There was a mystical time when I was about 20 to 24; I felt like I understood life and everything that was happening. I would read books and analyze my dreams like they meant something.
I was young enough to think that I had time to become something wonderful. I was also young enough to believe that would happen.
Dreams mattered to me because they were yet to be realized. Everything was possible and little had been tainted by the reality of holding it in my hand. Sure, I had already suffered the suicide of my grandfather and aunt, been roofied and raped, had a DUI, and been on Lithium. But, things still had a gentle glow of possibility.
Now, at 28, only a short time since those wide eyes, I held those dreams in my hands and found them not only to be wanting, but to be rather painful and depressing.
I had not become a classical musician for a major orchestra. I had not played in the amphitheater at Kensington Park with the Detroit Symphony on the 4th of July. I had not become a celebrated or paid writer. I did not work at Rolling Stone, or have a villa somewhere that I go to in order to write my next novel. Being a motorcycle mechanic was the closest I got; but I had matured enough to know that anything I achieved in that arena had a very short expiration date. Nobody knew me at Backfire Motorcycle night and my own motorcycle wouldn't run. Saddest of all to me, I hadn't so much as become a respected manager since the company I was currently working at called me "Gal Friday at best" when I asked them to call me a manager.
I feel like I'm at a loss: I'm out of dreams and saw them to their end--their end being where I decided they just weren't worth it. I don't have enough school to be a doctor, I don't have enough gumption to be an artist, and I don't have enough money to buy happiness.
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