An Open Letter to the Cello Player on 7th and E Street

This is the letter that I've written for the cello player on 7th and E Street. I would have delivered it, if I actually meant any of it and/or I was an absolutely crazy person. Unfortunately, neither apply in this situation. However, I did want to share with you the pain of heartbreak, unrequited love, and the pang of spending entirely too much money on gourmet cupcakes.

Hey you.

I don’t know your name—just simply “Cello Player Who Sits at 7^th and E Every Afternoon.” I wanted to write this to you because, well, it’s time I explain myself. Okay, it’s time that I explain us. You see, we met for the first time almost a week ago. It will actually be a week tomorrow. #HappyAnniversary! I passed you on the street and there you were, playing your cello. I’m pretty sure you were playing “Secrets” by One Republic. It’s one of my favorites—oh, you too? How ironic. Anyway, I immediately thought, “Sigh. This might be the person. You know, the person.” But alas, I came back to my office. I didn’t say anything until I asked my friend Maeve what I should do to which she said, “WWTD.” I’m assuming you don’t understand what that means—What Would Taylor Do? Yes, Taylor Swift. Because you play cello, I’m sure that sounds incredibly bass base to you; I apologize.

But I followed through, and I went back downstairs. I wanted to say something or impress you, but I didn’t know how, so I bought cupcakes. I took one for myself because, lesbihonest, it’s cupcakes. Then I took the other one, opened up the box, said, “Great cello playing. Hope you like cupcakes. –Justin” and then put my number. A friend pointed out that I gave you singular cupcake so technically the plurality might have led you to believe that someone else took the second cupcake, but “Hope you like cupcake” seemed weird. I did what felt right. You stole my heart, so I stole your extra cupcake.

Anyway, I gave it to you and you smiled because (a) liked me, (b) really like cupcakes, or (c) have nice manners. I hoped for a text or a call, but alas, that didn’t happen either. I was left behind, like a bow with worn out hairs. And let me tell you, you were my first and my last One Cupcake Stand. I know that I was kind of aggressive, but that’s just the city we live in. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love flies by you going 400 miles an hour, so if you don’t watch out, love will pass you by. You played your harmonious melodies and drew me in and then left me out in the cold. (Quite literally—it’s been frigid in DC lately.) You are a cello tease.

I’m not saying anything would have happened. But I can tell you what could have. I had a whole slew of puns like “Cello there, how are you?” and “Bach dirty to me,” but we’ll never get to use those, will we? I imagined it going really well and then one day, we’d spend our lives together. We’d lounge around after a long day. You’d get up and fix some type of drink and then play something simple on a stringed instrument, and then I would… watch. Because that’s pretty much the limitation of my skill set—looking at things… and cooking. Oh, and last night I found out that I can do a really good version of Forrest Whitaker’s eyes, but that’s neither here nor there. I had a life planned. A world that could have belonged to us, but it was over before it started.

I consider crying sometimes when I think about it—the situation, your cello, that cupcake… life, really. But I don’t because as Amy Winehouse once said, “My tears dry on their own.” But my biggest issue is that you continue to return to the corner of the street that I work on. You sit there, smugly, playing some classical piece and you see me walk by for my tri-daily trip to CVS to pick up an assortment of necessities. You don’t even say a word. I am Adam Sandler in a remake of 50 First Dates, except it’s not 50 First Dates. It’s 50 First Break-Ups. And then I think of that cupcake. Do you know how much white people pay for cupcakes? That was like, nearly $4.00. That’s the price of 2 cakes in 1962. For all intents and purposes, let’s look at it that way. I bought you two 1962 cakes, and you didn’t even care. Sometimes I wonder if you even ate it. You probably are gluten-free. God, you would be gluten free.

You might have even ruined the cello, no, ALL string instruments for me. And that sucks because I really love string instruments. You took Vitamin String Quartet from me, and that’s almost harder because everything they do is fantastic. They’ve literally covered every song in existence. For God’s sake they did “The Best of Nickelback” and “The Best of Nickelback 2.” I didn’t even know there was enough Nickelback to make a “Best Of” album, let alone, two. And you know what? I probably even enjoyed them. That’s how amazing they are, and that’s the amount of damage you’ve done. The only thing I want to thank you for is taking a little more Nickelback out of my life. For that, I am truly grateful.

It all makes sense now. I may not be the kind of guy you’re into. I’m commercial and fun and witty and mainstream. You sit on the corner playing your cello and you’re interesting and shit. It’s whatever. But you remember—it was mainstream music that brought us together, and it was your inability to love that tore us apart. As I close, I quote Taylor one more time, “I should have said no. I should have gone home. I should have thought twice before I put down a mortgage on two freaking cupcakes.”

