I cleaned up my room today and decided to change my bulletin board, which was a huge collage of pictures (mostly old ones). I had removed all traces of Cody from the collage a few months ago, but I felt today that I just needed to take down the entire thing. However, that meant I had to put all of the pictures back in their places in the albums, which meant flipping through old albums and encountering memories. I don't know if I can describe my feelings while I looked through those albums, especially the very old one that is almost 100% Cody-Krista. I was a little bit sad, but most of all I was surprised by how much I had forgotten. Pictures taken at random parties at Lindsey's house, or pictures from this boat cruise we had for school...pictures when Sarah came down to visit, pictures from camping trips in Osoyoos - those ones really got to me for some reason. Perhaps it is because I'm longing for summer, when the sun sticks around for days at a time and it's actually somewhat warm outside. Looking at pictures of Cody and I trying to race everyone else in an inflatable raft on the lake...me in my blue bikini and him shirtless, both of us looking tan and blonde and so happy...I don't know if I missed him, or having a boyfriend, or summer, or having a boyfriend in the summer.

For a few moments I was caught up in the past and it wasn't that torturous, in fact I felt sort of happy to have had those experiences and know that my high school years were spent with a steady boyfriend and a close group of friends. I felt somewhat fortunate to have so many cool pictures and to have shared so much with other people. But at the same time, it was sad because the reality of it is, I'm no longer in contact with that boyfriend or most of those friends...the ones I always called my best friends...

Today I was vaccuuming out my car in the driveway when Shannon came home from somewhere with her family. It was slightly awkward and I couldn't help but think how stupid that is, and how it shouldn't be like that - I grew up with this girl. She was always my best friend, who stuck with me through everything. We walked to school together for 13 years, spent summers at each others houses. Not even two years ago, we'd spend summer nights on her trampoline, drag out heaps of blankets and pillows and lay there staring at the sky and talking about the stars, God, whatever else came to our heads. I distinctly remember one night we got on the topic of the existence of aliens and we got so scared we had to run inside the house for a few minutes. Shan was more scared of aliens than anything, more than ghosts, murderers or anything else that could show up in the backyard. Once I had said, "What if we turned around and there was an alien standing right there?" that was it. Meanwhile, she'd do the same to me, but with clowns. The motion detector light in the backyard would blink on and off depending on where the dog was. When the light was on we'd yell at the dog because we couldn't see the stars anymore...but as soon as it turned off, she'd start to hum the circus theme, which would send me into a spazz...

I started this off by saying that I was vaccuuming the car and she was there, and I decided to be friendly and say "Hi!" and she said hi back. Her hair used to be very long, almost down to her waist, but now it's just a little bit past her shoulders with a little bit of a curl at the bottom so I said, "I love your hair it looks sooo good!" and she said, "Thanks". She asked if I still had her shirt, and I said I did and I ran upstairs to get it and bring it back for her. Then we said, "Bye!". That was the first time I've talked to Shannon in a long, long time.

This was after I'd looked through the pictures and already thought of her and missed her, and so I took the opportunity to say hello and now I can't get her off my mind. I know I've screwed up a lot in the last couple of years, but I wish I could just fix it, and I wish I didn't care that she's friends with Cody. I wish nothing had ever happened, and now I am starting to cry thinking about it. When I was very depressed, I thought I had lost all of my friends when really I hadn't - I was just pushing them all away from me. Now that I'm okay again, I understand that all that time I thought nobody cared, they did, I just didn't want to see it. I was seeing what I wanted to and hearing what I wanted to, and in the last couple of years I've drifted so far from most of my friends that I can hardly find anything to say to them anymore. I wish I could hang out with Shannon and just pour my heart out, I wish I could tell her all about my feelings for Cody, how school is, what I want to do with my life, how I'm going to convert...but things between us are not the same anymore. I can't just jump at her and tell her my life story out of nowhere. We're uneasy around each other, we don't know if we're friends or not. We don't know where we stand, we don't know who is angry with who, or who doesn't want to see who anymore.

This summer, I want to try to get back on good terms with Shannon. If one of my friends from high school matters, it is her.

I still can't believe it has been four months without Cody. I'm doing okay, but I am still very nervous thinking about this summer, and what it is going to be like to see him again, and talk to him. I have repeated fantasies of going to coffee with him, and just telling him everything, and in the fantasy everything is fine - no awkwardness, and we're smiling and laughing and it's like we're great friends and nothing else. Of course his girlfriend is nowhere in the picture. She's an issue altogether on her own, and I don't know how I'm going to deal with that yet.

I feel like I need to cry tonight. It just feels like a good time.

<< || >>