Karina from the Block

Once in a while something will trigger not so much a memory as a feeling of the girl I used to be. It is in those moments that I look at my present life and wonder what the people who knew me then would think if they could see me now.

In all honesty, my present path is not necessarily unexpected. I’ve always been driven, hard working, determined to succeed. I’ve always been independent, serious, and strong. I’ve always been a person of faith, with a giving loving heart.

So, perhaps, the woman I am is in fact a natural byproduct of the girl I used to be. Deep down, where it matters most, I am who I’ve always been.

It is the on the surface, the outside me, that has changed so much. It was a gradual change, so subtle in fact, that I barely even noticed it as it happened.

But now and again, something will remind me of that other me, and a smile will form at the corner of my lips. Even more than wondering what my friends then would think of me now…I smile at the thought of what those who know me now, would think of the girl I used to be.

The few friends I have now who knew me then will know exactly what I speak of.

Let me explain in the quickest way I know how. Listening to the radio the other day, this song came on, I think it’s called “Sexy Chick” by David Guetta and the lyrics say something along the lines of “I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl, without being disrespectful”.

As I listen to that song, a song that is not exactly a musical masterpiece, a song that is about a hot girl in a club and all the ways her body moves that make this guy want to get to know her better, I laugh. Because this song? Has nothing at all to do with the woman I am today. And yet, something about that song pulls me in each and every time I hear it. There is a ring of nostalgia attached to this song, because once upon a time, I was that girl.

Once upon a time, when my friends and I spent every weekend at dance clubs, shaking our booties, flirting with men very much like the guy singing this song…that was the world I lived in.

Hell, I dated, fell in love, and had my heart broken by that guy. More than once. I was not your typical girl from the suburbs, crossing that line into the other side of the tracks for an adrenaline rush. I fit in that world, it was where I belonged more than anywhere else at that particular time in my life.

And yet, today, that world seems so distant to me. So foreign. In no way can I merge that version of me with this version of me and make sense of it all.

But, the truth is, the girl I used to be still lives inside me. Underneath the more suburban me is that club girl, and she still thoroughly enjoys reminders of her hip-hop life.