Transcend

July 13, 1980

It’s Sunday and I’m sad.

I’m ticking days off the calendar I ache to keep.

I’m haunted with early morning dreams, possibly because I’ve been dredging up the past, and can’t get the people and places out of my head.

Sometimes, I even miss LA and the people there like Mike and Dan.

But I don’t miss some parts of it – and would go back in time to change some of that if I had a chance.

I rarely do that.

Most of what I’ve lived I accept as lived and move on with it. But there are a few painful nuggets of wrong choices I’ve made that I would change – if only to make myself better.

I look at myself then and now and realize that time has changed me in some regards, while in some ways I will never change, and I struggle with the hope that those parts I cannot change, I can live with.

It’s the people I miss – the faces of those I know I will never see again, who helped or sometimes hurt me, some who stole my heart and spirit – both of which I have regained, but not without the high price of lost years.

I miss Louise; I miss my daughter, but unlike with others that came and went, I am convinced at some point I will meet both of them again.

I lived whole lives with them, but many more since, and still ache over that meeting a few years ago, when my daughter cried at my leaving.

There are some memories good or bad that never fade, and some that should not be changed, even if they could be, markers in time to say who and what we are, and what we must become in order to transcend.

Have I transcended yet? Hard to tell.