1000 Words: Part I

For he whose disdain for noncreative passion is reaching ever more a status of unforgivable,

I cannot apologize for anything I said Tuesday night. Truthfully, I think that if either of us should be apologizing, it should be the one of us who not only insulted the other’s personality (which is not any different, believe it or not, from what it has been for the past 15 years) and major, but also their grandfather; a grandfather whom you have never met and perhaps should not judge quite so quickly.

I hate, truly, truly hate people who, just because they have encountered a few psychologists or psychiatrists in their time, think that they know everything about all psychologists. I guess it’s nice to finally know how you truly see me. Maybe I hit the nail on the head and you don’t like that. Maybe you feel that you made some grievous mistake in your past and you don’t want to accept that it influenced your present and future. Either way, I found it cruel of you to decide to bring psychology into our conversation in such a cold hearted manor.

I find it tactless for you to insult not only my major and my grandfather, but what I want to be. There are certain lines that you should not cross, and insulting my aspiration is one of them. I was under the impression that intentionally insulting someone’s dream is not the best way to go about something. But then again, you’d probably kill for a spot in history. I want nothing more than to help someone, even just a single person, in my lifetime.

Does the desire to question somehow imply a lack of creativity or faith? Because I do not believe that fairies exist, because I have doubts and fears about heaven, because I believe in evolution (which had nothing to do with psychology by the way) I have lost my creativity? I find it strange that you are so quick to condemn me. You seem all joy when I question my own faith and all but when I question yours. For years you called me a cynic, and I’ll admit that by your falsified definition it cannot be denied, but when reality is forced upon you, perhaps you will come to realize that I am merely human.

The Man

The man was the eccentric sort. He was too tall and too skinny, and his hair was too full and too dark for his age. He stood in a slight hunch, more due to the fact that he probably wished himself shorter than because he could not hold himself upright. He wore a suit typical of a man of his profession- black with a white shirt and a black tie. Physical examination was, if anything, fruitless. By looking at the man, one could tell little of anything about him. Of course, the permanent scowl planted upon his long drawn face said something to his personality. For indeed, his smile appeared more as a barring of teeth than an actual smile.

For My Valentine

When blindness conquers those around,
and truth cannot be seen,
When trust is lost in clouds of blue,
and hidden lies convene,
When justice drowns in pools of blood,
and life has lost it's worth,
You'll find me waiting, shining bright,
high above the earth,
For I alone and you with me
have fought injustice's crown,
And traitor at us they will call,
when axe comes falling down.
When light and life and love betray
I tell you dear, my sweet,
It was for you I gave my soul
an act I would repeat
This truth for you, my sweet divine,
Froms yours alone, your Valentine

Notes on "Moving On"

Sometimes it takes more than just deciding to move on, and that’s where the dilemma occurs. I have heard, and no doubt you have heard as well, that it is so much easier to get over someone when you meet someone else. The problem is, when the mind is so thoroughly pre-occupied with that past someone, it’s rather difficult to find the replacement someone. Not to mention the fact that most people don’t like the idea of dating someone simply as a rebound. In most situations, people don’t like to blatantly, consciously hurt others.

It dawned on me one night, that perhaps the only way to truly get over someone is to cut them off completely. This, however, also creates a problem. In my case, this person was a friend, my best friend, and I am anything but willing to throw that away just so I can “move on.” Frankly, I think that moving on is over rated. The trick is not to “move on,” but to accept. No, those are not the same thing.

Quantifiably speaking, moving on is the easy way out. How is that quantifiable? I have no idea; I just wanted to say that. But seriously now, moving on is easier than accepting. The thing about “moving on” is that it’s very similar to forgetting. Just throw person A on the back burner and pull person B forward. Easy, fast and involving very little effort, moving on seems to be the ideal solution. And while “moving on” may be the ideal solution in terms of speed, there is severe questioning as to how ideal it is in terms of duration: hence the idea of a “rebound.” The “rebound” really does sum up quite nicely what “moving on” is. It is a brief period during which one’s focus has been voluntarily and forcibly transferred from a person of the past to a person of the present. Notice the lack of “person of the future” in that definition. The “rebound,” as many people know, serves one, and only one purpose: to help you “move on.” Honestly, though, what does a “rebound” do but make you temporarily glad you are no longer with that person of the past, only to make you miss that very person at the end of the relationship?

Acceptance is, of course, considerably more difficult but more rewarding in the long term. Acceptance is easy until word reaches your ears that your former is no longer as alone as you are. So why would anyone choose acceptance over the apple-in-the-basket technique that is moving on? The thing about acceptance is that it gives any chance of a possible sustained friendship, well, a chance. Acceptance is simply deciding that you are ok with the decisions made by either party to end a relationship or, as is significantly more painful in my opinion, to never start one at all. It is accepting the fact that there is someone else out there for them and, more importantly, someone else out there for you. I would love to tell you the steps to reaching this acceptance, but I cannot. See, the thing about acceptance is that everyone has to take their own road to reach it. So, not only am I yet to discover my road, but there is an entirely different road that must be taken by you.

Ok, now for the complete honesty. I think acceptance and “moving on” are both complete shit. Yes, I said it. Both of those words were chosen by people who never had to accept or move on from anything. The kind of people who married their high school sweethearts, are still happily married, and have friends whose lives are something less than perfect. It’s the kind of advice that is only received from friends in an extremely happy situation. Think about it, when did a friend who was going through something at all remotely similar to you ever tell you to “just accept it and move on;” which I think is my favorite phrase. Just accept it and move on. Was there ever a colder way to tell someone you care? Quite frankly, the whole thing is just a joke. The truth of the matter is that you will probably never truly get over the person from your past, but you will find a person for your future. Eventually the future will be the present. As much as I would love to assure you, being an idealist romantic, that the person of your future will be the person from your past, it simply cannot be. Life is not a movie. At times it may seem like it is—especially because there’s always music playing—but it’s not.

