I've been having a hard time, but last night, for a whole hour, sitting next to someone I've come to dearly love, I couldn't stop smiling. Even when I tried to stop, I couldn't.  It was just four friends (mostly new), a gingham and Hank Williams themed barbeque restaurant, a small order of hush puppies, bluegrass music played by a quartet of older men, and me.

Being there, surrounded by banjo playing and happy people, I didn't feel eager to leave the south anymore. It was one of those small moments where I remember why I love the place I'm from and why I'll want it back one day if I ever live somewhere else. I'll always miss that automatic feeling of belonging that comes from walking into a room full of smiling people. But people who aren't getting paid to be nice, who are really smiling and happy to see you - a stranger.

One thing that has always scared me about getting older is the way life will become divided into chapters. Except most of the details of those chapters will be lost, and the only thing remaining will be old photograph books, whatever the mind manages to hold onto, and maybe a few journal entries here and there. I always wonder: if I won't remember these things one day, these things that are everything to me now, does that mean they might as well not even happen? Obviously every major event, no matter how many details I remember, will shape me in some fashion (although I may not be aware of it), but the thought of memory loss is still perpetual and scary, and the end result is sentimentality and an obsession with documentation.

I noticed last night that everyone there to hear music (besides us, of course) were around the same age. I realized then for the first time how beautiful it will be to grow old with the other members of my generation and have, at least on some large level, the same life chapters. Right now, milk is $2.99 a gallon (okay I am really cheap and buy the store brand). We have the Iraq and Afghanistan war. We had Nickelodeon as children, and we were young when internet became a part of every household. We're part of the gay marriage debates, the voter suppression legislation, the Obama administration. We also have Lady Gaga, Flo Rida, and Kenny Chesney. When we're old, our memories will all contain these things, among all the other things we still have to live through. Just like all the generations before us, we'll all have our own chunk of history to say we lived through together. We'll see the world change, and we'll change it ourselves.

I don't know why I'm having such a hard time. It makes me feel guilty to think that I could be so sad when my life has contained so little trauma thus far. But ever since last night, I've had the overwhelming feeling that everything will be okay. It was like a small, yellow light in a dull room.