Sometimes I have these random thoughts during my day. Before you think up some sarcastic comment about how thoughts are a part of having a brain and of course having thoughts would happen considering I do have a brain, let me assure you. These aren't just any old thoughts. They largely differentiate from the other daily, redundant thoughts (the ones that tell me it's time to get out of bed, the ones that tell me pancakes sound really good right about now, the ones that practically scream how attractive Ryan Gosling is, the ones that everyone else think on a day to day basis too, ect). No, these are not the usual brain occurrences that plague other people. I say that with a loose interpretation of what others think as I cannot read minds and I am merely guessing. All I really know is these are mine, and they are completely unusual.

Most of the time they happen when I'm spending a lot of time in the past. I go there too much, and I see all of you. If you are reading this, I probably know you and if I know you, you are there. Believe me. Anyways, in the midst of seeing you (you the reader in general, or am I speaking directly to someone? The fun in being a writer is I can confuse the hell out of people and not have to confess what any of this about because, you know, vagueness is art) while visiting memory lane (AKA the past) today I thought, "I should have run away." What? You mean Candice Brattain thinks things like that? To that I say, of course I do. Do not take anything I say too literally though. I am not actually going to run away. I would much rather walk or saunter, and there would have to be a HUGE explosion in the background. (I have a sense of humor, too.) I would never actually run away. Too cliche. BUT! Today, for some odd reason, my brain told me that's what I should have done.

So here I am, sitting on some curb on some street with Memory Lane printed on the sign on the corner, and I wish I would have run away. I wish I would have bolted. Maybe if I had left before I came I wouldn't have to keep coming back because I wouldn't know where I was going back to. There is an almost embarrassingly high chance that that last sentence makes absolutely no sense to anyone but me, and it was the easiest one to write in this entire thing. (I told you my thoughts are unusual.) I guess what I'm trying to say is, today I wish I hadn't made all of these memories in the first place. They'd be alright ones to have if everything was the same right now as it had been back then, but it's not.

We all talk about the "good times," and more often than not those times live on this street. We never talk about good times as if they are happening right now. Mine are always in the past with all of you, and every once in awhile it is bad times that live a few blocks over on a street named Present Day. Present Day is the street neighborhood watch tells the cops about, the street the neighborhood children aren't allowed to play on, but it's also a place where we all live at certain points of our lives. I live there when people die. I live there when I lose friends. I live there when someone else is sad or depressed and I can't do a single thing about it. And I can't help but to think it'd be an easier place to live if the dead were never alive, if I had never made any friends, if I didn't remember the happiness. Maybe, just maybe, the bad times wouldn't hurt as much if I didn't have the good times to compare them to. Perhaps I wouldn't want to leave Present Day so badly if I didn't have Memory Lane to visit.

"I should have ran away." Maybe, but then I wouldn't have had the inspiration to write this. And this, this is the upside of not running away. This is my ticket to a place where times, although changed, have the potential to be good again. This was written to be read in a big city filled with so much life and adventure, or maybe in some quaint seaside town where there's a ferris wheel on a pier. This was written for a place named The Future, and someday I will live there instead.