part of me is still there.

i can vividly recall thinking that i'd feel this way and that way forever and believing this was it.

thinking in absolutes.

there's no other way to describe it. adolescents have such flawed egoes while never realizing it. for awhile they fill with self importance and swear that they are not a part of a whole, but a sum of parts. invincibility lies beyond the equal sign, and coming into adulthood means working back from the multiple choices to find out the nature of the equation.

i've still yet to find that dusty neon bar, the one where it always seems like it's midsummer twilight in the windows and everyone squints and laments, where i envisaged myself sidled up to at the ripe old age of 25, drinking a milkshake.

sometimes i start to believe it doesn't exist until i realize how i might be thinking in absolutes.