In Christ,

Justin

Love and Pokemon

My friend Mark started playing Pokemon again; I think Red--one of the originals. For everyone who missed the late 90s/early 2000s, it's a game where you start out by choosing one of three Pokemon: a Squirtle, a Charmander, or a Bulbasaur. Choose the wrong Pokemon, restart the Gameboy and play again. Ultimately, the goal is to catch all of the Pokemon and defeat all of the Masters with the best team that you can assemble. But it all falls back to that first Pokemon--even if you don't use your first choice in the final battle, you always start the game believing that you will. Most people, the naive people, always choose a Charmander. If you do it right, you end up with a Charizard. But most people don't wait around long enough for that, and even if they do, you don't know what to do with a Charizard. That's okay, too. Not everyone is meant for a Charizard and what it means to have a Charizard. You don't always have to end up with what you started with.
Pokemon is an experience that you have--you don't really think of it that way as a kid. Actually, you don't think of it that way pretty much anytime. People who say that Pokemon is an experience is the kind of person who cries at the end of The Breakfast Club and totally ruins Lost for you because they talk about how the plot was all about the relationships between everyday people. But Pokemon is an experience, particularly similar to dating. Think about it: it takes nothing to catch a Weedle.
We've all dated Weedles. Occasionally, you run across someone cool like a Growlithe or a Vulpix--fiery and interesting. You want to date a coffee barista? That's a Lapras. You know where to find one, and as zen and urbane as he or she may seem, nothing ever really changes with them. And God forbid you ever run into a Chancey because much like the game, you're completely unprepared. Chanceys come around when you're approximately 6 shots in at the bar and you're dancing alone in the corner to "We Can't Stop." You're fresh out of Masterballs, and then you spend the next five days thinking about how you totally missed your shot at a Chancey. But whether it be a Chancey or a Lapras or a Growlithe, it really doesn't matter what you have if it doesn't make sense to your game plan, your experience.
To keep from completely ruining everything you've come to love and appreciate about Pokemon, the whole notion that dating and life and Pokemon are essentially interchangeable is because all three things boil down to one thing: the anatomy of a noun. Back in first or second grade, we're taught that a noun is a person, place, or thing. The noun is essentially the most basic of the language building blocks, second to spelling the words themselves. Nouns have such a simple function that we practically forget just how important they are. Because what everything depends on, ultimately, is a person, a place, or a thing--sometimes all three.
Sitting outside of my college dorm a couple years ago, I was dealing with a break up. Like most people after a break up, you go over everything you could have done differently in your mind--each argument or cancelled plan. You think about all the things you had considered doing and that you hadn't. And then you consider all of the things you did do and whether or not you should have done them. Lather, rinse, repeat. Sometimes, you'll drive yourself crazy with the notion, and unlike the Gameboy, you can't go back and restart it. You're stuck with the Pokemon you started out with, and even though you've logged it back into the Pokedex, it doesn't mean that it's not still there.
But that's where my friend Nam found me--out perched up on the side steps of Carnegie Hall puffing on a Camel Crush or something equally disgusting. She had known what I was going through, understanding that I had chosen to move away for grad school instead of trying at whatever assimilation of a relationship that I had. She plopped down beside me and asked me for a cigarette and began to explain how everything in life works--or at least everything to do with making a relationship work. She talked about how a relationship is a special kind of noun: it requires all three noun components--the right person, the right place, and the right thing... most usually, time.

Deal. I'm going to go eat an entire pizza and
watch American Horror Story.

It's a great little litmus test, if you're being honest with yourself. People in their 20s are obsessed with being in relationships--almost as much as they are about going to brunch or being purposefully ironic. But at the end of the day, when people stop coming to your single's brunch, and your friends don't want to go ice skating with you because it might appear that y'all are gay (Side note: I still completely stand by the notion that two men can go ice skating and it's totally platonic, but whatever. Not here, Justin. Not here.), we aggressively turn our minds toward a relationship because a relationship will be the thing that will fix us. And in your 20s, if you think there's a way that will fix everything, you immediately jump at the offer. That's why so many people do P90X, let's be honest. (Side note 2: You're never going to find me doing P90X. I tried it once. That's stupid and it hurts.)
I'm not against relationships. I think they can be amazing, and ultimately, as disgusting as it sounds--life is so much more fulfilling when you have someone to share it with. But to go back to Nam's theory, it requires everything that a perfect noun entails: the right place, the right time, and most importantly the right person. The right place is usually the easiest. Unless you're just a really avid eHarmony user who searches miles and miles outside of your own city, the person you might want to date is most likely going to be around you. The place is only complicated if you've just gotten there or you're just about to leave. But overall, the place is easy.
The time kind of meshes with the place. It's all about being settled and how busy you are. Oftentimes, we underestimate just how important the time part is because we always think we're ready for the next step. Either we're bored or we're swamped or we're somewhere in between, and we convince ourselves that we're ready for whatever we might find. The eternally monogamous don't understand what the world would be like single, and the eternally single are just positive that it's time to take a turn for the more serious. But in reality, time is complicated because it's not a state that can be determined by how long you've been single or what you've done before. It's a matter of knowing when the clock inside of you is ticking at the exact right speed with the right person.
And the person is the worst part of all because it's almost entirely out of your control. Even when the clock is ticking steady in the right place, it has to be ticking in sync with the right person. And that's terrible and magical at the same time because waiting for it to work is a nightmare, but when it does, it's this thing that makes you believe in things like fate and luck. Because as frustrating as catching all of the Pokemon may seem, sometimes, you do have a Masterball when a Chancey appears. And you have room in your belt for another Pokemon, and when you throw it and watch the ball wiggle, and wiggle again, and wiggle again, sometimes it just closes and there it is--it happened. You caught it.

