passing thought on christmas

I don’t know why I can’t be happy.

As everyone moves about the room, happiness flashes across their faces like so many pictures being taken to capture each passing moment.

But still, I know that every moment without you is a moment I would rather not have had at all.

I. You.

I am he that lives and breathes and feels.
I am he that thinks and processes the world around me.
I am he that loves.
I am he that bleeds.
I am he that dies.

And you.

You are she who lives in a world unto your own.
You are she who breathes in air untouched by others.
You are she who feels the love of those around you.
You love.
You bleed.
You die.

And us.

We are they who take steps forward on a planet full of creatures alive and breathing.
We are they who view the world as open to discovery.
We are they who live in love, and love in life.
We love. We bleed.
But we,
we never die.

A few quick words...

I'm sitting on the couch in my parents' hotel room at 2:00 in the morning; my commencement is behind me, and I have only my school convocation later today before I receive my diploma. I have been surrounded by old friends, family, and loved ones for days; toasts have been made in my honor all night. My mother bought be my first official "Northwestern | Alumni" shirt, my bags are packed in preparation for my move back to Los Angeles, and I have a fire burning deep within the pit of my stomach propelling me forward. And yet...

I'm sitting on the couch in my parent's hotel room at 2:00 in the morning unable to sleep. An hour ago I switched into my running shorts and left the room in search of a gym to blow off some steam. I worked out. I cooled off. I cleared my head, got ready for bed, and checked my email.

I regret everything, and yet I don't think I would change anything.

But I'm sitting on the couch in my parent's hotel room because it was never supposed to happen this way. I never thought that I would feel this alone while standing on the precipice of the rest of my life. I never intended to drive this path by myself.

We changed the ending, but we never figured out where that ending was supposed to go.

I hate the fact that I require a companion to function properly. I have never been able to set out on my own and accomplish anything worthwhile. And yet everyone I once knew to fill that void is gone. The friend who moved away during college. The friend who grew distant with time. The friends with whom I may never again share a fraternal or collegiate moment are moving up, or moving on; regardless the direction, it is a path I cannot follow.

I hate knowing that the right decision could be filled with as much pain as the wrong decision, and never knowing which decision was which.

And now...

I'm sitting on the couch in my parent's hotel room at 2:19 in the morning, and it's time to get some sleep.

Welding

I was talking to a friend earlier today who's in a very similar situation to myself. He's got an ex he's still not quite over, and a newer girl who he's involved with. He didn't understand why he still would think about his ex, even though he knew he never wanted to get back together with her. That's when I thought about the following idea:

When two people fall in love, it's like two pieces of metal getting molded together in perfect unison. Over the course of time, these two lovers melt into each other forging a bond that's stronger than either one individually. Even when the fire and the passion burns away, there is a strong foundation and an unbreakable mold left behind to fall back on. As the inevitable fallout ensures, the metal, this bond, slowly starts getting chipped away, piece by piece; and by the end, you're left with two pieces, their ends jagged and painful. What's worse is that the metal that melted together still contains pieces of the other person, and until all of those pieces have been removed, there will always be pain.

the hunt

it was simple and direct.
you had regret in your eyes
while you discounted the years
and preyed on my fears,
but you were cold and imprecise.
you didn't bother to check
for my pulse as I lay there
bloodied to a pulp.
a lioness pawing at her kill.
amused by this newfound power
you purr as my defenses fail.
you could have finished me,
only you hesitate,
watching as the life drains from my face
like water from a sponge:
unnoticeable at first
yet immeasurably changed.

If It Ain't Spring Broke, Don't Fix It

SO many many things going on lately.

Quick recap:

- Came home on March 14 to surprise Makenzie (she was shocked)
- Told my parents that I plan to move back home after graduation to pursue a career in Hollywood
- Realized within fifteen minutes of announcing my move back home that I hate living at home
- Caught up with some old friends
- Was caught off guard by something I thought had ended some time ago
- Dealt with some family d-ram-a

So yeah, along with the normal chismas and bullshit that goes along with any trip home, I'm finding myself creeping ever closer to that mystical and terrifying region of life known as "adulthood." Fuck that noise. The moment I can afford to move out, I'll do it. The moment I get my big break in Hollywood, I'm taking it. The moment I have to "grow up," I'm running hell-bent in the other direction. I will consider it a personal failure if I end up driving a Taurus and pulling a 9-5 by the time I'm 30. As a good friend says, "Live to rage, rage to live." There's no reason to do otherwise.

Some quick thoughts.

So... this week is I-Week at the house, which basically means very little sleep, lots of events, and the eventual initiation of our new guys. Yay fraternity. If you can't tell, I am BURNT out. I can see the light at the end of this collegiate tunnel, and I want nothing more than to push onward and outward. It isn't that I'm not enjoying myself this week, it's that I'm starting to lose interest in the frivolity of the fun and games I used to live for.

My time at Margie Korshak Inc. is almost over, my last day being Friday, March 13th. I'm basically trying to figure out I could live with doing Public Relations until i get my "big break" and i'm learning that, no, I would not be happy doing PR. PR is a woman's world in the sense that it requires an inordinate amount of multi-tasking and in my time with the company, I have met but ONE MAN working for PR. I know men exist in this field, and I'm sure they thrive... But let's be honest: I get enough estrogen with the women in my family. Still being truthful, my time at MKI has been a wonderful experience. If I can arrange it so I work for them one or two days a week next quarter, I will drop a class and add them instead, but financially, I am not sure if I am going to be able to afford not earning an income for yet ANOTHER three months.

