some sort of noise

Sometimes, before you even know it, things just change. And you sit wondering how you got somewhere; how if years before now someone had told you this is the life you would be leading you would have laughed in their face. You still wonder.

It’s become that sticky-hot summer weather here in Charlottesville. It’s the kind of weather where you can feel the pollen crowding into your nose and face; the kind where things seem out of focus by mid-afternoon. It’s where you sometimes feel exhausted, like you are constantly moving and walking underwater. Like your body is holding its breath and all you can do is think about the moment you will come to the surface and breathe. It’s haze and soft breezes blowing through my long, white blinds. They clap together.

The fan above my bed is creepily quiet. Almost like it isn’t moving at all, just hanging in the air and pushing it so that it absorbs into the walls. I want to hear it, sputtering around above me doing its job to cool me off, but it continues its silence. Maybe I just want some sort of noise to cover up my thoughts.

I hope to never have regrets for the choices I make, but when they hurt people I care dearly about, I can feel it. Though to say we got much hope, if I am lost it's only for a little while. It’s harder when you are thinking that it’s just the beginning of the end. That you have to give back the record player you just got him for his birthday, and that even when you think caring about someone is enough, it’s a hard truth to find out it’s not. People live like this for longer, accepting graciously what has been given to them, without question. I was not born with this ability. Only with the ability to try and change, which I have been unsuccessful at doing.

I don’t understand how these things work. I only know that when my fan isn’t loud enough I will put on the record player, for the time that it is mine, stare at the empty shelves that will never carry his books, and think about what might have been, but more importantly, what is to come.