Lapras, the smug Pokemon equivalent to
a coffee shop barista.

So you might not end up with the first Pokemon you started with (the high school or college sweetheart) because that rarely ever happens for anyone. That's tricky, and God help you if you end up with a Venasaur, because that just means someone is hanging around and eating all your shit. In the end, all of the pieces have to match up because anything else is just forced, and you really should reconsider metaphorically restarting that Gameboy. Life is too short to go around pretending to love someone for the sake of saying you're in love. Take that time and go live. Catch a Lapras to catch a Lapras and then store it away. Go explore all the different areas that you want to explore. And in the midst of all the Pokemon references, take a little time to find yourself because even in the moments when it may seem like the right time and the right place and the right person, you have to be content with who you are, when the Gameboy is shut off and you're lying alone at night. If you can't live with who you are, no one else is going to be able to live with you either.
Nam didn't include anything about Pokemon, but I know she probably would have if she thought of it. Instead, she finished up by snuffing out the end of her cigarette on the concrete step and brought it all home by saying, "That's it. If it's not the right person, the right place, and the right time, then it's not right for you. And in the meantime, you just have to wait." Nam's not really one to tell you that it comes when you least expect it or that love is just around the corner. She's kind of brutal with the truth, and she's not one that will tell you how close you are to love. Because what if it's the wrong place? You're not going to catch a Starmie in Viridian Forest.
And you're not going to find love or a relationship until all the right pieces match up.

Didn't We Almost Have It All?

I like to split my life into semesters because it's the easiest way I know how to turn my life into a television show. Each semester is representative of a season, and the breaks between class used to give me a break between each season, similar to the summer hiatus more television programs take. My life hardly fits into the semesterly format anymore, and in a year's time, semesters will cease to exist entirely. I have no idea how you split normal, everyday time into television seasons, but I'm sure once I'm faced with the issue, I'll find a way around it.
But in my television show, I alter the way I see things--no matter how boring or frustrating my life may get, I find a way to make it more entertaining or more dramatic in my mind. I make the frustrations mean something, even if they don't actually mean anything at all in reality. Some people would call that neurosis, but I tend to think it's just my way of constantly writing. I tend to make my life something I would rather see than what may actually be in front of me and because of that, I find no boredom in my life--every day is worth living to the fullest. The only problem with my method is when the lines between reality and my reality get blurred. And it happens to the best of us... the blurriness that is. It may not be a TV show in your mind, but we all have the things that we come to believe are true and they don't happen to particularly align with reality.

---

One of my favorite, most recent scenes that I play in my head happens every morning on the way to work. I recently found the song Underneath Your Beautiful, and I start it once I get off the escalator at the Metro Center subway stop.
If Shonda Rhimes has taught us anything about modern day television, it's that every powerful scene is best if accompanied by an equally powerful song. But as I transfer from Metro Center to Chinatown, the song grows in intensity, and once I get off the train and exit the turn stall and approach the summit of the final escalator, the song crescendos then grows silent. Sometimes I stop and watch the characters, slightly positioned cater-corner from the metro. There's the guy, and he says to the girl, I don't want to be your choice because you're not my choice. A choice means you have options--that there's a selection to choose from. A choice means that someone else matters enough to be considered. You're the only thing that matters to me. You were never just an option. And then he pauses, and they look into each other's eyes. I don't want to be your choice. And then I realize that I'm blocking the metro exit, and I wish that I knew how to screen write because that's good stuff. But I don't know how, and I'm now running forty-five seconds behind, so I walk on to work.

---

And that's when the perception is over. I may be the guy who has come up with multiple seasons of a fictional television dramedy, but I do understand when it's time to come back to the real world, and at times, it's a refreshing feeling. The image of the fake couple at the metro is perfect and eloquent and sweet, but it's just an image--at least for now. And when you can realize that it's just an image, it's almost as rewarding to be able to come back to reality and respect that story and that scene and those characters for what they were in the moment. It's similar to falling in love, or rather, falling out of it.

A little over a year ago, I was in love with being in love. I've come to believe it's a college senior year phenomenon as life is about to make a giant change, and if you can find something to place you in the moment, it may take your mind out of the future for a while. And it did, because for a while, I loved everything I was doing. I loved having someone to make out with, and I loved having someone to talk to. We had a song and inside jokes and mornings where we'd wake up in the same twin-sized college bed, and it really was amazing. And then it wasn't.

