She Left With a Part of Me

I hope I never do this again.  I became so attached to someone that the thing I wanted to do most in my life was to be with them.  Being with them was my only goal and my other hopes and aspirations faded into the back of my mind.  I became so impassioned about my relationship that my previous dreams seemed dull and boring.

Now that she's gone, I have no idea what to think.  I want to go back to the way I was before her, but I try to do the things I loved before and it just seems like there is no point.  Nothing can compare to the happiness I felt when I was with her.

What was it that made her so amazing?  It was the idea that we were there for each other.  She would listen to me and I would listen to her and we cared more about each other's feelings and aspirations than our own.  Love is when you miss someone so much your stomach hurts when you're not with them for a day, and you know they're feeling the same way.  It's as if I could package eternal happiness into a box and she held the key.  I don't know where to find that happiness now.  She left with a part of me.

"Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own." Up until about 3 weeks ago, this was one of those lines in a great song that I just glazed over. I just didn't think about it. But now that I do, this is the most relevant, most important line I have read in a long time. I'm an artist in this world and the landscape around me is the canvas. In other news, I want to reach to goals that I have for myself, but I'm too afraid I'll plunge in, then come back and everyone I knew and loved will be gone. I'm afraid I'll reach a dead end, want to turn around, but the road of love which I built for myself on the way out will be gone. I love someone more than I can ever know, but I wish I could know what they were thinking. It seems like we feel the same way, but doubt each other. How could we love each other this much?

“Would you like to know why you’re depressed?
Hmm?
well, I’ll tell you.
It’s really very simple.
the answer might ever surprise you.
The reason you’re depressed is because:
Your Life Sucks.
It’s true.
Your life is unrecognizable.
It’s nothing like you thought it would be,
and the level of disappointment that you feel is unbearable.
Perhaps the wort part
is that you feel copletely powerless to change anything about it.
So you wait.
Day in
day out
waiting
hoping for something to change.
and all the while
the problems of your life
grow in number
and complexity
and nothing changes.
We become desperate
for something,
anything,
that will make us feel better.
we become pleasure junkies.
Food.
to feel less empty
Sex.
to feel connected
Drugs.
to feel nothing
Spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need.
Booze.
to forget
We watch infomercials.
because we don’t sleep.
and we remain unhappy.
with even more problems than before.
because pleasure
and happiness
aren’t the same thing
Clearly,
waiting for things to change
isn’t the answer
so what is?
We have to change.
really change.
Nothing will change until you do.
Start with one thing
that you hate about yourself
and change it.
The truth is,
the longer you wait to change these things
the worse they become
Haven’t you been the victim of your life long enough?
Stop waiting to be motivated.
Stop waiting for magic.
make some.”

Is it not fair to say that the people with money must spend it?

I was running the other day in the streets of a small city in Maine. I saw a group of three 20-30 year-olds walking on the sidewalk so, instead of trying to squeeze by them, I ran in the street to pass them. Suddenly, before I realized it, they were screaming obscenities at me like "You fat bitch" "Go to hell" "Yeah, keep running". My first reaction was to look back and yell, "well, look who's running, idiots", but I held back. I kept running, angry about the whole situation for the rest of my run. Why would people lash out at a random stranger? Not just a random stranger, actually-a stranger who was trying to be NICE to them?

One suspicion I had was that they could tell that I was a college student. They were frustrated with the economic and social class difference between me and them and they decided to take it out on me.

Another possible factor that made them so bitter was the anonymity of the situation. Just like another car in a line of traffic, it is ok to hold your horn down in frustration. It's not like you will ever see the person who you're beeping at ever again. If the car in front of you isn't solving the problem, then they are part of the problem.

In reality, I feel as if this problem is one of the key problems in our world. The only people who we are willing to be nice to in this world is people that we can understand and connect to and understand. Anybody else, whether they are strangers on the street or people across the world suffering, are too disassociated from our lives to deserve our respect and love.

If you can not associate with hunger and poverty, then it would be just as impossible to say "I want to feed people going hungry" or "I want to donate to those less fortunate than I" as "I want to put a large rock at the bottom of the ocean". Random examples aside, we cannot be motivated to do something that we cannot associate with.

Instead, we should try to find similarities in things that seem utterly foreign to us. Instead of hating utter strangers who see life differently, we must see the humanity in us all. This is what connects us and what allows every single person to be connected.

Most everyone has a hatred and an aversion towards strangers. I spent 14 years of my life avoiding conversation with strangers just because that is what I was taught. It is socially acceptable to not love and not respect people who don't know you. And, as soon as you don't love and don't respect strangers, they don't love nor respect you either.

It is as if all of humanity is a large, hollow sphere. The atoms of the sphere are human lives and empty space is hatred. We love those close to us, our neighbors next to us on the sphere, however we pool our hatred for those distanced from us. We pool this space in the middle of the sphere, so that there is a large space between us and the other side of the sphere. As the other side looks in towards us, all they can see is the vast space of bitterness and hatred between us and them.

We need to stop feeling as if people all around us aren't people, just like us. We need to understand that it is ok to talk to, ok to respect, and ok to love perfect strangers. Instead of hurling obscenities at people running past you, look them in the eye and smile. If they don't smile back, don't feel anger towards them, just know that the more hatred and anger you absorb without repercussion, the less hatred and anger there will be in the world.

Go Forth

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank
submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the
darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you
chances.
know them, take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death
in life,
sometimes.
and the more often you
learn to do it,
the more light there will
be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have
it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in
you.

Sometimes I wonder
Do goodbyes exist?
If only I had known.

I wish I knew everything and everyone. I wish I was connected with the closest of my comrades. I wish I knew exactly what they are thinking. Why can't voices be heard? Do people not know what they are thinking, or are they too afraid to admit it. Sometimes even when they do admit it, you can't even hear them.

Sometimes you have to wake up and get out of bed. It's tough, but then you can enjoy the day. I just woke up. Is it really worth it?