When I think back on the past, there isn't anything that I regret, but there is a lot that I miss.
Simple things that I had once grown accustomed to and in turn, took for granted, tend to return to me in memories, making me ache with a longing for the past, as my vision gets blurry and my heart feels like it is coming out through my throat.
I miss people that I can never have back in my life because like it or not, time has changed us into strangers that we never knew could exist, until something reminds us of who we once were.
I miss old friends who paid disregard to their appearances, I miss my old self who paid disregard to my own appearance. I miss my baby brother, when I could still call him my baby brother, and I miss jumping on my old bed. I miss filling up all the sinks and bathtubs in the house with water, the night before we thought that the world would end in 2000, and I miss waking up on New Year's Day to find that the ceiling directly under the bathtub upstairs had a massive water stain on it. I miss the way that the rest of the world was so foreign and new; a land to be discovered. I miss running in the field of dandelions beside our old house, catching stray dandelion puffs on my cherry lollipop. I miss my dad's corny old jokes and random bedtime stories, and I miss going to see lame movies (starring Eddie Murphy... or any movie with talking animals) with him, because no matter how cheesy the movie was, he still loved it to no end. I miss being daddy's little girl who could do no wrong.
I used to talk to God, every night. I could never go to sleep without saying a prayer. It was a bit of a fear of mine. I was afraid that if I didn't pray, something bad would happen. So every night, I'd first thank God for everything I have (to, you know, butter him up), then I'd ask him to protect my family and let my parents win the lottery, and to give them a new car, and to never let my mom have cancer again. Then, I'd ask him to put all the bad guys in jail, and to feed all the poor people in Africa, and also to help all scientists find a cure for cancer. At the end of my prayer, before my "Our Father", "Hail Mary", and "Glory Be", I'd ask God to please, please, please, please, please, please, if he could find the time, find a nice boy to love me even though I wasn't very pretty. I miss having something to believe in.
Last night, my leg started acting up again and it hurt so bad that I couldn't sleep. I wanted so much to be five years old again, so that I could crawl into my mother's lap and have her sing me an old Vietnamese lullaby until I finally fell asleep, the way she always would when I was little.
God, where did all the time go?
