad they happened, just the way that someday I'll be glad what's happening now has happened, but I'm okay that they're over. It's the ebb and flow of life, and it's all natural and necessary. I used to not be okay with that. Now I have accepted it. (Maybe this is growing up.) I still feel twinges of missing people, as this has clearly evidenced, but now I'm just happy that I ever had those times. Yeah, we had some good times, but there are far far greater things ahead than any we leave behind.