April showers? Not in sunny Diego. It's an absolutely beautiful day, a perfect 77 degrees. Days like these always remind me of home... playing with the neighbor kids, biking to the park or the railroad tracks, watching my mom garden. When I got a little older, days like these were the setting for singing in the car with the windows down, swimming in grandma's pool, ditching class and eating ice cream.
Despite the wonderfulness of these memories, they make me sad. Like, really sad. I miss home and I miss my family, but what I miss more than that is how things used to be. Home will never be the same as it was back then, there's no way I can get it back.
"It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. Maybe that's all family really is, a group of people who miss the same imaginary place." (Garden State)
Maybe that place not only doesn't exist in the present, but never really existed in the past either. Maybe that was my innocent childlike perspective of the world. Maybe we fool ourselves when we look back. They say hindsight is 20/20, but I think hindsight is far-sighted: we can see the big picture, that glowing image of happiness, but the details that make it real are gone.
I fool myself into thinking that what I see in our memories is still true today. But it's not. For example, my family isn't as perfect as I've believed my entire life. There are miscommunications, misunderstandings of who each other really are, but we pretend like those aren't there. Because to acknowledge that would ruin the pretty picture that never really existed.
Is it better to bring up the lies that we see in this world and risking hurting those who really believe them? Is it better to be real or to be happy?
