Lord, a lot has happened since I last updated this. In fairness and honesty, I have updated once since the last time, though it was my first post I kept unopen to the world to see, mostly because I wrote it while utterly tired and thought it was a good idea to actually read it before I opened it up. I think I'll open it back up as soon as I'm finished with this. (So feel free to cruise on over to my blog and read it) But since the last post anyone has been able to read, my world has flip-turned upside down. Of course, I realize I've drifted from most everyone that is likely to read this, and those that I talk to with much regularity, namely Tom and Alex, already know this. I suppose like everything anyone in the world has ever written, it's always optional to read; I just don't have too much expectation that it will interest all of you.
..And as I look at when I actually did last post, I suppose I was wrong with my original idea. I have posted somewhat since life has gone crazy. I just didn't go into a whole lot of detail. So let's get started.
Probably around the time of
this I got into a relationship for the first time in about a year and a half. Shortly before Alex came to visit for a few weeks. My social life kicked into overdrive then. It's actually because of his visit that served as a catalyst which got this relationship going. I met her in the lingerie department of Fred Meyer, and I had no idea what I was getting into. I had expected a fun day out getting to know someone better, and ended up getting to know an entire new social circle over the next few weeks.
I have Alex to thank for kicking all that up. I started hanging out with other people more, from a variety of social circles. I got to know Andrew a hell of a lot better. While it's sad that it only happened in his last year here before moving, I am glad it happened. I can't recall exactly how we started hanging out more, but I'm very grateful for it.
Shortly after Alex left I went with Mallory (the girl whom became my girlfriend) to her prom. She followed the next week to mine. That night really started things off, with us starting to fully show our feelings for the first time. A few weeks later we were dating, nevermind the traditional idea of dating before going heavy with someone. Tradition be damned!
That continued and intensified over the next month or two before Mallory leaving for Europe for a month. To be fully honest I had no idea, nor real intentions of the relationship continuing past that point. But somehow, it did. Around this same time, I started to branch off into an only lightly explored culture of people, the drug and what could be considered seedy underbelly.. of Woodinville, anyway. The rest of the summer would mark a continued social expansion, summer school because I mucked up graduating on time, an exploration into drugs and the group that ran with them, waiting for Mallory to get home, and eventually continuing being with her.
At some point or another I graduated summer school. If memory serves, Mallory had left shortly before for Eastern Washington University for school. And, if memory serves, I graduated about the week I left for Eastern Washington. First I visited Andrew at Pullman for the weekend, and got to get to know him even better. After that it was off to stay with Mallory for the week before heading back home to get ready for college classes. ..And, right. I got accepted to Cascadia Community College, though that's not exactly the academic equivalent of climbing Everest, here. So after the first week of college class, (a pre-fall College Strategies thing), I think I got high on pot. I'm not sure, because my memory is horrible anyway, and drugs don't help. That began to bring to light the relationship problems I was having with Mallory, namely the distance and worry about miscommunication that could bring.
So over the next week things were avoided, then talked about. That went over really well. Just about as well as every other time it was talked about, except that this time it actually was discussed, albeit not happily. It ended in a break. I think we were on different pages. Or perhaps, the same page in different books. While I didn't consider that too detrimental to our future together.. well.. that's another one of those things where I misjudged. Or perhaps more likely, was blinded by my unwillingness to see the truth before me. It's a mistake I've made before several times, so it's not hard to see how it would happen again. Go, Nick, go.
Around the time the actual school year started I began to realize just the degree of split between us through both pondering the issue and a few key talks with Mallory. That led to the most fun I've ever had crying, as well as the longest time crying in one go, AND the only real time I've cried with someone else. It was certainly a new experience to feel utterly heartbroken and shattered while paradoxically alive and determined. At least, it was new in that light. I've had similar things happen in the past, but they've never quite lined up as they did on that night.
So I set out in a grand gesture to win her back, and to leave no possible regrets for the future. The original plan hashed out while unbelievably high on narcotics, adrenaline, stress, nicotine, (..I also started smoking) and maybe a little dehydration worked out very quick. Within several hours I had set in motion something that would normally have taken far longer; it entailed (somewhat) symbolic skywriting, a symbolic promise ring, a symbolic plane ticket, and symbolic flowers. It was really quite symbolic, I must say. The only thing that proved unable to do in the next day of finalising this was the skywriting, moreso due to a lack of possibility than lack of financial means. What surprised me the most was that from thursday morning to saturday morning I convinced not only myself and Mallory, but my parents, and with hardly any resistance for this to go through.
