You never know what you have until...

So I've have had some spare time lately don't you know? Spare time calls for a deep house cleaning! Deep cleaning a house means finding relics from the past. Two scrapbooks created by my Grandmother when I must have been something like 4 and 7 years old to be exact. They're pretty nice, sort of two feet tall by one foot wide affairs filled with poems, magazine clippings, puzzles and captioned family photographs. I remember staring at some of the pictures in them when I was a child for god knows how long, letting the words and images fill my mind and salvage something remotely inspired out of the tiny ball of creative potential my small self was. I'm such a bastard.

This past boxing day I lost my Grandmother. I wish I could tell you about her in depth, but I was a terrible Grandson you see. For as much as this wonderful woman doted on me in my extreme youth I ignored her in my teen and adult years. No letters you understand. No ring on the phone. Would of took five seconds to do, but every time I thought of it... I just didn't. I walked away, apparently occupying my time with frivolous activities was more... what? Convenient? Playing video games, smoking a bowl, wanton defacement of public property could somehow fill my teenaged mind's overwhelming urge for instant gratification and gave me a sense of my place in this world that getting to know my roots could never possibly do? Better to occupy myself with those things instead of those people who made me, well, me I suppose.

Bastard! What happened here? If I am a product of my surroundings, then what could I have encountered in my short history on this earth that would turn me into something so crass? So uncaring of those who took the time to care for me? I can't be looking at a future of nothing but regret for my own tactless behavior can I? Lord and Lady I hope not. I suppose I could rationalize my behavior in more than a few ways. Being a base brat for the first half of all my existence I learned that roots were a vegetable. We played at best friends, but when it came time to go we knew that good-bye was not "so long," it was forever. Disposable people were my way of life.

But there comes a point when the excuses mean less and less. Regret is healthy when one can appreciate it for its motivational purposes, use it to exact change and personal growth. What I'm feeling is natural, I know that. I want to change. There is hope here.