‘In my mind, I’m going to Carolina …’
Today I wore my warm vanilla sugar body spray, the stuff I haven’t touched since I was in South Carolina, circa October 2001. My head is full of memories and my heart is full of sadness. For reasons best left unexplained, it wasn’t the dream vacation I’d been hoping it would be, but I will never forget the pier, the sand, the moonlight and the salty air; the open-air bars with malfunctioning air conditioning; the hot sun beaming down on the courtyard at the convention center; … and the feeling of being so close yet so far away from someone I had grown to adore and maybe even love.
Funny how I don’t think about him much anymore, yet today, a mere scent can rip me backward and force me to remember what I’ve tried valiantly to forget. I wonder if he ever regrets how things happened — I wonder if he knows that he was 50 percent of the reason that I left Pittsburgh. I wonder if he ever stops to wonder how good things could have been and how lucky he really was. We may never know, but I do know that I stopped wearing this scent for a reason. 🙂