Don't Ask.

Everyone always asks if you’re “okay.” She hated it. Every time someone new found out what happened they’d call or show up unannounced just to make sure she was “okay.” Frankly, it made her want to vomit. Of course she wasn’t okay, of course it took all of her physical, mental, and emotional strength just to get out of bed, and of course she was still very hurt, and very upset. Then people would always follow the “okay” question with phrases of condolences including but not limited to: “You’re better off without him. He didn’t deserve you. He was always an awful man.” And her favorite: “Well you look great! Considering…” None of it made her feel better, not even after constant repetition of the same things. But because she knew that it made everyone else feel better (and it was actually nice to have company when she was completely honest with herself) she permitted the visits. But the one person who she wanted to tell the most, needed to tell the most, wasn’t any one of the visits.
Tess was in New York, thousands of miles away. And she made sure that she wouldn’t find out about anything that had happened until absolutely necessary. Her baby sister was finally happy. After years of more than just a mere unsatisfying home life, and of trying to figure herself out, she had finally found herself on the right track. She had her career, her fiance, and everything else she had ever wanted. With the wedding just weeks away, the last thing she wanted was to put a damper on what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life.
He was still supposed to be in the wedding, Tess’s special request to have a representative of a “happy couple.” Because she didn’t want anything to ruin her baby sister’s special day, she made damn sure he’d still be there. He owed her this, (among a pretty hefty laundry list of other things she could thing of) at least this much, for certain.
College sweethearts. Except she never really got to finish college since they married so young, and someone had to support the two of them when he was in med school. But she had offered, volunteered. He was the love of her life, her best friend in the world, and so she was completely willing to sacrifice her dreams for his. He was the only man she had ever been with, the father of her children, the only investment she had ever made thinking that it was completely sound. All she kept thinking was, how could he do this to me? Eleven years of marriage, two years of dating, a one year engagement, (a total of fourteen years together) two beautiful children, and nothing to show for it? How the fuck could he do this to me?

Big Cities.

I watch Dawson's Creek for quotes like this:

"In a city like New York where everything is moving all the time at this constant driving pace, it’s like this living organism breathing and changing, and over time your relationship to it becomes like this incredible romance. At first its intoxicating, irresistible then slowly it becomes comfortable and safe, you have this cellular connection to it as if you’ve known each other forever like your oldest happiness. And sometimes you’re on the outs, and sometimes you’re making up. And every now and then you catch yourself in this transcendent moment when you think to yourself , 'Oh my God I’m madly in love with you, and I always will be.'

If only it was that easy to feel that way about a person rather than a beautiful city.

Stay tuned for more fictional entertainment.

Thanks for the Music.

If you love someone you let them go, you said. It’s selfish to stay and fight, I agreed. But when does it become okay to stay and fight? If the person seriously needs help? If you honestly think that they shouldn’t go and it really is for their own good? It’s preposterous to think that at anytime it would be “good” or “better” to keep someone from living their life. Mothers always watch their children fall in the hopes that they learn how to walk. Parents let their child go off to college to teach them independence and growth. Friends watch their friends marry off in order to allow them to follow their hearts and achieve happiness. And lovers watch their partners walk away to ensure that what is done is done and will probably never be done again.
So what if you can’t let them go? What if you know you should and you try your hardest to, but you simply can’t? Does that make it okay to stay and fight? You told me you had to go. I told you I understood and allowed it to happen. But what if I lied? What if what I really thought was that although you “had no choice” but to go, I knew I needed you with me? Does that make me selfish? Does that make me a liar? What exactly does it make me, if it makes me anything? I told you what you needed to hear to make it okay to leave. I was as supportive as I possibly could be. And to be honest it hurt. It mother fucking hurt. But if there’s one thing you taught me, it’s to put others before myself, and so I put you before myself just as you would have done, I’m sure.
And so for that I’m thankful. Thank you for teaching me how to love and let go. Thank you for making me into the person I always hoped to become. And thank you for loving me and letting me know it. Although it was not in the way I wanted, it was more that I could have ever hoped for. So I’m going to leave too. I’m going to law school. I’m not going to take a break, and I am going to be truly alone for the first time in my life. The beauty of it is, I’m not as terrified as I had anticipated. I know I’ll be okay and I know I can make it because I know that there are people like you in the world. Thank you for letting me know this and thank you for allowing me to believe in people in a way that I honestly though I would never be able to again.

