you’re watching a show, your favourite show,
and the first three seasons are great!
the gang just does their thing:
laughing at the bar or the coffee shop or in that living room,
telling a different version of the same silly tale,
and the best part is that they’re together; complete, whole.
you settle into it without a second thought —
— but then,
for one reason or another,
they need to move on – get off the island, go to college, move cities for a new job, whatever it may be,
and everything changes.
the energy is off, the colours look different, it’s just not the same anymore and you sit there,
wishing they would all go back
to the same simple, steady people they once were,
wishing they didn’t have to leave and change and evolve because things would just be so much less complicated if they all stayed the same…
it felt so safe. and that was better,
right?
i’m on season twenty-one now –– this show has gone on for way too long ––
and i wish i could rewind back to the good ol’ days:
the days when my siblings still lived at home and i couldn’t really hear my parents fight over my brother’s laughter as he played his video games;
when i’d eavesdrop on my sister’s calls with her friends ‘cause she was eleven years older and i was an impressionable five-year-old who wanted to be just like her;
when my dad played legos with me on Saturdays for an hour because that was the only time he could rip himself away from work (or Natalie, as i later found out that’s what her name was).
things weren’t always the best in those early seasons, and i guess i was left in the dark, for the most part;
lucky that those around me were good enough actors.
but still, i can’t help but want things to go back to the way they were.
now,
everyone has left,
changed,
gone off on their own path.
and where am i?
still here, still stuck in the same setting where everything was once the best it had ever been and simultaneously (hopefully),
the worst it will ever be.