I've never been good at lying about important things, and once the new wore off, it became increasingly evident that the fairy tale I had produced in my mind was not what the reality seemed to be. But in too many cases, we waste time because we would rather believe that what we have is what we've come to perceive it as. So in the months before graduation, I tried to make it as fantastic as I wanted it to be. I knew what I wanted it to be, and more than that, I knew that I was the only one that wanted it that way. I was reaching for something that simply wasn't, and in a way, that's more painful than the whole thing being over. But then after too many walks and long conversations and disagreements about what the future might look like, I ended up sitting outside on a windy April unsure of exactly what I wanted to do. The conversation just wasn't happening--like, literally--it wasn't happening. So we sat there in silence for a while, and finally I said, I don't think we need to do this anymore. And there were tears, but for once, they weren't from me. I closed my eyes and leaned in for a final kiss because that's how all the best romances end, but when I opened them, I didn't really recognize the person that was sitting in front of me. And that was when I realized that I had fallen out of love. Or maybe more accurately, I had fallen out of love with trying to be in love. Like the image I see some mornings outside the metro, the love I had so strongly believed in had suddenly vanished once I realized how truly not there it was. It didn't mean that I didn't love the idea of it or love what I once believed was there. It was just the moment when you come to realize that a mirage is simply not tangible.
One of our greatest flaws as humans is the notion that we've ever understood what we need. In terms of the basics, I suppose we've gotten that down: the food, the water, the shelter bit. All of that seems pretty obvious. But where it gets complicated is when we try to figure out what will make us complete--you know, after the basics. It honestly doesn't take a lot to keep a human alive, but the struggle comes when we try and figure out what makes a human feel alive. And that's where we step in with our notions and presuppositions. It's just our normal reaction, even sometimes going so far as to try and make those decisions for others: an issue I had a year ago, and one that I've essentially imposed on a ton of fictitious characters. We try and make life what we think it should be with little regard to the idea that maybe life works itself out without our imposing hand.
But the learning process is difficult, so I stick with primarily forcing life decision on to the people who live in my head instead of the people who live... well... with me. I think, at least for me, part of it has to do with being impatient and the other part has to do with having control over something. Television is planned out beautifully, almost to the point that it's predictable. You have the season opener, then November sweeps, then February sweeps, and then the finale. You may not know exactly what's going to happen, but you have a pretty good feeling when it will happen. You have character development, and on the up and up, everyone can fall in love and experience the depths of life (with the aforementioned musical background). And as for my life? There's hardly anything scripted about it--it's about as close to reality TV as you can get. And when it doesn't follow script, all you can do is wait for the next scene and look back and say, Maybe it was never supposed to go that way at all.

I Have to Hate You First

I've sat here tonight and desperately tried to think of a blog topic, or some kind of funny anecdote from years passed to write on, and I can't do it because I'm thinking about how frustrated I've become with my reality, and the circumstances I've allowed myself to become a slave to, and most of all, I think of how much I've come to hate myself. But in the moment, I hate myself for what I've let my life become. I hate the people around me because I feel their judgment, and I patiently wait for them to walk away from me so that I can hate them even more for not waiting for me to not feel like this. They've made me doubt myself and question who I am as a person. At times, some of them have made me feel unattractive and lazy and ugly and worthless. And from day to day, I find myself resenting them more and more because it only contributes to the hate I feel inside for myself. And I'm sure that "hate" probably doesn't seem like the right word because it's awfully strong, but I was once told that you can't hate something that you don't care about--you can't hate something you're not willing to fight for.
And that doesn't make any sense, right? Surely, that's the most ridiculous logic that you've ever heard in your life, and if I hadn't spent the past two weeks contemplating this topic, I'd think I was crazy, too. But life, as of late, has been difficult. I work two jobs and go to school, and at the end of the day, it feels awfully thankless. I hear from someone that they're disappointed in something I've done, and if it didn't happen in some context at work, I feel it when I get home. There's this quietness that envelops you, and you just don't feel wanted. And at night, you look in the mirror, and you feel like you're becoming all of the things you don't want to--you've become bitter and angry and you've lost a part of yourself and all you want are the people that know you best. You want the people from home and the life that you've left behind to join the adult world.

This is a real outfit, that he thought was okay,
and wore out in public... like, for real.

