Help! My Favorite Place Has Been Invaded My Vampires and Now I'm Being Held Captive!

It’s the worst of times when you find yourself slapped in the face- Both physically, and mentally. Either way, the worst feeling is when the one thing you’d grown to love is snatched away, or turned against you. You’re just left clinging for your life, hoping that that one thing will somehow, in some way, go back to the way you knew it.

You’re just desperate for things to be normal again, but things are never normal. Your hopes are at the top, but sometimes there is no choice but for it to be shot down. You learn, but you learn the hard way. You feel like crying, and in your head all you can tell yourself is ‘it’s okay, you’ll be okay’. Sometimes- most of the time- things do get better. Other times, they only get worse.

Imagine yourself, going to your favorite book shop/coffee shop/ record shop, every day. You have friends, you know how it runs- you know how the system works. Then, suddenly, everything changes. The owner dies, and next thing you know there’s a for sale sign on the outside door. You think over and over that the change won’t be that big of a change. You think that maybe if enough people are against it, nothing will change.

Until a few weeks later, you walk towards it unexpecting- thinking that everything will be the same. Only to find it empty- gone without a moment’s notice. You realize then how important that book shop/coffee shop/record shop was to you, and when suddenly, not a month later, there’s a new book shop/coffee shop/ record shop, you realize that it’s something that can’t be replaced. It’s too important to you.

You see, all the people are still there. All the same people who’ve known you by name, or have seen you around. The only thing is that this time around, there are also the new faces nobody’s ever seen before. You should be glad they’re there, but you’re not. You miss having good old Rhetta bringing you a coffee/ recommending a cd/ getting you a book. The coffee/books/cds just aren’t/isn’t as good as before. Everything is tainted with that newness that’s screaming in your face.

You didn’t realize how important something was to you until it was gone, and now you’re just left desperately hoping that somehow time would turn back and everything would be back to normal. That the same table you sit at by the window still had ‘Fck whatever president on it’.

Things have changed, and sometimes it’s not okay, and you don’t want to be on your way. You just desperately want things to be the way they are in your head. Desperately.

What Goes Around Comes Around;

-Karma Police

Just One Moment, Frozen.

The way time works for someone like me is this: Fast, quick, and unnoticed. For a while now, it seemed like my life moved with me; so therefore nothing changed. My Mom was still younger than she looked, my Dad still had that too large belly, and my brother- although married- was just my brother.

Maybe it was because everything came in a pace, but sometimes when something throws you off, it really throws you off.

It was any other day, and it was cold out despite the fact that it was almost Summer. I exit my Grandmother's house, and walk towards the parking lot, where my Father's car is. As I'm walking I see my friend's mother walking out of the hall leading to the lot. I smile at her, and suddenly, running out of the hall behind her is her youngest son.

Now, my friend had moved here two years ago. He has a family of five: three boys, and one Mom. No Dad. Nothing. Well, when my friend had first moved here, the youngest son was just a baby- he couldn't even walk. This all registered as I watched this little human run by me, laughing gleefully.

And I realized at that moment, that a lot of time had passed. Two years had turned a baby who needed his mother to carry him to a little boy who could run around and see the world. For a minute, I just stood there, shocked.

I remembered all this stupid stuff that I never really remember until I'm sad. I remembered seeing my friend before he was my friend, when he was the new neighbor, and he was kneeling down and comforting his younger brother, who then was just a little boy. I thought about how that little boy was now in the fourth grade, and I thought about how my friend wasn’t as I thought of him then. He wasn’t kind and caring, he ditched class and did who knows what.

And I just stood there, and for the first time in who knows when, I just felt incredibly sad. I realized I was growing up. There was no Neverland, and no matter what I wouldn’t be able to imagine myself a meal in a few years. I wouldn’t be carefree, and the responsibilities that are already beginning to pile up are going to pile higher.

Eventually of course, I continued walking, feeling incredibly bittersweet. But now, when I think back to that one moment, that little boy rushing past, I just smile. It’s amazing what can trigger such a feeling, but it’s moments like that that really give me a reality check.

I'm feeling a bit nostalgic,

-Karma Police