Curious Frienship

There’s a strange quite curious thing called friendship. You meet these people, who initially seem purely fine. Of course they’re polite and kind because you know nothing about them and they know nothing about you. But then, somewhere down the line you start to care. Then even further down the line you start to truly and deeply care and even love. You begin to change and grow simply by being with and knowing truly good people. And you spend a lot of time together because you choose to, because you know for a fact that it is definitely worth your while.
For a while it’s amazing. You’re with the people you care about the most as much as you can, and you have the best times of your life with them. You go on trips, laugh a whole lot, do the most random of things together, and you love. You love each other, you love the trips, the laughing, everything. But what’s most important is that you don’t love it because the trips are to the most exotic places, or because the jokes are particularly funny, or even because the excursions are really that fun. The reason why you love it, is because of the people. It’s in those brief moments that you don’t think you’re ever going to remember, that you’ll end up cherishing for the rest of your life. These are your friends, this is your life, and every moment you have with them is everything.
The most truthful thing I’ve ever heard in my life is that friends are the family you choose. Many times if we would’ve had a choice we would lead very different lives from the ones we currently are forced to. If we have very unsatisfying, terribly modest lives, we dream of lives of luxury and constant leisure. And if everything comes easy and we’ve never been able to make any decision for ourselves because everything was scheduled for us and simultaneously automatically paid for, we yearn for a life of our own where every moment was tailor made for the lives we wish to hold. But dreams such as this, of living complete opposite lives that we think are the most desirable, never quite come true. We are forced to come into this world with at least one kind of fate, the fate that awaits us for at least eighteen years legally, that is merely an effect of existence and not a conscious decision. But maybe, just maybe if you’re lucky, you could be granted with the most perfect family. Maybe you will be lucky enough to choose the best people to be a very significant part of your life.
In these cases you’ll be lucky enough to spend even a day with such a person or persons, much less a lifetime. But if you’re really lucky and you’re willing to take a chance, and open your heart however difficult it may be, each day you open your heart more, is one more day you have with them. Of course it’s going to hurt. And in some cases more often than not, it’s going to fucking hurt. But at the same time, if it never did, it would not have been worth it.
In those cases, the ones that are definitely more often than not, you just have to hurt for a while. You have to understand that love is about sacrifice. The most intense and deepest kind of love is agape, sacrificial love, in which you’d give everything, even you’re life, for another. And when you make the commitment of loving someone you are ultimately making a pledge of yourself to do whatever is asked of you to better this person or this other person’s life. And so, whether it will break your heart for a year or constantly hurt for fifty years, the bottom line is that you love your friends. If loving your friends entails you having to let them go, then you must without question or complain.
Being someone’s friend means loving them completely and as unconditionally as humanly possible. So enjoy your time together. Make your love known to each other, and always, always laugh a ton. Because if you can do all this, and bear the desperate sorrow that inevitably goes along with loving someone, you will always remember and cherish your time together. Which is what the curious thing called friendship has always been about.

To Be Loved.

For my sister.

It’s nice to be loved. And while it is quite important to hear it even at least once in a while, it’s really nice sometimes just to know it. There are a lot of people who never get to experience that kind of thing, and for that I truly pity them. For it is what makes us human, loving and being loved.
She knew she really cared about this man. This man who came into her life at a time when she least expected it. It was the lowest point in her life and he had no idea. He had no idea about her past relationship and how much it had scarred her. About the many pills she had to take just to cope with the desperate sorrow she felt every day due to the unidentifiable feeling of entrapment caused by her terrible relationship. About the severe pain she had single-handedly caused those closest to her. About the friendships she had ruined forever. All he knew was her, and for some strange reason loved her.
They had met by a strange coincidence of fate. He was single, she was single, and they had mutual friends who happened to be a couple. The couple introduced them and for some reason he fell for her. They talked about their idea of the perfect date. A conversation strange for any man and woman who barely knew each other she thought. But she told him anyway. It would start with the hour drive into the city, San Francisco. She had never lived in a real city, and never really had any sort of strong desire to. The only strong desire she had ever felt was to feel normal again, and dare she even think it, happy. But she loved to take trips, and visiting cities were always good trips. She and her perfect date would walk around the Pier for a few hours seeing the sights she had seen so many times, and as the evening was coming to a close and the sun was on its way down they’d have dinner on the pier. And what made it perfect was that she’d know that it was all for her. For once in her life, she wouldn’t be doing something for someone else. She wouldn’t be the typical self sacrificing person that she always felt she had to be. She could for once, for a glimmer of a moment, be a tiny bit selfish something she’d never had the opportunity to ever be. He gave her a half smile after he heard this and she felt embarrassed and turned, shying away from him. He turned to her and said, I think that sounds like a very nice, very perfect date. She felt genuinely pleased by his comment and almost, for a split second, normal.
A week later the two of them would go on their first official date. He would pick her up from home and begin to drive in the direction of the freeway that would take them to the city. She would question where exactly they’d be going and he’d answer with a passing comment saying, “I just thought it would be nice to have dinner on the pier tonight.” She’d smile and know that she was totally capable of falling in love with this man. She knew that while he had given her the capacity to fall in love again, she gave him the ability to make her dreams come true.

