Senses

It's amazing where the senses can take you.
It can either be something sweet from childhood, something memorable due to all the emotions you felt at that time, or something dark and intolerable from a growing up experience that you just want to forget.
Just a few minutes ago, I took a sip out of a cup of milk. The cool, creamy, calming taste vaguely brought me back to my days in Brooklyn, New York, where I can see and hear my grandma asking me if I want a cup of milk. Without my answer, she would pour a small amount for me in a styrofoam cup, using a pen to mark "J" to distinguish my little cup from my brother's and cousins'.
There are several other ones I can think of...
Taking a sip of apple juice can take me as far as my days as a baby, while the smell of coconut lime takes me to my cousin Kenny's house, where they have the exact same smell for their room sprays.
When I put several of my closest friends' names and the word "trip" together, I surprisingly had a flashback of the time I was at the Key Club district convention, where an ex boyfriend would upset me to no end, stating that I "left him" when I was heading to my leadership workshop, and angered me to no end when he stated that he only came to spend time with me, when he knew damn well that I went there for leadership purposes, had many events to attend to, and had things to plan.
When my boyfriend wore an Affliction shirt, my sight caught onto the word and hatred would boil up in my mind at the thought of a benighted and selfish human being who once tried to get me to believe his vilifications, hoping those dark secrets would never resurface to embarrase and haunt him. Little did he know how much power one can hold with allies that made him the laughingstock of Fayetteville.
Whenever I drive by a Harris Teeter, I would remember the days when I would drive by it to and from work, staring at it longingly, emotional and eyes watery, trying to run away from all that I lost by blasting my Twilight soundtrack and throwing myself at the one person who was willing to catch my fall. I remember asking myself when this pain was ever going to end...

Senses are amazing. They take you back to so many places without your physical being ever leaving. While I like to think that I have changed since these events, I'm still the same person I was in every single memory... Perhaps physically different, maybe with different pieces of knowledge, but I was still me then, and I am me now.