Because of the circumstances that have been unfolding in the last 7 years, I have in my possession a single red trunk.  A box of things that have seen hours upon hours of bus rides, car trips and miles upon miles of open road.  This red box has been with me from Arkansas to Florida to Texas and back again.  And after all of these years, I’m still not ready to go through it all.

Through the pictures and photographs, the torn out loose-leaf pieces of paper with writing about events and information that is either irrelevant or no longer even memorable (at this point), receipts and trinkets and… memories.

It’s really hard to believe that it’s been 7 years.  The journey that started in the backseat of a friend’s car heading in the direction of the Arkansas River Bridge (connecting with North Little Rock) while heading away from my probation.  17 years old, going on 18.  No real direction other than that of the direction in which I allowed myself to be pushed.

Who are those faces, places, things, and items of interest long since forgotten?  And why, of all times, do they even resemble anything of significance now?  One day I think I’ll be able to crack the lock on my brain and rummage through it and make sense of it all.  I’m not holding my breath, tho.

I had gone out earlier to clean the van, and it started to rain slightly. It was refreshing, in a way, to feel cold rain on a warm day in January. If I remember right, about this time last year, it was freezing cold. But the weekend overall has been pretty mild, our cold front having pushed through already and, I’m sure, awaiting another one to push its way through within the next week.

So I guess the bottom line would be to enjoy the nice weather while it lasts.

I’ve been sick the past four or five days. Some sort of stomach bug is going around, and I seem to have gotten it. It’s a lot of fun, with dehydration and mucous draining into the stomach being the two top winners of the various symptoms that come with the bug. I’ve been pretty out of it, and have used the last few days of sickness as a good excuse to sleep longer hours than usual. I have yet to switch the car insurance over to my name completely, but I’ve got a few more days to that without my father getting too up in arms at me about it.

Earlier, I was creating a new song (a very simple one, featuring just a piano synthesizer and a melody, for me, that invokes memories of things gone by and events and people that have long since passed into the pages of my history) and I found myself thinking: What am I going to remember?

Ten years from now, what will I remember from my childhood? Sometimes I find myself thinking about this (this is a recurring thought for me) and I wonder.

Is it going to be the summer at Scout Camp, fishing and listening to stories at the bonfire? Is it going to be that first snow that covered the backyard completely, and our dog Diesel bounding through it, disappearing momentarily before reappearing as she jumped up from beneath the frosty white mist?

Is it going to be great grandfather critiquing my pancakes, or the summers in Florida spent with my family at the beaches and the first Books-a-million I had ever seen (also amazing to me at the time was the fact that they “had over 1 million books”…) Is it going to be my father going to Sonic and bringing back slushees (flavored iced drinks) for everyone on the block?

Is it going to be the memory of my first kiss, my first sleepover, my first best friend, my first day of high-school (or further back, my first day of 3rd grade)?

Or is it going to be the bad things I’ve done, the people I’ve hurt, the things I’ve destroyed? The summers spent on probation, in rehabilitation, or fighting my family on a various number of topics and subjects. Is it going to be the 2 weeks I spent running, the car crash that ensued, and the years afterward which I spent continuing to run?

Is it going to be a memory of a night spent in the cold, wondering where I was going, with the rain pouring down on me in buckets, drenching me to my bones? Is it going to be the first shooting star I had ever seen, while sitting outside at 5 in the morning wondering whether I wanted to face my problems at home or just run and never look back.

Are my memories going to be of those who helped me, or those who hurt me? Those almost got killed protecting me, or those who tried to kill me in the first place?

Our memories are what make us, and I guess my only question is: what will mine make me? Or is it to the point where I’m already made into what I’m going to be, and the only thing I can do now is look back at everything I’ve witnessed, everything I’ve learned, and be glad that it turned out better than it could have?

Memories of snow
I’m not a very sentimental kind of person. I’m sentimental in some ways, but not really in ways that matter. But seeing the snow today brought back memories from over a decade ago. The first really good snow I had seen in my life (the Christmas we got our first Daschund Diesel, and how she would nearly disappear into the few feet of snow and then re-appear as she bounded upward into the air, only to almost disappear again as she landed.)

Strange smells
Recently, we had a very strange odor appear in our apartment (almost smells like ammonia). We also have had puddles of water appearing from beneath the carpet. We alerted our apartment managers about it, but I don’t think they really did anything. The smell is still there, and now both Erin and I are getting light headed and feeling sick. I’m thinking of evac’ing us until this whole thing blows over, but due to the recent weather this might not be an option. It really all depends on how the roads are.

I’m pretty sure that somebody is cooking meth in the apartment complex or doing something they’re not supposed to, thus, the strange chemical smell. I hate these apartments. We just happened to be living in the trashiest one because the people upstairs let their kids run around and throw trash all over the sidewalk and tear up the place. Plus, somebody keeps stuffing huge pieces of furniture into the dumpster. (I’m talking couches and chairs and mattresses. It’s fucking unbelievable how these people live.) Which is another good reason to move as quickly as possible.

I don’t think I have ever, in my entire life, lived around people who were so trashy and it not be a trailer park. If these people disappeared tomorrow, I have a feeling they wouldn’t be missed.