The Truth About Forever

When I was a little kid in high school I remember wanting to finish all sorts of reading lists each year to put on my college transcripts as something I had done in my spare time that was worthwhile and intellectual. I'm not sure I ever actually read all the books so much as checked them all out of the library and then paid the fines for them and gave them back several months later.

Out of all those books there is only one that managed to stick with me over the years. And sadly enough I'm not even certain I would have read it had my older sister not picked it up over Christmas break and loved it. It took me a good 6 months to follow suit and read it. I received my own copy of the book that Christmas and have been reading it ever since.

I just picked it up again last week and am amazed how much I can still relate to it. I haven't read it for several years as moving and life have called my attention to other things. I was afraid that I would read it and be disappointed and that it wouldn't mean as much to me this time around as it had back then. Back then I hadn't neccessarily been a Macy but I'd had a Wes. His name was Jordan Johnson and oh how I loved him. Sa-woon! He was my best friend and the one with whom I'd shared all my truths. I wanted more than anything for us to end up together, but we fate would not have it so. I remember reading the ending so many times and relating directly to Macy and Wes and understanding completely their situation.

Now I have no Wes and I have become Macy. So strange how the tables have turned. Not only do I see myself more as a Macy this last year but I also have more of a Jason in my life than a Wes. How is it that I've regressed? I feel as though I'm relearning things I remember knowing before. Things that as a 15 year old I didn't struggle with and yet things that as a 20 year old I've forgotten. Silly, silly, silly. Not only did I feel so much like Macy Queen but all around me things keep happening almost straight from the book. It's been an interesting week filled with so many things all around me reminding me that "forever (is) so many different things. It (is) always changing, it (is) what everything (is) really about. It (is) twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I (wish) would last and last..."

Reading this book now and really thinking about myself in terms of Macy has made me see my life is a new and strange way. It has made me really think about what I want my forever to be. I find myself wondering what it is I would do - right now - if I could do anything.


The beautiful thing about forever is that I, as Macy did, can move on beyond the past. I can change. What has happened does not make the future set in stone.

I can feel myself standing at a giant crossroads in my life. I've been standing
here afraid to make a choice and afraid to move. But it is time. Time to change. Time to accept all that has happened and move on to all that is yet able to occur. I have the choice to continue down the same path, unchanged from the events of this last year or I can start down a new road and alter the current course of my life. It is up to me. I have the power to choose my own forever. Which makes me think of Emerson... or is it Thoreau? ... It's Emerson... "What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within us out into the world, miracles happen." I'm not asking for miracles.

But it is time to follow my own Wish.

"There (is) only one truth about forever that really matter(s), and that (is) this: it (is) happening. Right (now), and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now."

Goodnight, dear void.