Wednesday, April 25, 2012

This is a blog

Hello friends! No deep and meaningful blog for this week... So instead, please enjoy this picture of naked black man in a bathtub full of donuts.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Ultimatum

I've never been fond of goodbyes. Somehow, that feeling of bidding something farewell, if even only for a small allotment of time, has saddened me since my childhood. Along the winding roads of life, you find sanctuaries and friends, things that comfort you and quell the primitive emotions that dwell in all of our hearts. We wander an endless road, with danger lurking in every corner and the future never certain. It's a miracle to find something familiar along that route, and we clutch onto it for dear life because of our ever-present fear of the unknown. Each one of us is a baby on the inside, and these comfort items manifest themselves in many ways- teddy bears, alcohol, a sport, music, or even a person. Letting go is never easy, but it is indeed a common bump along this road of life. You find something that makes you happy, grab ahold of it, but eventually have to let it go. What's the point?

Last week, I went on a journey that would forever rewrite my life. By the luck of the stars and good grace of God, I wound up sailing the oceans for a week with the nicest group of people I had ever met. Among them was the most elegant and gorgeous girl I had ever bore witness to in this life. She was a fallen angel, everything about her was flawless. I was in love with this girl from the moment I first laid eyes upon her, and I went out of my way to try and make her feel like the princess she was. The night after we first met, I suffered a bout of the insomnia that ever chases my sweet slumber away, and ended up writing to her the most detailed and heartfelt love letter I had ever spewed out of my incomplete, human brain. There was no doubt that I loved her, but if I didn't confess to her how strongly I felt for her, she would be lost to the rolling tides and choppy waves of humanities ocean. I needed to act.

I ended up standing atop a small stage in front of a hundred or so odd people the following day. And in both the bravest and stupidest thing that I have ever done, I read every single word of that letter aloud in full view and judgment of the public. In that one moment, I forever changed the course of events in my life.

The damage was done. I fessed up to every last bit of love in my heart that I had for her. Everybody knew. The room was filled with shock as this girl turned bright red and covered her face with a pillow in embarrassment. I knew that in her head, she has already murdered me a dozen times. But there was no matter. I could breathe easily knowing that she now understood what I felt towards her, and there was hope in my heart.

Two days later, I said goodbye to her forever.

They say that if you truly love something, you should love it enough to let it go. I beg to differ. Life is brutal and harsh enough as it is, and it is a miracle to stumble upon something that you can treasure as much as I treasured this girl. In the twists and turns in the road of life, we stumble and trip and lose our valuables along the way. We weep, we shed tears, we mourn, but life goes on.

Why?

I had never loved anything so much. I needed her. In the few short days that I had known her, she had become the centerpiece of the sloppy fiasco of nonsense and emotion that I call my life. She had possessed my heart, and I was holding onto her for dear life. But I let her go. She and I said our goodbyes and parted ways, and this princess that I was so entirely and completely in love with would return to her home kingdom. She left, and I couldn't follow. We were on different paths in that lengthy stretch of road that we call life, and our that fork in the road spilt and carried her away.
Where do you go from here?

I guess this is the part of life where you just have to choke back the years and force out a goodbye. That week spent with her was worth nothing more than a daydream, it was there and in the time that it lasted it was beautiful and flawless, but it came to an end and I was left with nothing more than sweet memories of something that never could have been real. I woke up and collided head on with the solid walls of reality. Whatever fairy tale that existed ever so briefly now laid in pieces beneath me as I drew up my head and came to terms with the real world. The fantasy that her and I had written together was washed away by the waves of reality.

I am still praying that this is only the first page of our story. Something deep inside of me clings onto her fiercely, but all logic and reasoning contradict this urge that I have. The likelihood that her and I will ever again cross paths is near zero. Whatever existed between us is gone now and will never exist again. There were so many things that I held back from her during out short time together. But would revealing them really have made a difference? To her? To anyone? What does it matter? We are two people out of billions, and we will both be dead within a manner of years, lost to grimey textbooks and dusty records. People grow old, fall in love, retire, and work their own personal way down this winding road of life. No one would care what we had. We were insignificant. In the grand scheme of things, who would care? We were just two tiny specks of life surrounded by billions of other specks dotting this green rock we call home, surrounded by an endless expanse of cosmic frontier. Why would anyone remember us?

Will she even remember me?

Time keeps ticking forward, and we keep coasting along down life's grand interstate. She vanished amongst the dots of light on the horizon, and I am left alone with nothing more than fragments of memories to clutch onto. She is gone now, and short of a time machine, I have no way of reversing that. I can do nothing more than grit my teeth and have faith that maybe I left behind some reason to be missed, and maybe, somewhere out there in amongst the billions of people on our planet, she might feel the same. Maybe this isn't the end of the short chapter that we had begun writing together. The co author is still out there, and maybe her and I will one day meet again and continue writing the beautiful piece of literature that I call life. Somewhere, sometime, her and I will be reunited, and I'm holding out a lot of hope.