If you haven't stopped reading after those two very self-deprecating paragraphs, you should get a gold star because I'm getting to a point, I swear. The point of all that being: this isn't the first time that I've hated myself or the people around me. Actually, some of the people that I love most in my life are people, at one point, that I have hated and/or hated me. They're the same people that I want now, and it didn't really hit me until I wrote on my last roommate's Facebook tonight about how much I missed him. Scotty John always had a terrible sense of fashion. See picture to the right. But regardless of that, we chose to be roommates. We had all of these plans and ideas for what my senior year would look like, but in the end, we didn't get to spend a lot of time together, and about half the time we did get to spend together, we were arguing: about who was going to do the dishes, or about him throwing out my feta cheese because it had "molded," or about the girl he was seeing, or about how I was trying to come in between him and the girl he was seeing. At times, the fighting became volatile with him going as far to curse at me via permanent marker on our refrigerator (which I subsequently spent about an hour and a half scrubbing off with alcohol), or it could be as quietly uncomfortable as a total freeze out on my end of the deal. By the end of the year, the small arguments had amassed to the point that I doubted we would even be friends after that. Two days before my graduation, he moved out, and we never really spoke much over the next couple months.
But when I went back for my first visit home in October, he was literally the first person I saw when I got back to campus. I had cleared busting into his public relations class via Facebook... actually, he was the one who gave me the idea, and then after class, we went and had breakfast together in the college cafe. And even though we never really addressed what had happened the year before or gone into any magical kind of explanation, we both kind of knew that there were wrongs on both sides of the fence and ultimately things that we didn't know about each other. At the end of the day, we were both going through big years in our lives: one of us dealing with one of the craziest relationships known to man, and the other one dealing with what it meant to be leaving home and everything he had known for his whole life. We were both in this transitory place that neither of us quite knew how to deal with, and oftentimes, it led to us standing in our kitchen with both of us holding our hands up looking at the other person and saying What do you want? And a lot of times, we didn't have the answers. But when someone is supposed to be in your life and you don't always have the answers... you don't always know what you should say to them, but you keep on going because you know in your heart that person is having to put up with as much shit from you as you are from them. You put up with one another because you care, and you believe in the good that could come of it.
And the frustration and the hating and the arguments... it made us real. The fact that we hated each other showed that we cared enough about each other in the first place to feel something for one another. I've never resented a single person in my life for hating me or being angry. I've only ever truly resented the people who walked away without a fight because that showed me they never cared about me in the first place. People are allowed to feel, and the tears and anger didn't make us less of men--it made us two guys who were trying to figure out our lives and just happened to have to figure out one another in the process.
Scotty is not the only one... the list goes on and on, and most of the people on that list are people that I have come to care about to varying extents, but when I look back on those people, we may have had a  time in the past that we couldn't stand one another, but we've never made each other feel like less of a person, and we've never gone out of our way to belittle one another. The arguments always varied and came from different places, but the reason I miss those people so much is because they almost always have encouraged me to be the person that I inherently am. And I suppose that's where the distinction comes in. One of the most important things you can ever know about a person is that you can't put them in a box--you can't apply your logic to their lives, and if you ever go into a relationship with another person with the hopes of changing them, you should know your attempts will be fruitless. We are all our own complicated, weird selves, and changing someone to fit the mold you'd hope they'd be... well, that's just selfish. In all of the hating, it's important to remember that there are people who are just going around blindly hurting others, and in a way, you have to be able to spot them pretty quickly after they spot you. You have to find the people who are going to challenge you and be able to distinguish them from the people who are just around to provide critique and look down at you.
And it's difficult because you have to sit down and literally take the time to think: who is it in this new experience who has my back, who's here to help me grow, and who is here to tear me down? It's a tricky triangle to place people into, especially when you're tired and frustrated with yourself.
So I try to remember that there are times when even the people I've come to care most about were people that pushed me to my greatest limits. And at this point in my life, I also try to remember that we're just a bunch of children who are trying hopelessly to identify what it means to be an adult. We want to go home. We don't want to have to try anymore because it's hard to remember when rent is due, and it's hard to balance life, and you get tired of assuming everyone else's stress on to you. You forget to make time for yourself and you start turning on the people around you; and when you feel like you've alienated them enough, you start turning on yourself.
I took the entire weekend and tried to collect my thoughts as best as possible, and I tried to ignore those around me because I know that to pull myself out of whatever I'm in right now, I need to take a moment to reflect. It wasn't until those days after Scotty had moved out that I started to consider what I could have done differently along the way to make the situation better, and at that point, it almost felt useless--my best friend and roommate was gone, and at the time, I didn't know when I would get the chance to make it better. But that's what the past is for, isn't it? We get lucky enough to have these people stick around--people we once believed we hated, just so that we can learn from the love we've given one another. You get the opportunity to make the present a little bit better than the past. And for now, I'm living in this moment and learning from the past and realizing that maybe in order to love other people... and to love yourself... you have to do a little hating first.

Handsy on the Metro

When I was planning on moving up to DC, one of my fraternity brothers who had lived in DC before asked me what I was most excited about.

The metro. Definitely the metro.

