Old Music

The song starts playing over the radio, but it isn't just any song, it's that song; her song.  Old feelings come flooding back, and suddenly I find myself in the middle of a flashback.  Many years younger, many experiences stupider, and many times happier, I find myself looking at the face that would haunt me for years to come.  She was the one that got away; the one that broke my spiritual back.  I see her features as they were so many years ago; her slender, feminine hands; her hazel brown/green eyes; her lips as she mouthed the words to this song as it played.  The perfect moment, forever seared into my psyche.  

I'm filled with sadness, not just at the memory of losing her, but also with the realization that the young man in that memory no longer exists.  That boy I once was, carelessly admiring the object of his desire in that brief moment of history, is no more.  Another victim burned away by the fires of time, forever.  

"Live every moment like it's your last":  that quote litters blog all over the internet, but it's message is still valid, if not widely misunderstood.  Live every moment like it's your last, because it IS your last.  You only have one opportunity to experience each moment as you are, because time is constantly pulling you away from it.  

I will never again be that boy in my memories.  The way he thought, the way he saw the world, the way he felt are all gone.  That girl I admired so many years ago has long since grown into another person; a person I no longer know and who no longer knows me.  That memory is all that is left of those two individuals, and there will never be another one like it for the rest of time.  For now that memory is my treasure, guarded with every fibre of my being, but in time even that memory will begin to fade.  It is an inveitable truth that we all have to face.   

As the song ends, I slowly let go of the memory.  The images fade away as quickly as they came, and everything returns to normal.  I have to let go of that moment; I have to let those old feelings slip away, because that is life.  Dwelling on the past sacrifices the present, and without the present there can be no living.  That is also a reality I have to face.  Althought difficult, I must find the discipline and strength to shake off my old demons and continue to plow forward.  New moments lie waiting for me in the future, and I won't be able to find them if I'm constantly looking back on my life.  

-Jack the Stripper