Perhaps the better term, better than acceptance, better than “moving on,” is giving up. Giving up isn’t always as horrible and dishonorable as people make it out to be. Maybe it’s time to give up.

Look to the sky, take a long, deep breath, and fall back into the grass, never to rise again.

"When two people like each other, they try"

You can't say I didn't try. We've known each other four years and started out hating each other. By the end of senior year, we were almost inseparable. Obviously some trying had to go into that.

You are not disposable. You are one of the best friends I have ever had. You always listened when I needed to talk, you always gave advice when I asked. But I felt like you needed me to be weak for you. The moment I stood up on my own, you shot me down and claimed I was making assumptions about you. That combined with the fact that I could never help you with anything going on in your life. I could comment, but only if you stooped low enough to tell me what was going on, and only if I agreed with you.

One fight would not normally be enough to end it. We've had disagreements before and it hasn't done anything. It was the subject, the way you responded to MY stating my opinion and the messages afterward that--from my point of view--had an overtone of "I don't care anymore." It was a series of things, followed by a series of revelations, followed by a series of conclusions, followed by a series of actions.

I couldn't tell you sooner because I didn't even realize it. Long story short, if you thought this friendship was worth saving, if you saw me as anything more than a car-ride to get to a swing set, you would have done something more to try to save it. I apologize for any accusations that are going into this last paragraph of explanation, but this is what I'm seeing. And why I'm even bothering to explain this to you, I don't know. I guess I still haven't completely given up on the hope that you would try, just this once, try for me.

I'm sorry it had to end like this, but if this is how it has to be, I guess this is it. The truth is, you aren't anywhere near disposable to me. I was just hoping, stupidly hoping, as the typical idealistic romantic would, that maybe I was worth enough to you that you would fight it. That you would stoop down to my level and try. But I guess I was wrong. And now we are both reminded of why the idealistic romantic is also, always a pessimist.

Every Day: Part III

He tucked the skeleton key safely back into his inside pocket and made his way across the main hall. The sound of screeching nails rang through the prison yet again. He watched as the table appeared in the center of the hall. He could hear the prisoners coming. He reached out and plucked a grape from one of the grape-filled vines. Upon hitting his tongue the grape dissolved into nothingness. Feeling a strange sense of partial satisfaction in achieving what no prisoner had managed to do—getting the food to his mouth—he sat at the head of the table.

He watched again, as he did every night, as the prisoners fought over the food that they could not eat. He watched the pushing and the shoving with a feeling of detachment. One by one each of the prisoners gave up as they did every night. The chain reappeared around their ankles and he guided them back to their cells, locking each one inside with the same skeleton key. He finished locking everyone up and began his way back to the main hall. He paused outside the skeleton’s cell. It was curled in the corner weeping.

He continued to the main hall.

Reaching his hidden room at last, he removes his cloak and fell to his knees. The weight of human tire seemed to drag on him as he fought the urge to close his eyes. It was that figure. The figure would haunt him whenever he became so tired that he closed his eyes. The moment his consciousness began to slip, the figure would appear. That figure was one of the only things, if not the only thing that he truly feared. She had done something terrible. What she had done was unknown to him—he did not actually know the reason explaining why anyone was locked in the dark—but it was terrible. She would lie in the corner of her cell, moaning, almost weeping, her knees pulled up to her chin. Every time he passed her cell she would scream and leap at him, clawing at him through the bars. It did not take long for him to realize that he should never, under any circumstance, release her from her cell. It made no difference, however. She was the only prisoner ever to have escaped from her cell.

Every Day: Part II

He went to his desk and sat down. He stared at the marble swirls of the desk and drifted away mentally. He was tired from the eternity without sleep, but he would not sleep. He could not sleep. After some time of sitting in the dark, staring at the dark, he opened the top desk drawer and pulled out a candle. He lit with the hot, blue flame that lit all of the candles. It gave almost no light, seeming to almost draw in light rather than emit it. He stared into a flame. His eyelids were heavy and he felt his head beginning to slowly sink. He stood abruptly. He needed to get his blood flowing. He needed to wake himself up.

It happened at about the same time every routine when he would make his way through the mines, walking slowly, his hands folded neatly behind his back, inspecting, so to speak, the work of his laborers. Some of the newer laborers would stop and stare, turning back only to find that someone had greedily stolen their picking spot.

He was partially through the mine when a loud clanging sound rang repeatedly through the various halls and chambers that made up his prison fortress. He spun on his heel and walked quickly back to the main hall. A hole had opened in the ceiling and a black stone staircase had been lowered down. A figure was wandering down it—as they often did—looking back up the stairs, thinking there was no way this could be the correct staircase. He walked up to the figure. It was a woman. She was remarkably beautiful, and upon seeing him, she seemed to turn on a sort of charm.

She leaned in close to him and whispered in his ear, “So what now?”

It seemed like a rather strange way to introduce oneself, especially if the goal was to “get to know someone better.” She let out a gasp of delight as he grabbed her wrist. He walked her quickly down the prisoner’s hallway, her excited giggling fading quickly as she realized what was happening. She screamed as they passed the skeleton figure who clawed after him as they walked by, and by the time they had reached her cell, he was almost literally dragging her across the floor. She cried and screamed and she struggled to get away. He pushed her into the last open cell (there was always a last open cell) and locked the door with the skeleton key. She reached out to him, getting hold of his suit coat and pulled him close.

“Don’t worry. You’ll be released soon enough,” he said softly.

Her grip loosened and he was gone.