Aching Nostalgia

I can't sleep. My mind is flooded with past memories. I've somehow learned everything and nothing since the year 1998. It's the memories of that year, specifically, that haunt me tonight, for whether they were good times or bad, it's a time I'll never see again. Virginia is gone. My childhood friends Richie, Andy, and Eddie are gone. My innocence is gone. 1998 is the year I learned there's more to sex than making babies. It's this year I learned what beer tastes like, then what it tastes like mixed with Kool-Aid. It's this year I learned what it felt like to go trick or treating the last time, to realize you won't be a professional athlete when you grow up, and how special a girl's company can be. That year was full of real burden, real learning, and real shame. I didn't even know what it meant to be cool at that point, and I couldn't even pretend otherwise. I was a 5 foot 3 inch, out of shape, baby-faced late bloomer who played Parks and Rec basketball and averaged 6 points a game. I had no idea where a woman urinated from, besides that it was down "there" somewhere. I thought "evil" things like drugs or alcohol would kill me almost instantaneously. I never asserted myself or spoke loud enough to be heard. That was me in 1998, the 15 year-old Justin Blake Crum; the one who really knew what it meant to be alive, and the one I look up to now. I wish I felt as alive as he did.