My dad ended up driving me over there, with both my parents lacking confidence in the car to get there, and probably, me to make it back alive after a heartwrenching experience. That still amazes me. I wouldn't have seen that one coming. But, I'm really grateful for it. Because of it, I've gotten closer to my family for the first time since I was little, and feel like I actually have one. Having seen them actually step up and help when I needed it was an entirely new thing, one which fills my heart with joy. It was also a new thing to have anyone standing beside me in times of trying trouble. Or at least, relatively new. To have a good solid base of people able to help and willing was pretty new to me. In the past I've had some help online and in-person from people, but it doesn't hold a candle to what I've seen done for me over the past month or two. I thank all of you who played a part.
While the plan went off without too much of a hitch, I only completed one of my original ideas for visiting. In my mind I was thinking that two things were most likely to happen. There was a third thing that I contemplated as possible, though unlikely, and really would have been awful if it happened. The first two were either I'd win her back and things would at least have the chance to work out, or I'd get dismissed entirely, that it'd be over. The third was that feelings would still be there on both sides, but nothing would change, and I'd go back to sitting on my hands and feet. Screw you, third unlikely option.
So that's what happened! And that took about four days for the both of us to finalise that neither of us wanted to be with the other, both for our own reasons. I accept full responsibility for making mistakes and problems where I did, however unintentional they may have been.
From there on out I've been just moving on as best and fast as I know how-- without hurting anyone around me. While it might make me move on to go out and sleep with dozens of people, that really wouldn't be my style, nor would I want to lead anyone on. Our friendship pretty much has been reduced to tatters, most of the hurt and anger over all of it is gone. There's a little lingering feeling as to some of the memory, but that's at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. More often than not I laugh at how caught up I got in it, and how horrible it ended up. So I died a little because my body doesn't react well to stress? Ptssh, it's more funny than sad. Not that I wasn't sad-- I won't lie and say I took it with a steely face. I took it like a baby having candy stolen away and taunted back at them. And pretty fast, in a relative sense, I'm back to where I usually am. Really happy that it happened like it did, absolutely joyous and thankful that I did get to have those experiences and memories, and opened back up and forgiving. Maybe I'm like a clam who keeps opening up when people jab things at it, but I love it. I've closed myself off before-- I didn't like it. I enjoy being opened up to pain and hurt, it lets me know I'm really alive, and not just stagnating trying to avoid the pain of life.
So while all of this was going on, I still continued exploring new social webs, got into the college life a bit, have been trying to get involved with clubs, trying to see about going to Austrlia for winter quarter, meeting oodles of new people, and defying death far too much for my own good. I said I took things like a baby, and I did. The day after getting back from Eastern Washington I skipped class to go hiking in the woods without preparing, alone, far too late in the day and well off the beaten trail. I can't count the times I almost died, I really can't. For most of the time I was hiking it was in an area where on misstep in the wrong place would pretty well equate to that being my last hike of my life. Falling down a giant cliff into a river isn't something too many people come back from. Which is kinda funny, because I was misstepping all over the place. I can't count the times I collapsed from stress, simple tiredness, adrenaline, and lord knows what else, let alone the times I stumbled.
