While rose colored memories are always nice, sometimes I just can't puzzle out a nostalgic thing from some odd joy younger me loved. The questions become too much and the illusion of everything being simply explainable crumbles. It's easier when you can explain things away. When I was younger, I was a tad bit strange, but what kid wasnt? On rainy days, or whenever I would stand in the middle of the floor and spin. Not spin for 30 seconds or some other less than consequential time frame. I would spin until I physically couldn't stack the parts of my body on top of each other anymore and I'd fall to the floor. Then as I got over my pounding headache, I'd watch the world reset. Slowly I'd watch that spinning room place itself still and real, and all of the chaos would fall in order. Then, just over my dizzy naseua I would do that same stupid thing, again. These days, swinging too high on a swing gives me naseua and headaches that I just don't care enough to brave. I guess I get the appeal, reality becoming less stable the lines blurring until you can't exactly distinguish where you're standing from a dream. But I still can't place my finger on how that naseua was worth it. For the kid who couldn't read their beloved books in the car without an orange disaster on the side of the road, or worse on the seats. The kid who wouldn't go on spinny rides, that kid would care a little less just for a lack of reality for a moment. Younger me may be closer to where I stand now than I thought and for some reason those similarities scare me. It's easy to categorize things in feelings and times as leagues away and not deal with the messy entanglement between everything, but ignore it and I am forced to ignore that I really haven't changed. Just in method. I am a very sleep dependent person. Like many, lose an hour of my precious sleep and most who know me will notice a terrible change in demeanor. But through the years and to this day I have been keeping myself awake for no reason other than achieving that foggy brain state that comes after a certain hour. That feeling of disconnection as you type a blog post on an html website that will make no sense in the morning. Braving the headaches and irritability sure to follow in the morning. Caring a little less about potentially falling asleep in the afternoon tomorrow and ready to do it all again tomorrow. We dreamers tend to want to escape. Young me had the same idea, without the sleep losing 'benefits' of technology at their fingertips. That kid may be my biggest embarrassment, but old me will barely remember them. Old me'll have these same questions about my escapes from the closer to real. Old me will probably be pretty embarassed by all I have failed at, and forgotten. I was a spinner, ready to barfer, let my head hurter all for one 10 second chance at being farther away from a world i dreamed of escaping in a younger way, a kinder to myself way. Now I'm a headacher, may say something to hurt my friends-er, let my graders dropper all in an attempt to escape and stave off the ever present urge for a more permanent painful self hate fueled escape. While it may not be perfect, I've dropped the nasea. Maybe someday my methods won't involve headaches. And then maybe, I won't need them at all. -Charlie