It was raining. I remember that. There was this courtyard at Takoma Park Middle School, a place that no longer exists as the shitty school whose bathroom faucets poured brown water and people crowd surfed between classes because there were too many people smushed in the narrow halls. I don't even really think its a courtyard. We performed Vincenza & Husdon's "wedding" there. School didn't start until 7:55 am but because the long bus ride that began at 6:10 am had to drop off the kids at high school, we usually had an hour before school started to be aimless kids. Despite my general predisposition as an extrovert, especially enjoying the popularity I had finally attained at age 12, I wandered off alone that morning. I was wearing cutoff jean shorts inappropiately for the coldness and I laid down on the wet pavement and stared at the sky with the rain dripping down the side of my face. And something heavy filled my body as gravity weighed me down. I even wrote aboout it in my fake little diary, a yellow notepad in a green pen describing it as the "day everything changed."

Angst was all the rage when I was 12. People described it as a competition of "who was the most fucked up." Grunge was a short lived era but it was perfect for my adolescence cause its emotions matched my own sense of confusion in life.

So what? So for ten years, I didn't have to really think about that day. I never had to mention it. It was this chapter I got to put on the shelf. I could downplay my history as part of the "prozac generation" and laugh with other friends about the angst we ALL experienced. I left my grunge songs on my Itunes as an homage of that stage, but always skipped having to listen to them. It was too emotionally exhausting.

I forgot how to explain it. I forgot how to even understand it myself. I forgot that it is a part of me.

And I think I've just now begun to remember.