Flashing back....

Today, while surfing Facebook, I started flipping through a classmates photos and came across pictures that included me in them from my very awkward early years.  In looking at them, those memories came flooding back to me & they were NOT the best memories.  Memories of those terribly awkward years & those feelings actually came back to me for a flash.  ICK!  I didn't like it!  BUT...it did make me think of how far I have come in my life from those years.  And it made me think how funny Facebook was!  That in that virtual world, when we are all older, hopefully wiser & more mature, we no longer think of all the boundaries that held us back in our younger years.  I am friends on facebook with a lot of people that were in different social circles than I was in, but today, none of that matters.  We all comment on each others photos of our kids, families, etc.  laugh about big hair pictures from the 80's, etc.  I wish that teenagers now could understand that this is what happens when we all get older & not dwell on what seems to be everything in their world at that age.  Three years ago this month, one of my son's friends took his own life at the tender age of 15.  The question why has never really been answered.  That friend would have turned 16 in less than one month when he left this world.  Every year, on April 30, I flashback to that day, that phone call, my son's face, the faces of the boys that I had known & grown to love since they were in the 5th grade together standing on my doorstep, pale with tear stained cheeks & hurting worse than any teenager ever should at the loss of one of their very best friends.  I flash back to going over to that boy's home that night & hugging his dad & sharing my condolences.  I flash back to phone conversations with both his parents & holding my son as he cried....trying to understand but remembering how the world of a teenager is.  Remembering that their world is so different from that of an adult.  Thinking that who they are in high school defines them, who they date, what they wear, etc.  Thinking that those things are IT!  If only they could see where life takes us as we grow older, wiser & more mature.  I am no longer that awkward kid that I was in those pictures I looked at this evening, but she's still inside me somewhere.  She comes out from time to time...I am still clumsy.  I still trip over my own two feet from time to time & I still wonder how I could have ever been a cheerleader with my lack of coordination but I overcame it.  I now can laugh about my clumsiness, I have accepted those things about myself as those things that make me, well, me and it doesn't bother me anymore unless I end up whacking myself in the eye with the car door & give myself a black eye....I have a hard time accepting those moments but I can totally laugh about them & I do!  Even a bad flash back moment can result in a good overall feeling!