Writer's Workshop: Ten Years Gone

It's Writer's Workshop time, so I hopped over to Mama's Losin' It to check out the prompts for this week. I decided to go with the first one:

What do you miss most about being ten years younger than you are now? What do you miss the least?

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Then as it was, then again it will be

And though the course may change sometimes

Rivers always reach the sea

Blind stars of fortune, each have several rays

On the wings of maybe, down in birds of prey

Kind of makes me feel sometimes, didn't have to grow

But as the eagle leaves the nest, it's got so far to go

Changes fill my time, baby, that's alright with me

In the midst I think of you, and how it used to be

From 'Ten Years Gone' by Led Zeppelin

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While some people keep journals or old diaries or appointment books to enable them to look back to see what they were doing or thinking in the past, I have a blog. It's a pretty cool resource, really. Though I discovered Facebook late in 2009, I was still blogging somewhat regularly in January 2010 (sadly, I dropped from 258 posts in 2009 to only 44 in 2010. It bothered me then and I feel worse about it now, as I've come to believe that Facebook was the primary reason the blogging community I loved so much eventually faded away).

So this evening, I took a little trip back in time... 

I read several posts and what I miss the most about being ten years younger became pretty clear pretty quickly:

A sense of optimism.

At the beginning of 2010, I was flying on the wings of maybe.

Life was far from perfect but I was in a pretty good place... feeling good, looking not-too-shabby and in shape, dating (on and off), teaching writing classes. I was still years from a cancer diagnosis. Working from home was still working for me. Ryan was doing great, my fuzzy Sunny-boy was barely a teenager, and my car was still on its first clutch. I still believed that love would find me (or I'd find it) and that time was plentiful - for everything on my bucket list. Looking forward was so much easier; it wasn't scary. 

I had no idea what was coming - no idea just how far from perfect Life could get and just how quickly it could move. I didn't know how far I was going to have to travel to get to a place of security, of any sort (and I'll be sure to let you know when I arrive... if I arrive). Maybe it's best that way - that we have no idea. Sometimes knowing how far you have to go makes you not even want to start the journey. Or that might just be me. I don't know. 

But I do so miss that feeling of the best is still to come - that feeling of flying on the wings of maybe, of someday, of one day, even. 

I'm trying to get it back. I hope I can. 

You know hope, right? It's that thing with feathers... from the wings of maybe, maybe?

I didn't have to read any posts to know what I miss the least. It's easy to name: 

My complicated relationship with my mother.

I loved my mother. My mother loved me. I'm certain - confident - that both of those statements are true. But for most of my life, we struggled to love one another in the ways we needed to be loved by each other. We didn't understand each other (though we thought we did). We hurt one another. We cared for each other as best we could, but we got it wrong more often than not. I made my peace with it - with her - before she died. Because she left the world before her body did, I had to face the fact that I would never be able to truly resolve the issues between us. 

I came to realize that the simple fact that I loved her and that she had loved me would have to be enough. 

And it is. 

But I definitely do not miss the struggle, the conflict, the frustration, the anger, and the sadness. And that's a good thing.

Our decades, our years, our months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds are made up of events, occurrences, feelings, and people - some significant, some not. As time passes, we might forget them, or miss them, or be glad we've moved on from them. 

The only thing we can be really certain of is that time will pass... 

Whether we like it or not.

XO,