Saying Goodbye

Saying goodbye to a friend is always so surreal. Whether they are gone for good or just moving away, it's a bizarre feeling. Standing next to a roundabout waving goodbye to a shuttle, wondering if you'll really keep in touch, if you'll ever actually see each other after these moments of growing distance. Someone that you have built a bond with, who you deeply care about, and despite the fact that you may not talk everyday, that person who is a fixture in your life. That fixture is suddenly gone, and it's hard to believe. Whether it's physically, emotionally, or six feet under.
Reading something somewhere, that says that someone you used to know, to see everyday is gone. Reading the obituary because it just doesn't make sense, reading it again and again, trying to make sense of it. How can someone so young die? How can someone who never held harsh intentions for a fly be taken away? My graduating class already dwindling, only months after we all walked in unison, threw hats in the air.
Someone I loved fully and honestly, without hesitation. Who helped me make it through so much. Whether I was smiling and laughing about lumberjacks and silly little things, or drawing silly pictures, or crying, or laying in bed all day reading Slaughterhouse 5 three times back to back. The person who called me crying, telling me nothing made sense and that the world would be better without them. Reasoning, pleading, trying to make him see what I saw. The betrayal, the heartbreak. Crying when nobody was awake to notice. Letters and letting go. Forgetting who we were then, and why we loved each other so intensely.
Standing next to a roundabout waving goodbye to a shuttle. Saying goodbye to a friend. Not one who has burnt out, or who has moved on, but one who is simply leaving. On to better things, in a place where they ought to be rather than here. Losing this person makes sense, despite the fact that it hurts. I don't know if we'll really keep in touch, but I respect him for doing what is going to make him happiest. Knowing he'll be happy makes it all a little less painful.

Concerning Rain on a Tin Roof.

Rain drops fell rhythmically on the gray tin roof, running down in spiralling and glistening trails to the ground below. Droplets hitting rich green leaves pooled in their veins, until they grew so heavy that they shed the pools in sudden and minute crystal inundations onto the leaves and mossy ground below. The surface of the lake rippled a million times as each tiny drop impacted. A band of bantering geese glided across the surface of the ripples, splitting them into tiered pyramids with the crisp whiteness of their bodies. Hinges creaked on the old red painted wooden door of the lake house as it stammered open, and two conspiratorial figures moved out into the tepid downpour.

Disparate Parts

So many disparate parts make up a person. The sum total of every quirk and imperfection is an individual. We start as clean slates, tabula rasas, and over time we are moulded and changed and we become unique. Sure, we start unique, our DNA is specific to us, our fingerprint is our own. But from the very second we leave our mother's womb, we are changed. As we grow into adulthood, we lose that genuinely childlike purity. We see things, we do things, we say things, we hear things, and we are forever changed. Jaded. Scars are collected, telling stories on our skin, and our minds collect scars too. Our experiences affect our perception of the world. They affect the way we think, our actions, our ideas.

Have you noticed that photographs of children truly reflect emotion, whereas photographs of adults often seem false? The emotions therein are faux emotions, modeled for the camera. Unless in a state where control is lost, adults are able to conceal their true emotions. It's almost like it's a game, these walls are built up, to protect people from harm, from expressing the things that they don't want the world to know. There is a filter.

Another aspect of adulthood that strikes me is that people often prioritise their lives, and generally they don't put the things that make them the happiest first. They put their career first. They put the aquisition of material things first. They put winning first. They put on these blinders that block out all the beautiful things. The simple things, like laying in the grass in the sun, or listening to the rain pitter pattering on a tin roof. They forget these things, tell themselves that those things are not important. Complication is important. Toil is important.

What about simplicity? What about love? What do I love? What am I passionate about? What weird wacky strange oddball thing am I absolutely enamoured with? The things that are suppressed for fear of judgement. Simplicity, simple things. Like when I was a kid and I would get entirely absorbed with certain historical periods, or with animals, or events, and I would tirelessly ponder and explore these ideas until every stone had been turned and turned again and picked up and broken in half and fused back together. Egypt, Rome, Dinosaurs, Cats, Titanic, Horses, Pompeii, Penguins, Snails, Trees, Clouds, Caves, Wind, Oceans, Secret Gardens. Obsession is a good word for the way I pursued things of that nature.

I grew more and more practical over the years, taking placement tests, career interest tests. Tests, tests, tests. I put my passions to the side in order to become practical. I'll be a Vetrinarian and an artist when I have time. I'll be a doctor and a writer when I have time. At a certain point my practical ideas peaked, and at that time I decided that I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be impractical because that was what was going to make me happy. I wanted to follow through with my harebrained, crazy, irresponsible, odd ideas and dreams. At which point I decided that Evergreen was my best option. Sure, I could get into Lewis and Clark, I could get into UW, I could get into Western, or Cal Arts. But I didn't want that. I wanted this. I made this happen, and I couldn't be more ecstatic.

Pork Chops

Well hello gray skies, you're not making my life gloomy! In fact, I am quite pleased with myself for many reasons. This is a landmark achievement among a series of landmark achievements. For posterity's sake, let me list my day's achievements thus far:

1) Drew most excellent picture of fat man.

