Time Heals All Wounds...?

You know, I always figured this would get easier. You've been gone for 9 years, but I still think about you on a regular basis. I guess that's to be expected, though... It would be unfair to just completely forget you. And I don't think I'd ever want that. I just want this to get easier. I'm tired of wondering about the person you would be today, or thinking back to the days when we played hide-and-go-seek tag in your yard. The days I would stay the night at your house and your mom would record Pokemon for us to watch when we woke up.

I feel so bad for your family too, but what do I say? Sure, it's been 9 years since we all lost you, but is this an approachable subject now? I just don't know who else to talk to about you. I don't have the same friends we used to. Jonny is not the person I used to know... BJ is just as scandalous and stupid as he ever was. Jacob stopped being friends with me when I came out to him... That's another thing I always wondered about. Would we still have been friends if you had been alive when I came out? I'd like to think so. Sometimes I wonder if you maybe had the same secrets I did- I always remember you telling us you had a crush on someone, but you would never tell us who it was... was it a guy?

I miss you, Pat. I wish you were still around. I miss the way you used to say my name, or the way we would fight about something really stupid and you would always apologize first because I was/am far too stubborn to do it. I miss your laugh, and your smile. I miss how you always stuck up for me, even though I was the weird kid in McGrath. How you always made sure I was included in things, even things you knew I wouldn't like but would go do anyway because it was better than being alone. I wish I didn't have to do this without you. I wish I knew what would have happened to us if you hadn't died. I wish you were still alive, and still my best friend. I wish I could hear your voice again.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

I watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother a couple weeks ago that really got me thinking. In the episode, Lily invites all of her friends to see a play she was in. They all go, of course, even if they do have to convince Barney to go. When the play was over everyone tells Lily how great it was, except Barney, who says straight-up, "That was awful!" (It was.) This sparks a debate between them on if friends should always be honest with one-another and sit through things they know they won't enjoy for their friend's sake, or if they should always support their friends endeavors, despite your own personal thoughts on the matter.

In order to prove his point, Barney writes a one-man show specifically tailored to be awful and make Lily hate it. Halfway through his show, Lily gives up and tells Barney he was right and that it was terrible. Proud of his endeavor, Barney is also a little bit disappointed that, with Lily's admission, he doesn't get to finish his show. Seeing his despondence over it, Lily tells Barney he can finish his show; she sits back down and continues to watch a show that was tailor-made for her to hate it. Simply because she knows it matters to Barney and he is her friend. This got me thinking about myself and my own friends.

There are a lot of situations in which I am the "Barney" to my friends. When Hannah was in the Vagina Monologues, a show she was really proud of, I told her I wasn't going to see it because the content didn't appeal to me. As her friend, though, wasn't it my duty to go to the show and support her anyway? Earlier in the week I received a message from my mom telling me she would be home soon. As she had been gone for months, and I am a terrible housekeeper and had been throwing parties almost every weekend, the house was a wreck. Many of my friends had expressed an interest in helping me clean, since they had been present at a lot of the parties that caused the mess. The first person to show up was Hannah, though I sent her off early because a friend of hers needed someone to talk to.

I have friends who are willing to come to my house and help me clean it, while I wasn't even willing to spend a few uncomfortable hours listening to a performance by one of my friends. This whole chain of events got me thinking about friendships in general, the concept of friends and the reason we keep the friends we keep. I examined some of my own relationships, like my relationship with Meghan. Despite the fact that I have housed her entirely rent free and that, due to her lack of job and finances, I supported the both of us with my student loan, she chose to get drunk at a party in town instead of coming to the house to clean with the rest of our friends. Still, despite the fact that I was angry at her for a couple days, I find myself enjoying her company from time-to-time.

I don't hate Meghan. I love her. I just can't depend on her, and I know she's lied and attempted to manipulate me, and so I also can't trust her. I still consider her a friend, though, and it's this idea that confounds me; if I think this way about Meghan, what must others think of me? Perhaps I'm more thoughtless than I should be. Having so many people come to my house and clean, seeing all of my friends get this house cleaner than it's been since my mom left, I realized how much I depend on my friends. It made me realize just how much the relationships I have mean to me and how much I must mean to them in order for them to go out of their way to help me.

I don't want my friends to look at me the way I now look at Meghan. I don't want to be someone they care for, yet know they can't depend on. I want to hold on to this feeling I have, this feeling of intimacy and compassion and trust and love that I have for them, and I want them to feel it, also. I want to know they feel about me the way I feel about them, even if it is selfish to want all of that.

