Innocence has Many Meanings

I've been downloading many songs over this past year and have found myself somehow drawn to music from a time in my life when the possibilities seemed endless, when the vague future ahead of me was almost like an enticing new novel I was just about to read. I look back at that time as one both of boundless optimism and enthusiasm combined (contradictorily) with an absolute terror that nothing meaningful was ever going to happen, that I would never have a relationship with a man I could count on, that I would never manage to find a career that was fulfilling. Now, all these years later, I can hardly bear to look at pictures of myself (even though I was far more pleasing to the eye) from that time without bringing tears over the courageous, happy, yet vulnerable look in my eyes. My heart almost breaks for my former self with the knowledge of the things to come (both good and bad, but most unexpected). Some of the music that I have rediscovered from that time brings some of that innocent emotion rushing back to me, if even for just a moment.

Oh, and it's true. I never have been able to find that man that I can count on, but I guess two out of three isn't so bad.