Ten Years Ago

It's been a decade since I had major knee reconstruction surgery. An entire decade. It's weird to think that I'm old enough to remember things in terms of decades or say "I remember when gas was 98 cents" but I can and I do. So while I sat on my couch last night watching the US Open and icing that said knee after a grueling spin class, I realized how much things have changed since ten years ago (obviously, I'm ten years older and not in high school, thank God) but I also realized how many simple things truly haven't...

• I still watch almost every broadcast match of the US Open
• I still confer with the same boy about the Open, the same boy who's now a grown man and dating my brother's [then] girlfriend, the same boy who at the time was my on-again-off-more than-not-again "boyfriend" for as much as that can truly mean when you are hardly a sophomore in high school
• My knee(s) still hurt; I still ice them; I still use frozen peas over real ice or an ice-pack
• I still miss my brother, who at the time of my surgery had just left for college halfway across the country in Colorado and now lives across the Atlantic Ocean in Italy
• My parents are still my #1 fans and supporters
• I'm still not exactly sure of where I'm going in life and how I'm going to get myself there (though I'm a helluva lot more sure than I was a decade ago)
• The end of summer/cooler evenings/darkness by 7:30 still makes me a tinge nervous and sad, even though I no longer have double sessions of tennis practice or the thought of school and homework to worry about, I just have the same ol' mediocre 9-5 existence to endure...the seasons may change but in my cube it's always florescent