Happy DTR Day!

 

 

Today isn’t the day of love or that of hearts, what today is exciting for is all the single gals. Why is that, do you think? Well if you’re in a long term great relationship you know you’re getting flowers, dinner, and sex. But a single girl? What do we have to look forward to? We actually don’t know. Oh mysterious holiday…

Today is the day where every guy that doesn’t want to have “the talk” is forced to. Define the Relationship Day is what I call it. Yup. Some old dead guy just forced every guy to have the dreaded talk, but wait, not with words WITH ACTIONS. You’re going to find out just what you mean to him today. 

Today is, and will continue to be my favorite holiday for so many reasons.  I hope you all get everything you’re wanting and hoping for today. If he doesn’t define it with actions, it’s undefinable and will likely never be.  Don’t forget that my darlings. 

When birthdays are sad.

Today would have been her 31st birthday.  I try to imagine what her life would be like if the cancer had never happened.  She was happier than most, and Her happiness inspired you to be the happiest you could possibly be.  

If she were here we would all celebrate today and gather around to hear all of her jokes and stories.  She was a performer that way, and had an infectious laugh too.  

Sometimes I still forget that she's really gone and I still reach for the phone when I need her.  

I know she's gone in body, but we've all been blessed by her presence this last year and a half.  She gives just enough for us to remain happy about her short visit.

Her mom and I share all of the moments we get to dream about her.  She tells me we don't have much time and we have to make every moment count together. Sometimes we laugh like nothing ever happened and other times I know we're on borrowed time and we just cry.  Each moment and memory is a blessing, and I am forever changed by elementary school Andrea, church Andrea,  actress Andrea, sister at heart Andrea, high school Andrea, travel buddy Andrea, and best friend Andrea.  

So here I am all alone on your 31st, and I'm thinking about how this is the best 21 year relationship anyone could ask for.

"Time is very slow for those who wait.

Very fast for those who are scared.

Very long for those who lament.

Very short for those who celebrate.

But for those who love, time is eternal."

-William Shakespeare

They call her...

Space away;

space between.

Staring at you through the glass

just one transparent piece of material between us.

I know I won’t look away if you don’t,

I won’t walk away if you won’t.

And so finally you crack a smile and slip the paper through the crack of the door;

Still too scared to face me.

I can never decide if that means I’ve won or If I’m still chasing this ghost,

our ghost.

They call her Nostalgia.

Her Last Good Day

You never know it's your last good day, you wouldn't really know if it was your last bad day either, I suppose.  I always wonder what she thought on her last good day.   Did she know?  Did we all know?  I don't think so.  I know that was one of my favorite days in the world.  I know we sat in the chairs we grew up in.  

Good days in general can be hard to come by, and as imposibly hard as this whole situation has been for me, I feel like I was given something that so few of us get to experience.  

I can relive each moment of that day and just how long it was, how she looked, and even  how she slept.  And oddly enough, that was one of the days where she was at her strongest.  

It was always easier to hang out with her when it was just our normal thing.  Every Saturday I was there she would always turn to me, apologetically, as night came and told me I could go; I was off the hook.  I really did want to be there. We so rarely find people that are innately "our people."  She was and currently still is one of mine.  I firmly believe our bond was something not everyone gets to experience in this lifetime. 

We got to have a normal day.  We were actually really boring best friends.  We would always ask each other what to eat, and never ever decide.  So we did that this night as well.  I picked a movie, finally.  We had this weird thing for classics and so we watched a tragic love movie.  

We moved our recliners right next to each other so Andrea would be comfortable.  And so we sat there for most of the day just laughing, eating, and watching movies.  She didn't struggle for breath this day.  And after a full day without complication she was exhausted.  

It was amazing to be there on that day, and around 10pm she fell asleep. I glanced at the screen and the movie was ending.  On the screen were these words:

"And the light by which she had been reading the book of life, blazed up suddenly, illuminating those pages that had been dark, then flickered, grew dim, and went out forever"

Life can be very strange withi the way things play out.  I am lucky I got to say goodbye, lucky I got to hang out with her on borrowed time, and lucky to spend time with her on her last good day.

