Boulder is beautiful—this is fact. Though, with the background of the Flatirons looming behind, our very own constant moon, it’s pretty difficult for anything not to be. I imagine, rather, I know, this is a large reason such a significant portion of our community values time outside; hiking, skiing, biking, all the “-ing’s” happen here. Even with the simpler activities like walking or just sitting, its all worthy of your time. In Boulder it’s easy to lose track of the steps and miles when there’s always something to take in and capture, memorializing landscapes into our brains.
Knowing this, and also feeling this, makes it hard to hold in juxtaposition with the fact that, right now, I hate walking across campus.
The walk is dreadful. Stinging scarlet hands, unsteady feet, barely able to get a glimpse of our moon against the snowy foreground—it all makes everything else fade into a forgettable oblivion. When the snow finally begins to melt for the season, trading in the cold chill for a favorable summer breeze, I’ll be glad to have gotten through it, leaving another winter behind me.
I know this. So why am I also sure that in a few months, I’ll actually miss it? What is so glaring and pertinent to me now will soon be smoothed down and altered by time. Nostalgia will have crept in, and in another light, with another perspective adopted, I’ll long for this same cold. Come next winter, in the early weeks, with alarmingly warm days still lingering around despite the shift in color among trees, I’ll leave the door cracked open hoping the snow might soon blow it fully agape.
That old cold will no longer be one that seeped into my bones, making it difficult to breathe, but maybe one that was more caffeinating, ensuring a lighter step, than anything else. And that’s the whole thing with the passage of time, isn’t it? Things are always better in retrospect. What seems so glaring now will be whittled down, forging a recollection that maybe isn’t wholly reflective or even all that accurate, but all the more endearing.
This is something I struggle to grapple with. Sugar-coating my words or the situation at hand in the name of comfort or false optimism has never been something I’ve been known to partake in or appreciate—and that’s what this feels like. It’s something I’ve become guilty of doing, for over a decade at least, despite willing and bargaining anything I can to fight against it. I’ve found no solution.
While it’s a reminder that, yes, the good is preserved stronger than anything else, it’s always left me feeling like I’ve lost something, a puzzle piece whisked away, latching onto a reality that never completely happened, spoiling it and leaving another unwhole. What at times can be a comfort, can quickly become an ideation greater in theory than in practice, distracting from the possibility of the current moment.
I’m someone who always remembers, searing moments large and small into my head, and that’s not always a very fun person to be. Memory always goes hand in hand with something else, and it seems like it might be grief.
“Oh, yeah! I remember. That was nice, wasn’t it?”
“How could I ever forget?”
“I think of that all the time. Wouldn’t it be nice to do that all over again?”
It’s these kinds of questions I struggle to separate from.
It’s just all so tired, isn’t it? Wanting to go back, making unheard wishes to relive something just one more time, always seems more appealing than tomorrow. I want to trade in the “I miss …” for the “I can’t wait for …” I’m not quite sure of how to get there myself, so the directions I have to offer are minimal, but I do know that while these fragments are important to visit, we can’t stay.
So on my dreadful walks, I try to take a look around, taking it all in, even if I can only bear it for a second.
I would very much like to wish for tomorrow rather than contort my hands into unnatural positions trying to hold on to too many memories where this or that seemed much better than it actually was, or could be now.