Day 298: You and I

from reddit
by arcadeguy

Here's my favorite memory that took place with you and, likely, my favorite memory of all of my memories:

It was the day you drove down to visit me in the Dells after we had recently broken up. I had worked 35 hours the previous three consecutive days. You arrived, and I got to introduce you to my friends, and then we went grocery shopping and came back to the apartment to make dinner and watch a movie.

I am trying so hard to articulate the significance of that day to you, yet I am completely failing. Ever since I can remember, I have worried incessantly about finding a career that I enjoyed because I could not imagine going to work each day unhappy with it. But that one day with you, that single, bracketed eight hours of time with you hit me over the head with this brick of clarity -- that I was so content with spending the rest of my time with you that very little else mattered at all. I had an amazing family and an equally wonderful few friends, and you. Whether I disliked anything else would never have mattered again because, at the end of it, I would have been able to come home to you. Sweet, funny, beautiful, loving, wonderful you. That was it. After all of my worrying, job-switching, moving, idle days, you made everything make sense and be okay. Better than okay.

You were so young, and I was so naive to think that, at that point in time, it would all just magically work out. I am, more than you could believe, so sorry that you had to go through all that and that I wasn't responsible enough to think more with my head and less with my heart. I would never say that I wish I could go back and change any of it, but I'm still sorry. Additionally, I am sorry that I've allowed talks like this to go on for the past two years. There is no part of me anymore that wants (or believes we could) simply pick up where we left off. There's no part of me that thinks either of us could be the same people we were before. There is a large part of me (all of me, actually) that remembers exactly how it felt to love you so completely, though, and would always be willing to try it again from the beginning, consequences thrown to the wind.

I don't know what else to say.

Day 287: Deep in the Fields

Feeling impatient
Listening to Death and All His Friends - Coldplay

When I'm left alone in the wee hours of morning, when I'm reflecting back on the events that happened throughout the day, when I'm faced with my bothersome troubles, why do I feel so vulnerable? Why am I so afraid? Why are we left to don our masks and be dancers to a senseless rhythm?

Why do I feel like I am functioning perfectly well, yet so broken? Why do I feel like I don't need anyone else to rely on, but feel like I need a shoulder to lean on?

Why do I feel my soul's empty like a dried up well? Why do I feel like I'm half a man? What is it exactly that keeps me awake at night?

Day 273: What Makes Me - You - Us - Them ... Human?

Feeling hungry
Listening to Edvard Grieg - Stambogsblad

I think everyone faces this question every once in a while, after taking a long, unbiased look at oneself and the people that surround him.

What makes that person as much as human as I am? What qualities of that person render them human? What makes them deserving of my good feelings?

Yeah.

Not a human, but human.

I think peace will come only when the whole world realizes that we are all the same beings. Beings with feelings, conscience, hurts, blessings, weaknesses, and a constant hunger to be cared for, listened to, and loved. But until then.