The next day Andrea could barely stay awake or eat, and in the early evening she was rushed to the hospital.  I couldn't have been more shocked, considering how upbeat and happy she was the day before. 

 I love my Andrea and if she was in any pain on that day I thank her for giving me those last memories.  That day will always be on the top of my mind, just like she will always be on the top of my heart.

No New Friends.

I keep scrolling through my phone, looking for someone but there isn't anyone. 

I'm constantly disappointed constantly looking and searching for something worthwhile here. It used to discourage me knowing that really I have no friends. I let myself down spiral for months just seeing how low I could fall without any kind of support system. I let myself drown.

Soon I surrounded myself with people, just anyone really. I would go out and I would become this hot mess and feel like shit about it the next day, but still no one came to me. I was more alone than ever.

Then something happened. I told everyone no. My fake best friends, my going out friends, and every guy, potential or not. They all needed to go. 

Only one person in my whole life even noticed a shift, but unfortunately I had to let go of her too. I had to know that in the silence I was perfectly ok with just me. So I locked myself up every Friday night and read, I read a lot. I wrote, I watched TED videos, and I read some more. I went hiking alone, ill advised I suppose. But in the silence I felt the growing pains. I did this for months, I lost a ton of weight and I woke the fuck up.

I found myself desiring to be around people again, but I wasn't starving like before. I still wanted nothing to do with guys, but I wanted my friends back. I don't know why I wanted them back when no one even noticed I was gone, another life lesson. And so here I am all dressed up and no where to go because once again I have gotten ditched by my closest friend. I scroll my phone a little more to only realize there is no one and it's just me. I think I don't care though, but I used to. 

I'm all alone, no guy and probably not a friend in the world but I kind of don't care anymore. 

  

So thank you to my one friend, you know who you are.

10 Things That Make me Come Alive

1.  Death (Knowing and losing someone makes me more motivated than ever to reflect the goodness and example she set as well as living each moment that was stolen from her.  I only have now and I will make it count for the both of us.)

2.  Words (Those moments reading something, hearing something, or sharing something that makes you feel as if it was made for you.  It makes me realize that connectivity is the most important quality in the world.  Words connect our hearts, create bridges to other lands, and float us away into another world.)

3.  Evolution/Change (Change doesn’t exist, but you know what does?  Small improvements, evolution.  You can become who you want to be, but you can never change from who you were.  That will always be a part of you, so find your darkness and find a way for it to become apart of your future.)

4.  Love (The most powerful force in the world?  It could be and love is different for everyone and there are countless different types of love just like the idea of religion and denominations.  And you can never feel the same love twice; nothing can ever get old.  I love that idea).

5.  People  (People are amazing and unique and can push you closer to who you are or closer to who you should be, and even when they take you farther from where you think you should be you’ll come back, have faith in yourself. Because after all you’re human too.)

6.   Complacency (This is just for myself, but when I see a relationship that is stagnant or a person that is stagnant in their growth it pushes me to never want to be like that.  Growth is and has become everything to me. 

This quote: “Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen at once.” )

7.  Goals (If you don’t have goals, make some!  Small goals, big goals, lofty goals.  I have hourly, daily, short-term, and long-term goals.  And yes I love lists.)

8.  New Places (I love to travel and see the differences in the world of how just the smallest things can all be done in unique and different ways or have been done in the past.  We can learn from our past and we can learn from our differences.)

9.  FOOD (This is way too far down the list, but I love cooking and love trying new foods and experiencing them with other.  Food can bring together even the most scorned enemies.  As long as it’s not poisoned! Eep!)

10.  Making others happy  (This should be number one for me, but this isn’t in any order.  Making other people happy is the single thing that makes me happiest in the world.  And most of the time I will do whatever it takes to make those people happy.)

And never knew.

