Whoever said, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.” was full of it. Things change. Period. And people change. We mature, we grow older, we become different people and we are never, ever the same.

I’m heading home tomorrow. Home being Philadelphia, of course. I love going back to Philly and seeing my old house, my old school, my old friends… I love the occasional trip down memory lane. But things have changed. The people I used to know have changed. Some are gone. And when I pause to think about this, I am sad.

The best pictures are the ones we hold in our head: they are not pixilated images, limited by the technical specifications of a digital camera. Indeed, we remember how we felt in a certain moment: what the air smelled like, what sounds were playing around us, whose arm brushed against our own. We remember what it was like to be in the image because our mind and our imagination have the power to put us there again. Our memories are perfect. Not perfect in the sense of having total recall, but rather in the sense that we perfect reality. We have the ability to rewrite history to how we wanted it to be; our memories are history, seen through rose-colored glasses. We make harsh points a duller and happy moments, brighter.

But memories can only be perfect for so long. When we we see old playgrounds, old backyards, and old classrooms, we are confronted by the harsh reality that the images we hold in our minds no longer exist. Colors have changed, the breeze carries a different scent, and the people that shared those places with us are no longer there. We are alone and incapable of ever reliving those moments. They are lost and gone forever.

In a few days, I’ll be attending my 5-year high school reunion. I want to go, but I don’t. I have my reasons: people I never got along with, people I don’t particularly care to see again, people I thought I’d left behind long ago. But I’m also afraid. There are people that I loved, and I don’t want to see them changed. I don’t want to force my fiercely guarded and beloved memories to conflict with reality.

New shutters on a childhood home and remodeled elementary schools pale in comparison to when people we loved have changed. I lived in Philadelphia until I was 18 and I knew many of my friends for a good portion of those years. We went to learned to read and write together, we faced scary adolescence together, we took our first drink together… we are bonded forever by the things that we experienced together.

Childhood remembrances are so precious. I like to care for them and tend to them, enshrining them in my memory banks, safe and secure for all eternity. I remember these people for how they were, how I knew them and experienced our relationships. I remember their smiles, their laughs, their likes and dislikes. I remember when their loose teeth fell out, I remember the butterflies in our stomachs at the first school dance, I remember the sea of graduation caps that we threw into the air in June of 2001. When I review my memory archives, I feel warm inside.

When we parted ways after high school, I had the unique opportunity to burn into my brain the image of how they were throughout my childhood. Like a wax figurine, they are remembered as being happy and healthy and full of potential. The hopeful fog of graduation and the collective nostalgia we all felt for years past allowed me to create positive and happy images of them. Even the people I didn’t like, I remember fondly. This is the mind’s way of moving on; we are able to forgive old grievances and shed old grudges. This is good. This should not be messed with.

And so here I sit, half-excited and half-nervous. I know that when I see my old friends and classmates — individuals with whom I have not spoken in five years — some of my carefully formed and even more carefully protected memories will be chiseled away and destroyed. And I’m not ready. This is just another painful step in the grand process of growing up, and I don’t wanna!

What I want is to keep these memories. I want to love them and protect them forever. I want to open up my high school yearbook and peruse smiling faces, read goodbye messages and remember these people as exactly that. It may be childish, but I don’t care. Some things are precious to me, and my memories are one of them. I don’t want to admit that my friends have grown up. Because this “real world” we’ve got… it’s hard. And I don’t want to see sadness in their eyes. I don’t want to know that the world has beaten them down. I don’t want to know that they’ve failed at their dreams.

But it is inevitable. People are constantly changing, sometimes for good and other times, for bad. I just hate the bad. Because each time, I feel a pang of defeat. One happy memory, dead and buried in a graveyard that will only continue to grow. And this makes me profoundly sad. My heart bleeds for the innocence and idealism of youth. I wish things could be different. I wish I were young again, playing on the playground with my friends. And yet those times are gone. Life will never, ever be the same. And boy oh boy, am I not ready.