Repairing The Edit Button

It's the strangest things that will make me think of a person I haven't seen/talked to in some time. A song on the radio (Chicago songs still have the power to send me back to my 15 year old mindset and think of cassette tapes made by Mr. '79 Chevy Silverado) or a smell (that one perfume that mom always wore when I was little still makes me smile) or even a sound (thunderstorms crashing outside are a certain reminder of Montell, TX huddled in a hunting cabin with family). Tonight it was the street light near our house blinking.

Kentucky Girl is one of the nicest people I've ever met...she quickly joined the band of crazy women (that would be a compliment ladies) that I call friends. She shared with me a wonderful story about running in the evening around the parking lot of the apartment complex she was living in at the time. A street light would flicker as she came upon it, pass it and continue on. An occurance that most of us would have never thought twice about kept her running long after she would have usually stopped because it's something that happens to her that makes HER think of someone. You see Kentucky Girl lost her dad when she was very young and since then she feels his presence whenever there is a blinking street light near her; and now I think of her whenever I see it happen.

Such a random thing and yet, it now sparks instant thoughts of another person. So what? You might say...well, it's those thoughts that usually lead a person to reach out and contact the one they thought of, but not me. The edit button in my brain is broken...it adds in thoughts that shouldn't be there and deletes thoughts that were pretty good. I think of the person, I smile, I WANT to contact them, but I usually don't...that darned edit button will start adding in these malicious thoughts that tell me the person doesn't want to hear from me, or they've got no time for a conversation...and the next thing you know it's too late to call/text. But I'm breaking that pattern...I'm slowly mending the circuits that run to that edit button.

Tonight I knew it was late, but I texted anyways. I let Kentucky Girl know that I was thinking of her because if I don't I allow a wonderful friend to slip away and I don't want that to happen to me anymore. The cycle was broken this time! YAY FOR ME!