Fear is a uniquely amazing thing.  Some of us are motivated by fear while others are completely immobilized by it.  I’ve always been the type to be motivated by it, but lately I’ve noticed a more “frozen” version of myself. Is fear immobilizing me?  I’m always curious about what motivates people to do certain things, and over the past few weeks I have thought about it more and more. 

What fueled my curiosity was a limbo-ed friendship; something not quite just friendship, but also nowhere near a relationship. In his grandiose gestures & ideals of a potential “us” I would just sit silently contemplating if connection could possibly come that easily.  And in my naïve attempt to protect him, I thought it best not to encourage him. I stayed silent; all the while knowing I may lose him while trying to figure it all out.  But you have to be fair and you have to be honest, and I made that decision this year for a multitude of reasons. Wasn’t that the brave thing to do?  Honesty takes courage while hiding oneself is a product of fear in its purest form.  

This is not to say that I was perfect by any means; silence can hurt, and sometimes the combination of silence and sarcasm just rubs people the wrong way.  That is my best guess for what came next. To my shock and confusion, one day he decided to fall off the face of planet Anj. You realize that as quickly as someone is to tell you how you are so special, you are also extremely disposable.  Something to be remembered is that the potential good still has to outweigh the current bad.  There wasn’t a build up of trust, even in our pseudo-friendship, and so I was disposable. And I was disposed of. 

When this happened I replayed several situations over in my head, just trying to piece it all together and hoping it would lead me to discover what his breaking point was.  And maybe I’m looking at this too simplistically.   My challenge has always been to exist in the gray, when I am definitely an extreme black & white type of person.  The friendship may not have been ideal, especially for him, but I figured it was better than nothing. 

I over-analyzed this idea to death and I eventually came to this: Is it possible for another person to only care about you in one capacity? This was especially difficult for me. I realized that he didn’t want my friendship; he just wanted me to dissipate.  Maybe some people don’t ever intend to be your friend. I don’t know if that means they care more or care less. When I finally realized this, and trust me it took countless amounts of unreturned messages for me to realize this; I finally left him alone.

Even after we stopped talking I still wondered why people claim the gift of great connection, yet are quick to give up on it. Is it fear or lackluster?  I’ve never found connection particularly difficult, but I realize that connection is more difficult for some than others.  I may have never understood his connection to me, and I’m guessing that is why it was so easily removed.

Sometimes our fear of connection can have the same outcome as just a lukewarm connection. You can be too scared to face the vulnerability and just put on your running shoes on and jet.  But why?  I associate different feelings with different actions, so it confuses me that people run from too much closeness as well as too little.   Me? I’ve never been the running type.  So when my “friend” finally chose to talk to me it had been months of silence.  He broke the silence finally and guess his preferred form of contact? An emoji! Yup modern guys are the most elusive yet. 

His “yelling” texts smelled like straight up Jack to me, and when he finally called me a few minutes later this was confirmed.  After pouring out his “feelings” and stomping on any character this girl might still have had, to my second shock he reverted back.  I guess I’ll put him in the big red question box because I still have no idea what happened. 

As one of my fave’s said:

           This is the most fun part. I believe it’s really hard to meet someone you have that much of a deep connection with, so you should cherish it.  If the person doesn’t like them back, oof. I’m sorry. That’s a hard situation and it’s not always easy just to move on. When you meet someone you really like and connect with, I think that’s very special, and not to be taken for granted. They discuss this in Before Sunset, one of my favorite films, in a way that really struck a chord with me. Julie Delpy’s character says when she was younger, she thought she’d meet many people of the opposite sex that she would have a special, deep, personal connection with, but as she got older, she realized that’s not the case, and you realize how rare those kind of connections really are. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found I agree with this sentiment.

Fear sets into all of us, and I can’t pinpoint that for him it was indeed fear, but for me?  Yeah it’s a unique form of fear.  The mixture of fear, caution, confusion, and distance is way grayer than I’m comfortable with.  Maybe connection is more difficult than I previously thought; definitely something to work towards.