six months later

Six months ago to the day I packed up my car, and after my second-to-last shift at Spring Valley Starbucks I drove down to Cincinnati and started unpacking. It all happened so fast, it really did: everything was going along at a monotonous pace, and out-of-the-blue, like lightning from heaven, I had a different job and a different home and, in so many ways, a different life. I'm thinking that maybe most change is like that, happening fast. A series of coincidences come together and the end result is a titanic shift in life experience that seems to happen all at once. I say "seems" because half the time we don't know things are changing until well after the fact. All this to say that, being the nostalgic sorta guy I am, a post commemorating the 6-month mark should come as a surprise to no one.

I've been perusing old posts from that time in my life (although very recent, it does feel like a lifetime ago), seeing how much has changed not just around me but inside me. Some of these changes are good, some of them are bad; I just don't know which is which. Many of my fears surrounding the decision to move to Cincinnati came true. As predicted, Jessica put no effort into the friendship and then we both said "To hell with it" (though, for me, it didn't come as too much of an option). Unpredictably, Carly, too, stopped putting effort into the friendship. Losing the two of them--who played such large roles in my life in Dayton--fostered my mental distancing from those days, and for a good long while I suffered the loss of those friendships. But I got over it (as is always the case), and it wasn't too difficult: this new life down here just kinda swept me up, and my consistent visits to Dayton shortened as did the days, and with the advent of the cold autumn I was no longer making trips up there unless due to necessity. Not all my fears came true, however: I feared that I wouldn't get along with the people at Tazza Mia, but turns out we get along great and hang out outside work on a regular basis. I really have been blessed to (usually) work with people I like, and the Tazz was no exception. Like a half-remembered dream my time in Dayton faded, and though I am thankful and happy to be where I'm at now, working with people I like and living with people I love, that doesn't mean I don't miss those earlier times.

And why shouldn't I miss them? When I reflect on those times, I only remember the good things. That was back when "life was good", or at least that's how it sometimes feels in hindsight. What we often forget is all the bad stuff littering those moments in our lives, and at times I go back to my old journals and read through "happier times" to see that they weren't so happy after all. I remember them as happy times, but that's because our brains tend to trivialize negative memories ('cept for trauma) and bloat good ones. All this aside, when I think about those times, I don't think about the bad stuff that happened. I think about smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and playing Mario-Kart with Dylan and Tyler; I think about how we'd go out to bars and restaurants just because it was something to do; I think about how my hardest decision was whether to smoke Marlboro Skylines or Pall Mall Reds (which were both equally cheap; Skylines had just come out and were thus at a reduced price). I think about swimming at Carly's apartment, and driving around Springboro with her. I think about how we'd go to parks and climb trees, how we'd go to bookstores and get sushi. I remember Jessica, too, but the feelings are no longer there; we'd run errands after work, or hang out at her apartment and drink beers and watch "How I Met Your Mother," and we'd always write jokes to each other and stick them in each other's lockers. She had my old Starbucks barista photo tacked up in her shift locker, along with a note I'd written her a while back. 

Now Dylan's so far away, and I miss him like a child who misses his thumb (that'd been eaten off by an alligator). I really took that simile way too far. I don't even know if Carly and I could have an actual conversation not dominated by mere pleasantries, and honestly, I think I'd just be bored hanging out one-on-one with Jess. My friendships with those two were circumstantial, and my friendship with Dylan... Well, it's not going anywhere, despite him jumping ship on America, and I worry about him daily. I'm also super jealous that Mandy and Ams get to talk to him daily (through an app on their phones), but I can't because I'm the cheap-ass with the lowest-grade phone.