No *******, no poems. Nothing to hide behind. I remember listening to this Modest Mouse song, freshman year of high school. I had 20 bucks of **** **** socked away in a ps2. I had so many deep, but not intricate feelings. Maybe these are the best kind... It was a year of a fresh new start. I felt like the outcasts in all the halloween specials and ******* I had watched, as well as this tragically different being. I started hanging out with E. He's an indie wrestler nowadays. But back then we mostly smoked our cannabis, made jokes about historical events or political agendas. We were in a video production class. The class let us roam in and out and off of school grounds, missing other classes even. It was perfect. I met the older kids, we'd drive around, I just remember it now as sunny and a little chilly. I even lost my virginity that year. It was a train wreck of a relationship. Two people trying to hard to be older than they were. She was a senior then and had just lost her father... I still wonder sometimes if she's okay and I don't know why. It's not romantic worry, it's not hoping for reconnection, it's just a sentimental anxiety. It was a time of friends, running in nature and crunching leaves with my cross country team. It felt right. It felt so good to be old enough to be the freaks and the geeks all rolled in one. I didn't know then in 5 years who I'd be. I didn't know those people would fall away from me. My fitness would fall away from me. I wouldn't go to the library high with E anymore, shooting nonsensical politically engaged videos, full of bad hidden jokes and nearsighted irony. My sophomore year E stopped attending high school. We stopped talking so much. I haven't seen him in 3 years now. And only then it was a quick hello, his hair has grown so long. His eyes didn't look rebellious but lit with hope anymore, they didn't race. He looked older, real-er. Our momentary grasp on time and reality gave through the cracks in our hands. Now I sit at university. Barely scraping together classes for some mod-podge video art minor. Sometimes I feel like I like film because it reminds me of those old times. I still have fun, I still have experiences that ******* away, and at only 20, I'm sure I have many more to come. But I still can smell the cars and the schoolrooms, feel the trails and the weather, and taste the air and the packed lunches, from half a decade ago. I peaked in high school, and I'll never belong anywhere as much again.