And I mean, he tried to warn me. He told me that it would be fun at first, but that it would get old. As a recent graduate, I built it up to just be the jaded attitude of adulthood. The metro was awesome. The metro is how the cool kids go places. And you know... maybe it is. But the thing about the metro is that you have to know what you're doing; it's kind of like walking into a gay club or a drug deal. You don't go to "ya boy's boy Demetrius" and go and ask him what kind of illicit materials he has available this week. That's pretty much how the metro works. You don't go to mingle and conversate, and you don't dare mosey. You get on the metro to get shit done.

But very similar to my first drug deal and gay club experience, the metro took some getting used to, and it didn't come without it's fair share of errors. As a young resident of what some (okay, very few) have come to call "The District,"all I wanted to do was talk to people, which seems like a natural thing to do considering that back in Tennessee I have fifteen minute conversation with gas station attendants. But I quickly learned that no one wanted to talk back to me. Occasionally there would be a man with an airbrushed Obama shirt or a disheveled homeless man up for some incomprehensible rapport, but on the up and up, the metro just wasn't the place where you had conversation.
I made a series of errors on the metro in my first week that could have gotten me arrested and/or killed. Occasionally, when I would get bored, I would take pictures of myself with sleeping people to see if I could get away with it. Once when the doors were closing, I stuck my leg inside thinking that it worked like an elevator, but all that happened was that my leg was closed inside the door, like an unforgiving guillotine. Essentially, what I'm trying to say is that there is nothing fun about the metro. It's not a game, and it's not a social site. Most of all, it's not for children or people without direction.
It wasn't long until I became "one of them." I had a bonified metro pass with reloadable features, and I judged people who used paper passes. Once I descended into hell the escalator, I make eye contact with no one. People do not watch out for each other once they are underground; you are simply on your own.
Today seemed like any other day--I talked to my mom on the way to work, scanned my metro pass to get in and board, and just like every other mid-week venture, the metro was absolutely packed. I wore my colorful sweater and corduroy pants, you know, because it seemed like that kind of day, but with it, I wore my blue Chuck Taylors. I always try to wear something against the norm because DC is a boring place when it comes to fashion. People wear the same black slacks and loafers every day, so it's important to find some kind of way to stand out. The person standing fartherst from me couldn't have been more than a foot away, but the rule still applies: no looking and no conversation. The man standing directly in front of me was looking down at my shoes; it wasn't surprising to me--like I said, people don't really wear things like that to work.
But after the first stop, I could feel someone staring at me. You know the feeling... that pressing awkwardness when someone's eyes are quite obviously fixed upon you, and when I looked up the same man was staring at me. He was probably around my age, Hispanic, and a decent looking guy. I nodded at him and gave him a brief smile, then quickly turned away. But the longer I stood there, the more pressing the feeling became. He is still staring at you. You can feel it. So, I glanced back in his direction, and indeed, he was still staring. Feeling a little more energized this morning than usual, I decided to play his game.
We held each other's gaze for about fifteen seconds, and then he lifted his hand off the bar he was holding and gently put it over mine. For a second I was stunned... I mean, you don't look at people on the metro, and you definitely don't talk to people on the metro, so I can only assume that you are under no circumstance supposed to purposefully touch anyone on the metro. I glanced up at his hand, and glanced back at him, and he was still staring at me... smiling. The woman next to us looked at me, then at him, and gave us this knowing smile as if to say, I support your decision to be homosexual together. Congratulations. I did something akin to a smile/mouth stretching exercise and slowly pulled my hand down by my side. Yes, I risked the possibility of eating it on the metro, but it seemed kind of worth it to avoid this awkward situation with [this stranger/creeper/my new boyfriend].
The man immediately apologized, and I said, I mean, it's cool. I'm not bothered. Thank you. It's not a big... okay. And then I just kind of turned perpendicular to him and tried to evaluate what had just happened. Yes, a good sixty-five percent of me was really weirded out by the whole ordeal, but there was this other thirty-five percent that was oddly appreciative. People in DC, and a good number of people in my life, do not show emotion, let alone physical affection. I don't know if the guy was interested or potentially blessing my hand with some odd Hispanic ritual, but something compelled him to do it.
Because DC is DC, I'll probably never see my mysterious hand-holder ever again, but if you ever read this, I will never forget the thirty second visual exchange we shared, and the five seconds that woman thought we were a couple. And for a number of reasons, I hope that you're the only random man who ever caresses my hand on the metro. Let's be honest--it just wouldn't be the same with anyone else.