I Dreamed a Dream...

One day, I'm going to fall in love. Probably with someone who's just as creative and tragically misguided as I am. Because I have so many music majors in my life, I imagine he will also be a musician. We'll live together in a cozy (translation: "small") studio apartment, working terrible minimum wage jobs and working on our creative mediums in our spare time. I'll write short stories and poems, and he'll write lyrics and melodies. We'll compliment each other on our work, and criticize each other when our work stinks, but instead of leading to an argument it'll lead to discussion on why we think it's good or bad.

Eventually, he'll develop a small fan base and I'll publish a book. Neither of us will blow up, but we'll both receive a boost in ego and bank accounts. We'll find ways to make money from our passions. I'll freelance articles from time to time while working on my next book, while he works the random, odd paying gigs. We'll finally have more money, but we'll save it so we can travel or spend it on something fantastic. One day, we might use it to move- maybe to New York or San Francisco or some place more exotic. We'll probably move into something just as cheap and small as our first apartment together, because we're comfortable enough with small spaces.

Eventually, one of us will propose. Whoever does it, and however it's done, it will only be in extremes. Either it will be a huge, lavish, romantic proposal, or it will be a casual, "Hey, wanna get married?" We'll become engaged, but being as tragically flake-y as creative people often are, our actual wedding day will not be for some time, as we'll both procrastinate on planning the wedding as long as possible. I'll want an outdoor wedding, preferably under the stars. He'll want a daytime wedding, or perhaps even a traditional wedding in a church. We'll argue about it for a couple hours until one of us finally gives in and the negotiations begin. Eventually we agree that we can have a traditional wedding in a church, so long as the reception takes place outdoors under the stars, so we can have our first dance under the stars. But we still have our wedding song to argue about. It'll be a long day for both of us.

Next comes the house. We'll both have steady jobs in some sort of capacity, and we'll have found ourselves being practically middle-class. We'll save up some money and take out a loan, and buy a house. Our finances will drive us both crazy and stress us out, and we'll yell and shout at each other in our frustrations, but we'll always apologize when we realize we were wrong to act that way. We'll get a cat, or a dog, if we haven't already and discuss having kids. The discussion will make me realize how old I am, and terrify me, but I'll still be open to the idea. I'll stress my belief in adoption, while he tries to explain to me why it's important for our child to share our genetics. In the end, I won't budge on my point, so we agree on adoption.

If our child is a boy, his name will be Bennet "Benny" Robert. If she's a girl her name will be Charlotte "Char" Amelia. These are also things I probably wouldn't budge on, but we'll see how that goes when he presents his baby-name ideas. The adoption will take forever, as most adoptions do, but in the end we will have a child of our own. We will let our child know the truth about his/her adoption, but always let him/her know we love him/her. We'll both be rather lenient as parents, and give our child freedom to make a lot of his/her own choices, but in the end I will be the harder of the two of us- though, not by much. We'll argue very lightly in front of our kid, but mostly in jest; we'll both have agreed that serious arguments are to be had in private, and even then we should make a conscious effort not to raise our voices. Parenthood will have changed us in ways I can't even conceive of right now.

Our child will continue to grow up, and will know his/her family exceedingly well- he/she will love his/her aunts and uncles on my side of the family. My husband might be an only child, or have a distant relationship with his relatives. Our child will be a complete hellion in their adolescent. After all, it's only fair after the teenagers we were. Still, we'll be accepting of our child and try to lead him/her down a safe and healthy path. We'll both bawl like babies during our child's graduation, and will try to stress the importance of college. We'll both hope our kid goes into a creative field, preferably our own, but try to be accepting of whatever he/she chooses.

We'll grow old together and watch our kid have kids of his/her own. We'll cry together as we lose loved ones and laugh together as we recall all the good times and the past. I'll be more neurotic as an old person because I think I can get away with it. One day, one of us will pass away. Whomever is surviving will mourn with the rest of the family, and for the first time in decades will live a life without another half. It will be terrifying and lonely, but eventually I/he will find peace, and eventually pass away also. If there's an afterlife, we'll be together again. If not, we'll be buried together, or perhaps cremated with our ashes spread to a place that matters to both of us.

I dream of romance. All of it. Not just the fun, easy parts, but the difficult parts that test how much love really exists in a relationship. I'm a freak, yeah, but someday, somebody is going to love me for that.

