she needed wide open spaces

Who doesn't know what I'm talking about?
Who's never left home, who's never struck out?
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone
Many precede and many will follow
A young girl's dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed
-Dixie Chicks

i found some old videos on my camera yesterday. videos of fun, crazy, spontaneous times with my absolute best friends in high school. it was just the three of us. we used to joke that we would play them at our rehearsal dinners one day...those videos tell more than i can even begin to put into words. we were so young and alive, living and hoping for futures that were going to take us away from each other but loving that very moment we were in enough to record it. we agreed to go away and grow separately knowing that we would still remain close at heart. the strangely distressing part is, though, that despite those words we repeated to each other that last summer before college, as i watch that video, i'm not sure who those girls are anymore. they've been left in time, in life passing so constantly. it's like even though we promised to each other that we wouldn't let the distance between our paths part our strong friendship, we still walked different roads and grew up in different ways- such imprinting ways that are marked so heavily upon us now that it's nearly impossible to make out what was there before...what was there back when moving away from home and chasing career aspirations were merely figments in the far future of what could happen. that's life, though. it happens to us and we're just left to deal with it..to pick up the pieces it leaves behind if necessary and do something positive with the junk it throws at us. all the while, we become more than what our younger selves could even begin to grasp..and what once we understood all too well suddenly seems too faded to comprehend.

we needed wide open spaces, just like we shouted obnoxiously driving to the beach that weekend before graduation..if only we would've been able to fathom the exact toll those spaces would have on us and who we were as people, as friends. as i watch that video over and over, it's not the simultaneous note-hitting, breanne's attempt at driving and dancing, or megan's imaginary microphone that stand out. the only thing that seems blantantly obvious now..the only thing that i can relate to is that the words we sang became our very lives.