Some of the highlights include starting and being in a rockslide easily large enough to kill, crawling in a collapsed mine, falling over and sliding down a hill, eating (several?) poisonous mushroom(s), hallucinating the moon turning into Curious George (moreso stress than anything..), and being completely fearless (reckless/foolish/insane) toward the trail ahead of me-- running ahead in darkness with the trail littered with roots, rocks, holes, a giant drop on one side with a cliff on the other, charging across a moderate rivery stream bit without thinking, as well as the above mentioned. That I lived, or at least didn't seriously hurt myself boggles my mind. Especially the rockslide. I lucked the fuck out there. I was sliding on a sheet of rocks tumbling, with some number of boulders bouncing around my head the whole way down. I got hit in the chest with something, not sure what, but I believe it's the same rock which continued down to smash my hand. Only lightly, though. My chest was only bruised, and my hand got off pretty lucky. I bruised a bone in my little finger, and cut up the hand itself some, but it would have taken only a slight change in how the rock hit to have completely broken or shattered something; and on a trail that actually demands having hands to pull yourself up ledges and such, that would have been something of a difficulty. My hip got smashed up, as well as my knee jammed up something fierce when I hit the bottom of the hill. For the detail-oriented, it was probably a 20-30 foot hill at around a 70-80 degree angle; so it wasn't a free fall; merely a slide of happiness and death. And, in fairness and honesty, it wasn't a big "fuck you" rockslide. I would say anywhere from one fifty to several hundred pounds of rock came sliding down with a good portion of small debris, with the largest boulders being difficult for me to lift. It was a fun time.
But life moves on. While I keep coming back to the bad, right now, it's not so bad. It isn't really bad at all; how can I say it is? I have a family and friends that love me and I love back. I'm working at making a better life for myself, and becoming a better person to a degree that I haven't in some time. All of the pain in the past month or so has reminded me of the strength I can pull to overcome adversity, and it's one of my favorite things of myself. I love how someone can put me against hopeless odds, and I'll try for it even knowing that I'm unlikely to succeed; that I won't give up to logic; that reckless optimism and hope won't be beat back; that I don't seem capable of turning my back on someone after they've hurt me. Forgiveness, compassion, strength, dedication to what really matters to me, hope, optimism, love. All of this has put me back in touch with who I want to be, and who I always have been.
That reminds me of something I used to describe myself with: It's like I have a pantheon of deities dedicated to keeping my sorry ass alive.
Now I started thinking about this, and it seems to hold true. I'm fucking lucky. But when the cards are down, life doesn't do such a good job providing me with things that don't drive my happiness away like the plague is coming; so I thought about that more. How does that work out? Is it possible that they're too busy keeping me alive to bother with my happiness? Then it came to me in a way, that somehow, works. I'm my own deity of happiness. I'm the final part to the pantheon, the part that's missing. While I might have a whirlwind of luck flying about me, (both good [that I'm alive] and bad [that I actually end up in places where I should die, as well as happiness]) it's up to me to make the most of what I have, and to take my life and make it worthwhile. To throw life down onto the ground, grab it by the horns, and ride it off into the sunset.
In a long-winded way of getting to what I said back in May about a man named Winton.. he was a man who lived a life on the edge. An adrenaline junkie to be sure. But what he always seemed to do, he seemed to do with passion, and vigor. He embraced life and accepted that he would more than likely die young because of how he lived. I never saw any fear in the man.. it was like he moved beyond it. He moved beyond the hurt and pain he could bring to others, learned, and seemed to only bring joy and happiness. Though I never was close to him, I could feel the spirit and vibrancy he had about him. He could light a place up just by smiling and talking. Maybe I'm wrong, and idealising the man, I'll accept that.. but the life he picked up, he seemed to have no regrets. While I am sad that he died doing what he loved before I could get to know him better, I'm happy simply to have known him. He lived the hell out of life, doing more in a year than most people would do in their lifetimes. I know I'm not quite out on the edge that he was, but if someday in the future, someone would ever draw a comparison between the two of us, I wouldn't object. There's something about feeling that passion, that no words or pictures can ever begin to describe.. while I would have liked to have told him what he's done to make my life better, I believe it's only more appropriate to pay my respects by fully living.
I apologize for this being so long. I've tried to summarize one of the most eventful periods of my life, and a long part of it, in one go. This really only touches the surface in most places; for those of you that read this far, thank you. For those of you that want to know more, all you have to do is ask. After having nearly died so much lately, I want to say to all of you, I'm grateful to have each and every one of you in my life. Though we may not be close any longer, or even talk, I will always be happy and feel honored that you've shared your lives with me. I love you all, and you mean more than words can say; if any of you ever need anything, ask and I will do all that I can. It doesn't matter if it's tomorrow, or twenty years down the line. I'd feel honored that you'd think of me, and would try as best as I know how to help.
Thank you all. I truly love each and every one of you.