I Don't Know Why You Gotta Be Angry All The Time

This past week, my internship told me that I had an invitation to stay four more months if I was interested; I had done a spectacular job, and if a long-term position opened up, I would be immediately considered for it. That week started off fresh from a visit from my parents and ended with a double paycheck Friday. I had plans for the entire weekend set up, and still... with all of that good news in hand, I was told a record three times that week, Justin, I would never want to be on your bad side because when someone gets on your bad side, it's pretty obvious that they stay there.
At first, I enjoyed the summation because it made me feel like Victoria Grayson from Revenge or one of those Italian men from The Sopranos. Essentially, what I took from it is that I'm kind of a badass and garner respect from the masses. But after the third time, I began to wonder... what is it that I'm doing to people?? I looked back at my archived journals to figure out when the last time I held someone at knifepoint was, and that was way back in sophomore year of college, so it couldn't be that. Naturally, because I live in my own head, I decided to take a step back and try to think about what it is that could be making me so subtly angry.
At first I was a little perplexed as to why I could ever be perceived as a bitter person because, under most definitions, I am what the kids refer to as "living the dream." I somehow manage to pay rent every month (so far), and I have a small social circle. I'm doing well in school, and my professors think I have a witty, unique personality. What. Could. Be. Missing. When the solution isn't very evident, you start looking at the particulars. I've made a bulleted list you can scan through:

• a stronger affinity than usual for the lead pipe I carry in my car
• a spike in plays of "Somebody That I Used to Know"
• an influx of Reese's wrappers hidden throughout my apartment so that no one can find them
• an odd distaste for any movie closely related to a RomCom

After some initial WebMD searches, followed by an intensive unrelated Google search of "Where Do Broken Hearts Go," I decided that maybe I was lovesick. Lovesickness is something that people don't really like to admit to because, well, it's embarrassing and looks kind of needy. But it's not something that you should ignore because when you do that, people say that you're angry, and then you just make people less apt to fall in love with you, because that's how love works.

Apparently it's not that uncommon of an issue because, as of tonight, all three occupants of my apartment have now bastardized our personalities and dignity to create online dating profiles. Love, or the lack of it, makes you do some funny things which probably explains a lot of the weird things I've done in the past when it comes to relationships. No one can say that they're perfect, and when under the influence of hormones and the ever lingering threat of getting married while you're still in shape and proudly sporting a head full of hair, you start to have a really guilty sympathy for Amy Fisher, aka the Long Island Lolita.

I can never say that I've ever shot my lover's wife in her face, and that's something that I believe is a trait to be proud of; BUT it doesn't make me exempt from the laundry list of things I've done in the face of loneliness and desperation. The effects of lovesickness come in different forms: the direct and the indirect. As I've seen from our personal experiences at the apartment, the indirect is one of the most hilarious and/or ridiculous products involved in this process. As we've been filling out our profiles, we turn to each other in a nervous panic saying, This website asked me what I'm good at... WHAT AM I GOOD AT?!?!1?!!1 It's like we've forgotten what we do on a daily basis so we turn to basic human functions (walking places, checking the mail, buckling my seatbelt) because we've forgotten any remnant of a skill set we have. And then there's me who waits seven minutes, has no profile visits, then launches into a soliloquy about the shallow nature of humanity, and that if your profile picture isn't alluring enough, you might as well consider yourself trash. It's exhausting being self-deprecating.

This is called a Tango Corte, or as I referred to it in class,
the "kiss my ass, I'm really jaded after our relationship"
thingy.

But the redeeming quality of the indirect is that you can keep it as private as you would like; the real issue begins when you start directing those feelings in different directions. At the climax of my last relationship's downfall, I was in the same ballroom dancing class as my significant other. Ironically, we were not partners, which seemingly would make continuing in the class easier. However, the effects of lovesickness knows no bounds. I took my partner, Rachel, aside and told her, Listen. Today is the tango, and I'll explain it later, but I need us to blow this shit out of the water. And by this, I mean we need to blow them out of the water. I pointed out the couple in question and explained our mission. Rachel, being my Jennifer Grey, quickly agreed. We used our long limbs to parade around the dance floor, doing as many of the cortes (see above) as possible before our instructor told us to stop having sex on the dance floor. Was I accomplishing anything of any substantial value by completely kicking the tango's ass? No. No, I was not. But in the face of feeling kind of sad and heartbroken, sometimes it helps to believe you're doing mean things to other people. And when you look back on it, the idea of what you've done is almost comical because ninety-nine percent of the time, whatever grand scheme you had going on in your head has had no significant impact on the other person's life. You unsubscribed to your ex on Facebook? Zing. Bet that one's going to burn for at least fifteen minutes.

And sure, all of these things are easy to make fun of, pity, or maybe even demean someone for because the idea of feeling so spiteful in regard to love seems a little contradictory to the process itself. But at the end of the day, we're all just kind of human. We do stupid things in the face of potentially being alone because no matter what we may say, we like the idea of having someone in our lives. I mean, I know in my case that if someone isn't at my apartment when I get in from work, I just go and talk to the pictures on my bedroom wall until I hear someone walk through the door. We're not a species of people that are meant to live our lives alone, so you can't blame people for the weird reactions they have when they are forced to go stag for a little bit. The important part of it all is that you look at yourself at the end of the day and say, You know. I'm kind of being batshit crazy right now because if you can accept the fact that the way you're acting is totally absurd, then you at least have that in check.