Aside from that, not much going on this week. I'm meeting with a guy who runs the Media Lab for the Art Theory department with the hopes of getting a work-study job for the quarter that pays $9 an hour. It's not much, but it's better than most of the crappy jobs they offer around here. It'll help a little, and I can figure out a way to do that and work at MKI for another quarter (the perks are incredible) then I'll be set. Honestly, it's all about filling time until I graduate at this point. Come on, diploma..... :-)

Posting from behind enemy lines

I'm trying to post this from my iPod Touch and I'm having a hell of a time... Anyway, quick post is that Kristin's staying over tonight so we can have some hang out time. We rented movies, we're hanging out with friends... I guess it's kind of getting a sneak peek of what normal will eventually be like. I've become the cool guy in the movies whose best friend is a girl, and no one thinks anything about it, only I think about it a lot. I guess that's what we never learn about that guy in the movies; what's their history? Why are they "just friends"? Have they ever had sex? Would having it now destroy the friendship? Are they Jerry & Elaine or are they Harry & Sally? Anyway. Kristin's spending the night. She's sleeping in the next room on my couch. This is healthy, right? I swear I only write neurotic...

Like finding a box of photographs yellowed and tinted with age

Wow.  Besides being the worst blogger in the history of blogging, I am making a quick entry before going to sleep tonight.  

So much has happened since I last posted... So much of my life has been completely changed and turned on its head since, when is that?  September 14, 2008.  ((The word is "e-r-r-o" by the way.  Pronounced like "arrow" but with an "e")).  Kristin and I broke up, and this the first time I've been able to write about it since the day it ended. 

December 11, 2008 - 95 days since last post.

Almost one hundred days of sustained, prolonged, murder as our relationship broke into so many fragments that it was unrecognizable by the end.  Kristin began to shut down, to turn away from the relationship around the beginning of September, when she went back to school. She was happy, she was busy, she was fulfilled; but most of all, she was doing it alone.  Not to say that her only happiness should have involved me--far from it.  It was important, however, because this was the first real time that she allowed herself separation from the one constant she had had for nearly four years.

By the time October rolled around, we were in rehearsal to sing at my sister's wedding.  Maybe it was fitting that we sang Eagles, "Love Will Keep Us Alive," because it certainly couldn't have been further from the truth for the pair of us.  I will always be grateful for the opportunity we had to sing for my older sister's wedding, as the song could not have been a better fit for Marissa and Gino.  The stress of being among family, however, desperate to be the happy, collegiate couple in a sea of prying relatives was something neither of us were prepared for. The sensory overload of wedding gowns, tuxedos, babies, cakes, flowers, and doves, even, was enough to force us to look at our relationship from the outside looking in.

It wasn't a pretty picture.

Thanksgiving came and went, and I returned home for Winter Break a week before she.  Given the freedom of a week to clear my mind, I came to the conclusion that our relationship had become incompatible with life and would require immediate, invasive surgery with a very low probability of survival.  The problems that had plagued us over the years hadn't piled up, and there wasn't a new obstacle in our way that we couldn't face. But as a couple, we had ignored and marginalized the one glaring problem we knew we'd have to face from day one.  For her part, Kristin had a laundry list of issues with which she was unhappy, things that she had buried inside her all year and simply neglected to bring up.  This bitterness over my shortcomings was what made her shut down at the end of Summer, and I can hardly fault her for it.

A litany of mistakes and differences can be overcome, but a mountain of an issue--when ignored for as long as we did--simply could not be breached.  I don't want to get too detailed here, as ultimately what passed between Kristin and I is entirely our private business, but I will mention that sometimes, two people can be be so completely blinded by love, that they know not Love.  As Shakespeare wrote in The Merchant of Venice, "but love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit." 

It was as if Kristin and I were standing but a foot apart, staring into each others' eyes and unable to see, touch, or hear each other.  We were completely cut off from an escape, as I was convinced it was she who was not listening, that it was she who was refusing to hear my cries. Kristin, of course, was convinced that I was not shouting, that my cries were figments of imagination.  Or as Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, "For now we see through a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

Sunday, February 15, 2009 -- One day after Valentine's Day, one week before what would have been our 4th anniversary.

The pain does not subside.  The sickening rage that boils inside the pits of my stomach cripples me emotionally.  I am blind, still; unable to see, to make sense of the world around me without groping about to gain my footing, to set a bearing.  She has moved on in a sense, her grieving from the loss having begun nearly half a year ago.  I am reeling, lost inside my own head as I try to make sense and order out of that which has no logic.  I keep myself together in public, but can only last so long in social settings; it's as if I have late-onset-agoraphobia.  I retreat into solitude far more often than I have in the past, and anyone who knows my fear of being alone will tell you what a significant shift this is for me.  To go from fearing solitude to fearing company... if Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is worth her salt, then I am somewhere residing in the 4th stage of grief right now.  Lovely.  

Anyway, I need sleep, and then I'm off to my comedy-screenwriting class--a welcome escape into laughter that helps me start each week.

I promise a more uplifting and optimistic post in the near future, however these are emotions I've simply needed to purge.  Godbless.