2) Embarrassed myself publicly by volunteering to go in front of class, and was utterly un-phased.

3) Walked in the rain barefoot.

4) Found most excellent finds in the library.

5) Did something delightfully passive aggressive.

6) Put on some lip balm that is currently making my life.

Despite these ever so fantastic achievements, I must go run now. I am sure this will only further the greatness of this day. Maybe I'll even have ice cream for dinner. I love college.

The Wagon

I have fallen off of the proverbial wagon, and I wholly regret it. My mind has been whirring with ideas, and many of them have not been good. Oddly enough, it was my want to rely on others that got me into a grand old mess. I have to relearn self reliance, though I have found new and amazing friends. The good news about this ordeal is that I have learned to redefine my past relationships in my present reality. Past loves that were doomed from the start can become friends, but not without a great deal of respect for boundaries and for feelings. I have made people cry, and there is not one thing in this world that I regret more than that. I have hurt people outside of myself, and I have had to reconcile myself with the aftermath. My conclusion is that I no longer wish to rush into new love, new lust, new anything. I want to delve into myself, and to find what I am capable of creatively, intellectually, athletically. The past three years have shuffled me from one boy to the next, and I am exhausted of trying at this point. So I won't. I don't have to, I'm 18, I'm not dying, and I have decided that waiting for something worthwhile is worth being without anyone in the meantime. I will be a romantic sniper, I will quietly wait, get to know people, let things grow naturally. I've made amazing new friends already, and I am sure we will have nothing but the best college experience, and will make the best of every hurdle that is encountered. Breathe deeply and realise that this is everything I have spent the past four years pining for, and that's it's more than I ever could have imagined.

Owls

To say that I have never loved is a lie. I have loved, and been loved in return. The problem with that is that it was all quite tangled up in lies and misunderstandings. I wish I could make legitimate sense of the whole ordeal, or even the ordeal I am currently finding myself involved in, at least internally. My brain seems to be wandering back to a simpler time. I was comfortable, I was happy, but it was strained due to immense distance. Clearly I have more options available to me now, and yet my mind wanders back. I don't particularly want it to and yet I seem to have no control of it. To be perfectly honest I don't really know what I want right now. There is so much else to experience and overcome at this point in my life. College is starting, my class starts on Monday and I have to focus hard and prove-- if only to myself-- that I ought to be here in the first place. The question of whether or not I belong here has not arisen out of lack of esteem, I am perfectly content in myself. It is more a matter of having spent the past four years vying for this place and to be here is overwhelmingly terrifying.
My own terror in this new situation is most likely part of why I am seeking comfort currently, despite the source of such being questionable at this juncture. I am so unsure of my footing in other relationships. It's daunting to build new foundations, especially when I crave reassurance now. So I sit in the library, leafing through Michelangelo books, studying form, wondering just why I am here and being utterly terrified. I know for certain I am not that calibre of an artist, if that calibre of anything at all. That daunts me. Life in general is daunting me now. I will make it through, but I need to start making decisions, which I can only hope will have positive outcomes.

The Bell Jar

I ought to be asleep, however my mind is whirring with thoughts. They keep nudging at the outermost reaches of my skull and sleep will not come. I lay in the hotel bed listening to my own breathing and my eyes are assaulted by the bright green protrusions that are the digital faces of the microwave and the smoke detector. I hear movement upstairs and observe how the orange light creeps under the gaudy curtains in broken and chaotic waves. I lay on the floor by the waves, hoping that the moving shadow of some passerby will break them. I have a race in the morning at 10 o'clock, and must be up by 7. My mind must quiet. I have to rest. I want to talk, I want to-- need to-- articulate the idle wanderings of my mind to make them real. Rationalise them, discern their meaning, and make them dissolve. What is it that I want? I hear the soft scraping and flexing of the pad of paper and the scratching of the pen tip. I am writing. I love to write. But will it be worth anything? Will the rambling I scratch onto hotel notepads be appreciated by even a singular soul?
"Well written, but it had a sort of 'so what?' effect for me..."
My mediocrity gnaws at me. Sure I can write, but what sets me apart from scores and scores of other aspiring writers and artists? I'm terrified. Every person wants to be accepted, particularly when they bear their soul. I write with my heart on my sleeve-- at least at my best-- but lately I have guarded myself. Rejection on any level is paralysingly frightening. My true opinions and emotions are instead veiled in wit and syntax. I peer into the corner of the dingy hotel mirror as I sit on the sill of the bath. Shadow surrounds my features. Hair billows freely in rippling waves around my shoulders, draped carelessly across my high cheekbones. A pretty face-- so they say-- but what more? Hips and long legs, gawky height that I have yet to master with grace. What of my mind? What of my soul? I was repulsed by every boy who sincerely recognised that a mind occupied my head. In doing so I have made myself accountable to no one. They expect nothing but soft lips moving sensuously and cleverly in time with their own. I pushed the possibility of genuine love away in a flourish of pheromones and self loathing. My eyes are red with exhaustion in my dimly lit reflection. I need to sleep. Despite the loud clamour inside of my head. Clearly I should not have gotten my hands on a Sylvia Plath novel.