Option B

I use this blog for two things. One is to whine. Second one is to whine about the “good old days”.

My shortterm memory is shot and there’s not much to say about my longterm memory either. I remember random things, bits and pieces. And occasionally, even seeing proof, I draw a complete blank. Like yesterday.

We were packing up the old office and found a stack of pictures taken during Pride 2002, or the year before that, or after…. It was fun to see those pictures and to notice hom much the Pride parade has grown since. People look just the same still. Except…

Some of us may have put on a little weight… And a few more wrinkles. Some have grown their hair back and some haven’t. Some still use the same baseballcap. Some have the same girlfriend. Some have something completely different going on.

One picture was especially thought provoking. There’s me and my friends and their friends having a picnic. One of the people in the picture is a woman I was somewhat involved with much later. That picture is taken when I just knew her from the barscene, she still was in a relationship and there was absolutely no indication whatsoever about what would happen between us. I mean I can see in the picture why I noticed her in the first place. I don’t think that we had spoken anything by then, or before. So if asked, I would have said that I haven’t seen her there. But there she is, in the same picture, clearly hanging out with the same people.

Then the real thing. If I would have guessed what would happen with her would I have started it in the first place? Was it worth it? I know, these thoughts are completely useless, what’s done is done and so on. But even I am sometimes only human and think these things… Was it worth all the heartache and misery and loneliness and pain? Was there enough good to make up for the bad? Did it make me a better person to have experienced all that?

At the end there’s something that made it worth it all, and ten times more. Without her I probably wouldn’t have gotten to know the woman that became one of my true friends. So no pain no gain, and I did hurt a lot, but what I got out of it made it all right.

Similar features, part two

Through my work I met briefly a photographer. There was nothing extraordinary in that, except she sounded just like someone I used to care for. And not just kind of, but exactly like her. Every time she spoke I felt this little poke in my brain, triggering memories. It was strange. A good strange, but still.

While travelling with my friend we used to spot people who were just like someone we knew back home. Sometimes it was something like “that’s what X would look like ten years older” and sometimes something more far fetched, like “that’s what X would look like if she’d be ten years older, black, and male”. It is fun to see similar features in people.

Sometimes though it’s not so fun to notice that you’ve started to behave like your parents. You know, the ones you said you’d never be like?