Echoes of the Past, Reflections of the Future

Well, today has been allright, I'm now only about 100 pages behind in my Literature class, and I've a million things to do, but I'm allright. You know, I've noticed some things about how life goes, and I think I'm going to share a little of my personal experience here. Why? I don't know, just because I think perhaps someone would be able to learn from my mistakes.

I've had a lot of time to do some personal reflections on my past. How life was in High School, and before I moved to Cedar City. I've had a whole lot of things to think about from then, and most of the time, I didn't want to. But the more I think about it, the easier it is to let it go, and to realize what was happening back then.

I warn anyone reading this that this is my story, and that it is complete from my perspective. That anyone who loves Vernal and/or High School had better stop reading this entry right now, because I'm not holding back my feelings, and it will be easy to become offended if you do not stop reading right now.

Vernal is a place in my mind that will always be one of the worst places in the world. I hate it, and it hates me. From High School--and even before--I was a prisoner there. High school for me was full of many people, most of them fake, just trying to be the most popular or the prettiest or the coolest. No one understood what it meant to live--myself included. I fell prey to the constant suggestion of that accursed place that I was worth nothing, that life was meaningless for me. And what did it accomplish? At that time I had a deathwish, because I was not strong enough to realize that the constant suggestions and assault of words were of ideals that are nothing but the constant struggle and want of power over others. And no one was there to pull me out, at least not for a long time, not until it was almost too late.

Coming to Cedar I was running form the past. It seems to be a fact of life that you cannot run from your problems, and expect them to go away. They always come back with a vengance. And so it was for me. The echoes of the past I thought I had escaped threatened my life a second time. Well, I was smarter then, and more experianced, and I realized--though unable to cast off those weighted chains of thought--that they were not right, it was not how the world worked, there was something about those accusations of worthlessness that didn't ring true. So I sought help, and found my way back. I still struggle with the echoes of the past, they still haunt me at times and threaten my peace, but they aren't nearly as strong or influential as they once were.

I now have the life I've always wanted, and I am happy and satisfied with life for the most part. I find that the feelings of freedom I fealt before the past caught me the second time, are the very feelings I have now, but nearing ten fold the potency. To me, Vernal is Hell, and Cedar City is salvation. I have found that you choose your future, and I have chosen mine.

This experience for me has had several effects. Cedar City has become my home, though I choose my words carefully in mixed company. (I've offended several people already, without even trying). I have also grown a hatred for Vernal that I don't think will ever go away. There is also an effect form this experience that I'm not sure what to do with. Every once in a while, especially on sites such as facebook or myspace where the faces of the past confront me, I'll find a torrent and whirlwind of emotions battling for attention in my head. Needless to say the echoes of the past return at full effect (or what is now full effect of those feelings that are still left), and I found myself staring at those pictures with a kind of hatred. Not to say that I hate those people, but I think that my hatred of Vernal has began to leak into everything in my mind associated with Vernal. I do not hate them--most of them--but I find it diffucult to seperate my feelings of Vernal from them. I apalogize to any of those from Vernal who are reading this. It is something I may struggle with for the rest of my life. I do not mean it personally. Time heals all wounds, so it has been said. I'm not sure I believe this statement is completely correct, but it does have some merrit. With time these feelings of hatred may lesten, and perhaps eventually I will only think of the city of Vernal alone with those feelings and not the collective of everything associated with it. But for now the echoes of the past cause me to look at some with feelings of utter contempt. We shall se how this summer goes, since I will be returning to that accursed place. Perhaps that will help me through these feelings and allow me to finally lay at rest the past, and leave nothing but hope of the brightest future.