I Was Young Once.

Air is sharp on my lungs and cool on my skin and just cold enough to warrant a coat and not cold enough to need it. I leave it on and let leaves crunch under my feet as I say goodbye to the fall and begrudgingly hello to winter. There is no snow yet here, only trees and forest space and sunlight and air. And me, walking. I think to myself that I haven't walked in the open forest like this since high school. I wonder if it's because over a decade has passed and at some point I became an adult and adults have no time for this sort of thing. I wonder if I did become an adult at one point, or over many points. Over a series of trials and I decide that that is more likely. It seems obvious. It feels like it happened yesterday. Or, at the least, recently.

I was twenty once. I was twenty one and I drank and suffered poor and I was twenty three once and was married and loved. I was twenty five once and I was twenty six once and understood my love and the world finally and cruelty and I was twenty nine once and looking back and writing and walking through the woods at the end of a season.

The snap of branches under my feet. The vague heat of the sun. The scent of freedom unbound and a beckoning world behind me. I had forgotten what relief a long walk in the woods on a nice day could bring. Time to clear your head or sink into it. Time to see yourself. Time to be yourself. Hands in my pockets, I looked at the ground often but reminded myself to look up. To look forward. Forward to the future, up to dreams? I asked. Don't let go, I answered.

Few people would consider me young anymore but I felt young. I felt inexperienced and I felt dumb. I felt immature and silly and I wanted to be mature and experienced and respected and I wanted to be all of the things that a man was but I wasn't them. Maybe I could fool a few people in conversation, but I wasn't those things. I preferred my music loud and weird. I drank in the daytime. I avoided hassle and conflict and duty. I thought constantly about fucking and bands and art and it all may as well have been lying down in daisies and staring at clouds.

Something skittered off deeper into the woods as I came close to the treeline, close to the car.

I wanted desperately to be a respected man. I wanted desperately to hold onto youthful hope. Both of which seemed to be failing completely. I stepped through the treeline and toward the car. I glanced at my phone for the time and I had twenty minutes still until I had to get the exhaust fixed again. The car was embarrassingly loud and it was costing a fortune and it needed to be done and only a few years ago I would have just been happy to have a car.