She's happy.

He loved her. He kept thinking it to himself over and over. “Holy shit, I really love this woman.” She was rambling on about getting cut off on the freeway yet again, and how LA is such a horrible city which she would never even think of moving away from. And while he was simultaneously thinking, “This is pretty much the most annoying conversation I’ve ever had in my life” along with “Since we’re in traffic, it wouldn’t hurt that bad to throw her out of the car would it?” He also thought, “My God, she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
He had wanted to tell her for years. Boyfriend after boyfriend, asshole after asshole, and he was there right beside her for all of it. But she would never see him that way. They were best friends, and she always reassured him that this meant more to her than any other relationship she had ever had or would ever have. He knew she loved him, there was no way that he couldn’t know that. But she didn’t love him the way he wanted, no needed, her to. He felt nervous every time she walked into a room, much less held him or lay with him on a couch when either one of them were feeling down. He ached every time he saw her with someone else or even heard of her being with someone else. And yet, he did nothing. After three years of torture, the inexorable aching within him did not abate. It became a pain that he had grown accustomed to, accepted, and almost felt comfortable with and insecure without. “She can never know” was also a constant thought in his mind. “It will just ruin everything” was another.
And so, he left. She did not want him and he knew it. She would never see him the way he always saw her. She would fall in love again, with someone else, and he could not take sitting back and watching her do so one more time. He let her go, and resolved that though he would be in constant anguish for the rest of his life, at least he knew that she’d be happy. He was gone merely one year, and upon his return, he was to attend her engagement party. A man named Jim, or John, or even Jacob for all he knew or cared to know.
She opened the door of her parents’ house in which the party would take place. He looked up at her. She had never looked at him that way before, it was a look he was not familiar with, and he was certain he had not forgotten a single one of her faces that he constantly thought about. A tear streamed down her right cheek, she gave a half smile, and fell into his arms sobbing. He held her close, smelling her neck, stroking her hair, becoming intoxicated with everything about her. She whispered in his ear, “It should be you I’m marrying,” wiped her eyes and led him into the house with a smile. A million thoughts ran through his head, had she always known? Did she love him too? Why would she say such a thing? Does she even love this Jim John Jacob man?
But inside the house stood the Jim John Jacob man, who’s name was actually Dean. Dean kissed the love both their lives, and just like that the hope that she had placed in his heart was struck down by the familiar aching within him. “She looks happy” he thought, “just like I knew she would.”

Hold On

We said that we’d be friends forever, and that we’d be in each other’s weddings, and our children would play together, the works. Basically that we’d be friends for the rest of our lives. At the time, I honestly believed that it was possible. That we could overcome whatever adversity life had in store for us, and that nothing would change even though we were all moving away from each other. And at first, that’s exactly how it was. We each did our best to make sure that although everything was completely different, we all pretended like everything was still the same. I would have never imagined how our relationships would change. We were supposed to be best friends, whatever that means. But when you really care about people with all of your heart, you tend to not want to disappoint them, and when you live hundreds of miles away it becomes quite easy if not instinctual to merely stop telling them the details of your life.

I had left town with the intention of never coming back. All that had happened in that town was in my past. I took both the terrible, terrible times in my life as well as some of the best memories I can ever hope to have with me to the city. However, that’s all they were to me once I moved: memories. Moments that had passed and that had no ability to ever come back. Of course there would be times of reminiscing, but that would be all it was, attempting to recall events that were long gone. But now I fear that in leaving all this behind, and instead moving out and moving on with my life in the city, that I have compromised all this, and have detached myself from not only my hometown but the people in it as well. One of the hardest things for me to do after I moved was to open myself up to new people because I had felt that I had already found the people that I wanted to share my life with. But as it turned out, it began to feel like those people were part of some past life, and I was forced to adapt to entirely new surroundings and develop completely new relationships.

Initially, I think I misunderstood the whole best friend ideal. I was taught that you shouldn’t have to talk to your closest friends all the time, because the true test would be if everything was the same when you actually had the chance to talk with them again. But what I didn’t know was that it wasn’t necessary or even a good idea at all for you to totally cut yourself off from people, just to test the theory. It all comes down to the people. If you care about the people in the way that you’d honestly do anything for them, then you should make that clear. If it so happens that you don’t feel as inclined as you once did, to tell them every intimate detail of your life, then maybe you shouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean that you let go of all ties completely. Rather, while you maybe be more comfortable with loosening said ties, you must hold on. Loving someone in any sense of the word must come with sacrifice. If you’re not willing to make any sacrifices for anyone else, then don’t make such a commitment by saying that you love them.