Broken Biscuit

I love abandoned buildings.

I can't even use past tense and say that somehow my preoccupation with the standing structures has died down. Because it hasn't.

I don't know what it is. When I was younger the abandoned buildings in lots, and neighborhoods, were turned into our own kind of horror story. We imagined the horrible thing must have taken place in the house that it was now covered up with boarded windows and broken glass.

We dared each other to venture into those place, scaring each other more than we needed too.

As I grew older though, my thoughts that abandoned houses were where bad things dwelled has turned into an appreciation for beauty that has simply faded. I began to look at the ruins not as a place in which destruction was winning it's war, but a place in which beauty has once reigned, where life had been led, and simply became unattended.

If I could I would drive around America documenting these abandoned places. A car, camera, film, and maybe a friend or two, and we would capture these places. Our only objective is that we came back from the adventure with stories learned and more to tell. It would be our own photo album of the lonely buildings that still stand.

With finding out my dorm is being torn down in the summer, I have been pretty...Confused by the whole thing, or really by my feelings toward the tearing down. I walk the halls now, knowing that this is the last time anyone will ever do so. That a building is not only being torn down, but along with it goes it's history that holds longer then my near 20 years.

I guess why I am so bothered with this whole thing is because it brings up deep rooted fear of my abandonment issues. Not that I've ever been abandoned, I just fear it. Like one day everyone is going to pick up and realize that there is someone better than I, and then I will be left all alone. Trust me I know it's illogical,even as I write it I'm like "that doesn't make sense" but sometimes you just cant shake those things.

When I think of abandonment I see it as a sign that someone has given up on you. Just like those abandoned buildings that are just lying there for someone to take a chance on it. I'd hate think that someone had lost all faith in me, that they just let me wilt and crumble, instead of looking at the foundation and seeing how much potential I had, if only they looked hard enough.

I guess I feel so bad about the building being torn down, because sometimes I feel like that. I mean I feel like those building who have just been unattended for a while. The ones the children gawk at, and make absurd stories about, forgetting the history that lies behind the shattered glass.

I don't like things being torn down, discarded, thrown away, it only says to me that you have no hope that it can ever be made better. And maybe it's because I like trying to see the beauty in everything, because of my want for people to see the beauty in me that I walk the halls a little sadder now. That I am now running my hands along all the little cracks in the walls, that I can't help but want to learn about all the little pieces, to give me a greater picture of this place that is condemned to be torn down.

I mean sure there are roaches, sure it is possibly the ugliest building on campus, and the heat is on extremely too high at night, but it's foundation is strong. I see something beautiful in that it has stood this long, and that so many people stories have lived in this building.

I hate for someone to lose all hope in me, I like to think that my was foundation was strong, or at least getting stronger. And I realize how parallel me and this building are. Why I am having difficulties coping with it's date with a bulldozer.

Maybe it's why I like abandoned buildings so much, because if someone just gave it chance,instead of giving up on it they would be surprised by the beauty it possesses underneath. If they only looked hard enough. If only they had given it a chance.