But until then, goodbye, Megan.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Megan


There are seven billion something people on planet Earth right now. Seven billion separate people tethered by an invisible force to a burning sphere hurtling at millions of
miles an hour through a vast and unthinkably large unknown.
We are a seven million strong people, each one of us bleeding air and breathing red. We were all born to a mother and a father, we all will live and stand firm on our common soil, and eventually, we all will die.

Out of those seven billion people, she was the most beautiful.

She was the prettiest girl I had ever laid my partial and judgmental human eyes upon. Seeing her was like being nailed in the chest by a sledgehammer. Throughout our entire written and spoken language, no word could ever do justice to the sheer, untainted beauty that she possessed. Her eyes were like round window into infinity, each retina a
portrait of star collisions and each pupil a magnificent supernova. She was so entirely and completely beautiful that every bit of my body went dumb while I was around her. My heart was like a runaway engine, the out of control powerhouse thundering and shaking my entire being. I was dumbfounded. Each word she spoke was like a separate symphony unique upon itself, serenading a brilliant and triumphant melody to my ever-eager ears. My insides melted when I laid eyes upon her. In the raw definition of beauty and wonder, she was the most pure example of every positive description a boy could muster up the courage to name a girl with.

I knew that there could never be anything between us. She was but one girl out of billions, living out her own life, our paths accidentally intersecting by the dice rolls of fate. Her and I were separated by a thousand miles of invisible boundary, a series of numbers and distances clumsily given to things that we cannot describe by haphazard scholars. She was a gorgeous an breathtaking princess from Atlanta, and I was just another goofy and awkward Seattle boy. I had no idea what to say to her, much less begin to touch upon the depth of the feelings that I held for her. And deep in my heart, I knew that these emotions would never manifest themselves in any form other than the wandering and hopeless dreams of a teenage boy.

It didn't have to be that way. Maybe I could muster up the courage to choke out a couple of decent words to her. Maybe if I was lucky, she would take pity on me and acknowledge my attempt at conversation, or at least be kind enough to grace me with a reply. And perhaps if I was extraordinarily lucky, this awkward exchange of shy "hello"'s an nervous smiles might flourish into a friendship. Perhaps her and I might grow close, and I could keep in touch with her by crating letters to my dreamy princess in a faraway land. And perhaps, if I was fortunate beyond words, her and I might one day stand hand-in-hand together at a church altar in front of our entire collective family as we are read words that would forever bind us together and unite us in the spellbinding love that I had only dreamt was real, and I would gaze into the breathtaking pyrotechnics display that she held in her eyes and she would blink back tears of joy as she realized that out of those seven billion people on planet Earth, she had finally found the one for her.

None of this is real.

Life can be a brutal and cold place, and the split second that you embrace something dear to you and realize that you do indeed want it in your life, that thing is ripped away from you and lost to to the endless expanse of untold miles and plethoras of people. That person that you had once felt such a deep and wholesome connection with can be torn away from you in an instant, and what was once a friend becomes just another face in the crowd. The odds are never in our favor. We live in a complex jigsaw puzzle of warped emotion and rigid rules imposed upon us by those who do not understand. Everything you want can be gained instantaneously, but everything you have can be ripped away as well.

In some deep psychological way, this rambling on of emotional words somehow quells the bitterness that ever eats at me knowing that I may never see her again. Time was running out, but how does one explain to an almost complete stranger that you are in love with them? Her and I were separated by this awkwardness between us, our interactions being small talk and shy laughter at best. She was captivating. I had known her for not even a week, but it felt like she was an old friend. Being around her entirely melted away all feelings of doubt that festered in my heart when she was away. But I had no words to describe to her what I felt, nor the courage to approach her and speak the truth. Nothing in the world meant more to me than being with her.

What really was keeping us apart was my own personal unwillingness and furthermore, altogether lack of bravery to fess up to her what I felt. I was unwilling to risk what delicate friendship that was balancing between us, but time was running out. If I did not act, she would be gone like that, and I would never see her again. My current lifestyle satisfies me fully, but could I really live on knowing that I had passed up possibly the greatest blessing to ever grace my life?

Bill Watterson once said "If you can get away from people, you are lucky. If you find someone that you can stand, you are very lucky. And if that person can also stand you, than you are lucky enough". There is no doubt in my heart that I would be content to spend the rest of my existence with this girl. If I ever was going to find someone that I could actually tolerate unconditionally, it would have to be her. You only do live once, and some chances are worth taking. This was one of them. I could not just stumble upon the girl of my dreams and just let her go. I had to act.

Seven billion people covering planet Earth. Each one of us with our own life, our own personality, and our own dreams. We are mixed together through mass media and public interaction, conversing with each other and moving on, but too often, the greatest of friends often stay strangers until too late. Our dreams are only made reality though action, and the time for action was now. Out of the seven billion people on our planet, she was the most profoundly beautiful and elegant girl I had ever had the privilege to come across. Looking at her fed my mind an image too beautiful to process, and my body went into a catastrophic self-destruct sequence as my brain went haywire with adoration for her. This girl knows who she is, and by confessing this in full view and judgement of the public eye, maybe I could inspire someone to act and make their dreams a reality as well, and in doing so, one out of those seven billion people on Earth is that much happier.