Different

Have you ever felt yourself being changed? Not so much by any specific event but just as you're driving down a highway you feel that... differentness in your heart. Sometimes it's a good feeling but often it's this ache inside you that says "You're never going to be the same".

I'm on a road trip with my parents, little sister and her husband and son. We just left my father's mother's house. As we're driving, I look at the Texas city-scape and the run-down buildings, all the differentness from my Kansas home.

I look back and see that because I visited my grandmother today, this visit has changed, has affected my view of her. As has every encounter we've ever had and every encounter we will have in the future. I don't think any less of her or anything but... because I visited her today, as my 19 year old self, I will never look at her or remember her the way I saw her when I was say 7 years old. She's not the same Grandma and I'm not the same Erika.

Sometimes I love the new, the changing, the freedom to transform and experience variety. But today I ache of loss. Today I wish I could feel the same I had back then. But I can't. And such is life.