People Change

It's an undeniable fact of life. People change constantly, and never has this been more apparent to me than it was today. I had tea with Lavina and Liam at Sipping Streams, and while I had a good time, the conversation that used to flow so naturally between us seemed a lot more forced than it once did. Often times we would substitute conversation with interaction with Liam, Lavina often adjusting his toy or myself delighting in making him smile (which isn't all that difficult, but it's fun watching his little face light up). I realize now that our friendship had been bound in similar thoughts and experiences before. Parties we had both attended, people we both knew. Sure, there was some of that, but our commentary wasn't what it used to be.

And it makes perfect sense. For the past year, Lavina has been preparing to become a mother. I spent the last year looking for the person I wanted to be. She was forced to deal with parenthood, while I was still trying to figure out how to be an adult. After I lost my apartment, I distanced myself from the wonderful group of friends I had before and during my life there. I think, subconsciously, I had associated them with my failure, and tried to stave off further failure by keeping distance from them. I began hanging out with a new crowd- Meghan and Luke and Amelia and so on- yet my failures still persisted. Because it was never my friends that caused my failure, it was myself. My lack of ambition, as well as my inhibition and general naivete, made me miss out on some great opportunities and experiences, and a large chunk of my friends life.

Now, I'm finding it harder and harder to reconnect with them, though I hope they realize I am trying. But being almost completely absent through Lavina's pregnancy, as well as most of new-born Liam, is definitely a blow for our relationship. David is practically non-existent in my life, also dealing with parenthood and his future plans. Hannah, perhaps, has changed the most though. While she's always been dramatic and avoided sharing her feelings of pain, it's obvious whatever demons that have been plaguing her are worse than ever. Her chipper, happy personality seems more like an act now than the girl I once knew. Emily is the most recognizable, and perhaps still the most present, in my life- and for once in a very long time, she seems to be doing generally all-right. She seems the happiest I've seen her since high school, if not a bit stressed out.

To my friends, to The Court, I want to apologize. I've always had a multitude of insecurities that caused me to project an image that was never me, or distance myself from the people who showed me those insecurities. I can't do that anymore. I'm growing up, and more than that, I don't want to lose you all. I hope my efforts to reconnect have been noticed, and I hope you understand that my distancing myself was never about you- it was about me dealing with my own short-comings. Which, to an extent, I have, though there are still some things I'm working on. None of you seem to hold any of this against me, and perhaps you don't, but it's something I believe I will continue to regret. Especially being absent for Lavina's pregnancy, when I'm sure she could have used as many friends as possible.

This is me. This is me attempting to grow up and become a better person. A person who would like to continue being in each and every one of your lives, and hopefully make them the better for it. I know I've never been the most reliable person, but that's one of those things I'd like to change. I want you to know that I am someone you can start to rely on, though I know it's not as simple as that. If nothing else, I am more than willing to earn that trust. Because I know we'll grow apart- with everything happening in each of our lives, it's bound to happen- but before that happens I'd like to make amends. I know we'll never forget each other, we've got too many memorable experiences to ever do that, but when you do remember me, I'd like you to think of the man I'm growing into and not the boy who ran away when things got tough.

I'm ready for change. I'm ready for all of us to change. And I want to be there to see all of us grow into better people.

Single on Valentine's Day

For some people they can't imagine such a thing. Some people actually go out of their way to have a special someone to share Valentine's Day with. Today will be my 21st Valentine's Day single. I'm not going to say it's a bit of a let-down, because it is, but you know what? I survived. And not only did I survive, but I actually had a really good day. I got to hang out with some friends I don't get to see often enough. I talked to one of my friends about her Valentine's Day plans with her boyfriend. I was a bit envious, yes, but I was also just really happy for her. Happy that she was able to find someone, happy that she's very much in love with someone, and happy that she was happy.

People forget what Valentine's Day is really about. It's not about couple's celebrating being a couple. It's about celebrating love. Of course two people in love are going to have an extra good Valentine's, but that doesn't mean those of us who are single are automatically down-in-the-dumps. I'm happy for all of my friends who currently have a significant other. I'm happy that they have a day to put aside the rest of the world, maybe even for just an evening, and lavish one another in romantic gestures. It would be hard to make every day as significant as Valentine's Day, I imagine, because everyone has so much going on in their life as it is. People say you should treat the people in your life as well as you do during the holidays everyday, and you should always treat the people in your life with kindness and respect, but it's hard to divide the kind attention for family and friends you have during the holidays throughout the year.

