they repaved since i was last there. the gym had newer bigger lettering on it’s exterior and the baseball and soccer fields now have a decent fence now. i dont know what possessed me to visit there. after all, it wasnt exactly a happy point in my history…well, that’s not entirely fair, some of it was actually happy. but for the most part, it was…well, let’s just say unpleasant.

i cried in the parking lot. it caught me by surprise at first. there i was, sitting in my car in the parking lot of the school i attended for most of my middle school years, and without warning, i was crying.

at the end of eight grade, i left that school as quickly as my mother would allow. i spent about four years there, maybe five, i cant remember exactly. there was so much pain from that school…the few people i went to school with that i called friends werent there long and saying i didnt really fit in would be putting it mildy. i was weird and nearly every situation where my life could be made uncomfortable, was made uncomfortable. i wasnt exactly bullied in the sense that kids in school now days have to deal with, but mentally, it was torture. the last year i attended there, i cried nearly every day. but there i was years later, sitting in the parking lot with tears in my eyes wanting to go inside. i wanted to walk the halls as an adult. from my car, i could see into the hallways that were the bane of my existence for so many years and i cried a little more. for a moment, i felt myself shrink the way everything would wrench up inside me as my mom pulled into the drop off point every morning and i would want to just go home sick or crawl under a rock for the next seven hours…and then i remembered something.

i’m not that girl anymore. i’m not the same girl that dreaded every moment of school, that hated when the bell rang cause it meant walking the hallways alone, trying to look small and not be noticed. that girl that had to block out everyone around me to get by, to hide the things that i liked because they were weird or childish. that girl that sobbed to my mother nearly every afternoon she picked me up and begged that i didnt have to come back. that girl. i was her. but i’m not anymore.

as i sat there, taking in that place nearly twelve years later, i wished i could go back and tell that girl that everything would turn out okay. that all her fear, her tears meant something. that her misery turned into something incredible. that she would be loved, accepted…that she would have a joy filled life with people who genuinely wanted her. i just wanted to tell her that it would all turn out okay.

there are days when that girl from my past comes into my present. there are days when hiding and fear and tears seem to undermine my confidence, my drive and my passion. its those days when i remember that it’s not who i am. it might be where i came from, it might be familiar, but it’s not who i am. and everything will turn out okay.

dwell in possibility…