Time changes

I can't express the importance of saying things out loud. I don't really care if you feel like it needs to be said, sometimes the only way to really get the point across is to use your words. I look back on last summer fondly, and as this summer rapidly aproaches I half-heartedly wish that I could just relive the moments of my last summer. Unfortunately, that's called 'dwelling', and isn't really healthy...
At this time last summer, I was falling for this guy. I had all these friends, good enough grades, and my grandparents were blissfully ignorant of my existance. The boy I met made it alright that I felt like nothing to my family, and with him I felt like I was bullet proof. It was april, but the weather was far warmer and much more sunny. I remember at about this time I was making him a very ugly, uncoordinated hemp bracelet for his birthday... I remember giving it to him in the parking lot at the mall, my face red as he unwrapped the gold paper and beamed at me.
It was all knotted up and the strings were too long and I think I had missed a stitch or two somewhere because it looked really uneven on his small wrist. He put it on right then and there, even though I was embarrassed at it's hideous and unfitting appearance. It was simple in those days to be happy. I was seventeen, I was in love, and everything seemed like a fairy tale. Now I don't think I even believe in love or in fairy tales or any of that. I just live each day doing whatever mundane things I have to until I can go to sleep and wake up again.
I know there are opportunities that will appear as time goes on and all that. I keep being preached at like there will be some sort of revelation one day and everything will go back to being sunshine and rainbows, but I know a little more than I did last year. I've been fortunate enough to take lessons from the time that has passed.
I remember may, talk of graduation and summer plans like everything in the world was at our feet. Like we couldn't fall as long as we walked the road of life hand in hand, ignorance riding on our backs. I guess it's called childhood innocence, and I miss it but at the same time feel a little better knowing I've been made smarter by the destruction of the last part of my innocence. He put a list on myspace of all the things we wanted to do over those three short months of the summer. Things like going to the drive-in movies, buying suspenders, and the emmett cherry festival. Simple things, because things were simple in those days. Now I'm once again looking at May as it comes, and I'm thinking about absolutely nothing. I don't even know what I'm doing or where I'm going. I wish things could have remained simple after he left, but that's one of those lessons I learned from the passing of time.
Nothing lasts forever. Not your first love, not the perfect summer, and not that childhood happiness. Everything changes in time, because nothing about humanity is solid. It's changing constantly. Then of course we progressed into June, July, and August. The summer. Ah, it's rapidly aproaching again. I guess that's why my head is becoming stuck on memories again. The way everything looks shiney in the sun, the way the air tastes the same and the sweat that gathers... All of it is the same, minus him of course.
I honestly don't remember everything that took up my summer. I know I spent almost all day every day with him, and I know we had fun. I believe we spent a lot of time in cars in parking lots, but that's a secret. Some of my memories seem too good to be true, so I'll write them off as dreams and spare any readers the pain of listening to my over romanticised heart.
The point to all of this is that I'm sad. But I'm also smarter. As my favorite song puts it "This time baby, I'll be bullet proof"... I've learned from that, and the year is starting to repeat itself. This time, I plan on being bullet proof. Each moment is a chance to change whatever went wrong in that moment in the past. I'm in april again. I have memories of april's that have passed, and I have hopes for the aprils that have yet to come. I don't worry though, I know that I'm a little better off. I've grown up through change, and time will continue to change me and the people around me. I can only accept it and move on.