We live in a society were things are constantly getting more and more hectic. This becomes especially apparent as you grow up. School, jobs, children. It's hard to show all the attention and affection you have for someone all the time through-out an entire year as things pile up on an individuals life. And, honestly, showing this kind of affection year-round would probably get grating. I'm a creature of change- I, for one, need ups and downs in my relationships. It makes the ups all the more enjoyable, especially after a really low period. And I'm not even talking romantically, I'm talking about the friendships in my life. I, honestly, don't have any clue what kind of significant other I would make (as my first blog post makes known). As a hopeless romantic, though, I know I'll figure it out one day.

Which is another reason I can enjoy Valentine's Day. Because I get to see all my friends have wonderful Valentine's Days with their significant others, and I know that I have something to look forward to one day. I have my first Valentine's Day with somebody special to look forward to. And that feeling, the fact that I know I have that to look forward to, is wonderful.

Okay

For the first time since I lost my apartment, I feel okay. It's been a while since I've been able to just sit down and feel... content. For once in my life I'm on top of my homework, so I'm not stressing about school. I'm not spending my money all willy-nilly, so I'm not stressed about money. When I lay my head down to sleep there are no nagging, persisting thoughts to pester me. Sure, there are things I'd like to add to my life right now (a boyfriend would be nice), but they're not really things I need. They don't nag my mind when it's looking for a few moments of peace.

It's a wonderful feeling, "okay." Sure, we should all shoot higher, but simply being okay is a wonderful thing to be if those other, better feelings are just slightly out of reach at the moment. And when you feel something other than "okay" you tend to get distracted. If you're happy, sad, angry, or whatever, you've probably got things on your mind that keep you from thinking about the necessities. You think about the necessities when you're okay. You have an easier time remembering and knowing what it is you want, because there's nothing else there to cloud your judgement.

Or perhaps this is just maturity, and I've just never recognized it before. Maybe I didn't think of the practical before now. For the first time in my life my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I asked for something pragmatic. Maybe "okay" is simply growing up and finding out where you want to be in this world and figuring how you get there- even if it is one step at a time. Maybe okay is having numerous little things go your way once in a while. Maybe okay is a collection of all of these things, and just a feeling of contentment that can be found only when you've reached a certain psychological cue. I can't say for certain. The only thing I am sure of, is that I'm okay.

And I'm really glad to be okay.

Imagination

The greatest gift the human race has is the imagination. Without it we would never have advanced as far as we have. Without the ability to imagine a better future we never would have been motivated enough to create modern marvels, but we would simply live on instinct like the rest of the animal kingdom. So I suppose you could say it's our ability to imagine that makes us human. Growing up, I was always encouraged to stretch and exercise my imagination by my grandma. She also encouraged me to read and write, and was a huge influence on my continued interest in English to this day. My Grandma understood the importance of creativity, and I think she always knew I was suited for a more artistic job than a more logic oriented one. It makes sense that I'm a daydreamer today. I spend countless hours imagining fictional scenarios, some I think I will use as a starting point for actual story-lines I want to write, but most of the time it's just for me to escape into a better world than this one. Which isn't to say that I don't love the reality I live in, but I also can't deny that I'm a bit of an escapist.

I dream of supernatural things, science-fiction things, and even things set in reality. I dream of one day getting married and starting a family. I dream of having a career that I love and pays well. I dream of having a career I love that doesn't pay well. I dream of living in New York, or London, or traveling. I dream of becoming a companion (and love interest) of the Doctor. I dream of finding out I'm a mutant and joining the X-Men, or developing mystical powers and becoming a member of the Avengers. I dream of being famous and talking on the Late Late show with Craig Ferguson. I dream of getting a kitten. I dream of being a total Batman-style vigilante, or Catwoman-style super thief. I dream of mental instability. I dream of fairy tails. I dream of heroes, and villains, and sometimes heroes who are villains and villains who are heroes. I dream of good and evil and all that gray area in-between.

And that's just the tip of the iceburg. I daydream constantly. When I'm watching movies or TV shows I daydream myself superimposed in the show, a character added by me. I give myself different backstories, depending on the story, and even abilities. My imagination is constantly active, it's constantly feeding me and by living my life and absorbing any and all information that catches my interest I'm also feeding my imagination. Because even a powerful imagination is limited by what you know. Someone who's never seen the color red can't imagine the color red, and in that same vein someone who's never opened their mind and experienced what life has to offer is limited in their imagination. You need to be open to new experiences to fully develop as a person, and you need the imagination to understand your potential.

After all, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.