staying up all night to write a love song for no one...

There's a section of road that I used to drive at least once or twice a week...5 Mile, in between Hines Drive and Sheldon Rd. Something about going up a curved hill, surrounded by trees, getting to the top and seeing the old St John's Seminary at the top brought me a peace that I don't even know how to explain.

I made that drive tonight.
The trees are mostly gone...cut down in favor of giant new homes, hotels, and strip malls. Even the old seminary barely resembles its former self, with the addition of St John's Inn.
The soul cleansing I used to get from the sight of the clocktower was gone, replaced by a sense of emptiness....of losing something that I had almost forgotten.

All these places of my past have changed so much. Have disappeared so completely that I almost think they were just...smoke. Wisps pulled from some idealistic place in my imagination.

Was I really as free as I remember? Was I as happy? Is the girl I was then...idealistic, optimistic, romantic...gone for good? I've become so much more cynical as the years have worn on, and I miss the naivete I used to be embarrassed by.

I miss having a place that felt like home. I miss my family more than I can say. I miss my best friend being five minutes away. I miss believing in something bigger than myself.

I've felt so lonely lately...never more so than tonight, alone in my car, listening to sad songs and trying to decide if I could be bothered to find something to do. Feeling like everyone I know is rapidly pairing off, settling down, and I'm left in the dust, looking around, wondering how I'm the only one left alone. Wondering why every inkling of a relationship the last several years just leaves me more and more broken.

I've built myself up as a strong, successful, independent woman. There's not much that frightens me, and there's not a thing I don't believe I could handle. But tonight....tonight I felt like the smallest person in the world, and I wondered if I would ever find that lightness I've been so desperately missing lately.

But still...I drove on...and on...into the fading light. And on a dirt road, somewhere in the 'country', I looked up into the sky, and saw how amazingly beautiful it was tonight, and breathed in the air rushing in my open window, and I started to feel whole again.