Acting out and doing the weird human things we do in the face of a loveless life is what makes us who we are. Some people like to "find themselves" and do yoga or swear off of (insert gender) for (insert time period). Some people resort to online methods in hopes of ending up on an eHarmony commerical one day. Then you have people like me, who apparently uses his lack of love life as an excuse to hone in on his ability to terrify people into believing that he could kill them at a moment's notice. Whatever you do to pass the time between romances is perfectly acceptable, as long as you don't shoot anyone like Amy Fisher did. Nobody likes that kind of crazy.

Falling in Love Outside of Your Race (Or, Mother Do I Have a Milkshake?)

I think my parents always expected me to bring a nice white, Christian girl home one day and announce, This is the woman that I'm going to make my wife... or at least that's what they hoped for. In reality, I've brought home just about every variation of that equation except for that one. Casey and i never left a lot of room open for prejudice in our house because we were apparently really bad at following direction. And in started early for both of us. Casey's first major crush was on Amber Logan, a girl in our eighth grade class, and while Amber was extremely nice and extremely Christian, she wasn't by any stretch white, and once they had lost Casey, my parents began to reevaluate the characteristics they would hope for in our future mates. To come from the extended-Kirkland-clan (who made racist jokes into sport over Christmas dinner), my parents taught Casey and I how to love a little more freely than even they expected. We didn't see color or religion or any of that stuff, and there's no way that Kathy and Wendell could have prepared for that.
But being the trailblazer that I am, I opened up the door for Casey when I fell madly in love late into seventh grade. It was a process because you don't just jump from an incidentally all-white elementary school (with the exception of John Kearney and his biracial brother) into a melting pot such as South-Doyle Middle School. But once I had acclimated as a sixth grader and moved into seventh grade, I realized that the myths were untrue: black people are actually not only safe, but friendly. As a seventh grader, I was allowed to apply for and join Cherokee Television (CTV), which was the morning broadcast put on by middle schoolers to inform the school what was going on. If you were accepted into the small ranks, you were essentially a school-wide celebrity. Originally, I was placed in charge of the soundboard, but because of my inability to keep from pressing random buttons, I was quickly moved to an on-screen position. At the tender age of 12, I was placed as co-host of Homeroom Feud with Sydney Cross, my first black friend. We were quite a duo and groundbreaking in terms of CTV history. Never had South-Doyle had a multiracial duo hosting Homeroom Feud.

"And they're like, it's better than yours."

It took weeks to get over the fact that I wasn't selected as the primary host of CTV, or "the Katie Couric," as I would come to call it. But I made the best out of my position... that is until Sydney and I started having communication issues. I was always a precocious child, but in the purest ways possible. I could have a conversation with an adult like it was my job, but when it came to people my own age, sometimes I fell behind. Up until this point in my life, I had only listened to country music, so when Sydney walked in singing My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, I was a little taken aback. I asked Sydney who this song was by and what a milkshake was, but she denied me an answer. I was very obviously out of the loop, and it was upsetting to know that this milkshake double entendre was like a special club that I couldn't be apart of.
I went around asking people Will you tell me what a milkshake is? I asked my regular information sources: teachers, cafeteria workers, anyone with the slightest bit of authority. No one seemed to understand this "milkshake" either. I went home and asked my parents, but they didn't understand what was going on. So, in desperation, I turned to Google. I had prepared a list of preliminary questions, just in case I found out the answer:
--What is a milkshake?
--Do I have a milkshake?
--Is this the kind of milkshake you can drink?
--Why does this milkshake bring all the boys to the yard?
--How do you compare milkshakes?
Sadly, I don't think my query was specific enough, so for months, I was left stranded with the cliffhanger: what is a milkshake? I had decided that without Sydney's help, I was essentially out of luck. That was (and I didn't realize how mildly racist this was until now) until I met my second black friend, Kierra. She was everything that I had hoped my second black friend would be, and she was much less crass than Sydney. From the time that I started CTV to the end of eighth grade, I had been through three co-hosts, but no surefire fit. I was just a Kathy Lee looking for my Hoda, and there she was. Naturally, the first thing I did was ask Kierra what a milkshake was, and she quickly obliged and educated me on Kelis' ways. It wasn't long after that I started having the deep, raw emotional love that only seventh graders can feel, and then it happened: I had fallen in love with a black girl. I had no idea how I would ever tell my parents, but I knew that I had to. Kierra, for all intensive purposes, was supposed to be the love of my life. No matter the race, when you find a woman who willingly tells you what a milkshake is and compliments you perfectly as co-host of a low budget middle school television program, you love that woman with all of your heart.
I promised myself that I wouldn't kill my parents' dreams of snow white Aryan babies until I had to, but when I told Kierra that I liked her, she told me that she didn't "like me-like me." Little did she know, she set off a chain reaction in which I would spend the majority of middle and high school without any physical or emotional contact with anyone, followed by my college years when I would scandalously make out with just about anyone... regardless of race, religion, etc. The pain has died down since, but it just recently hit me: Kierra, my second black friend in the world, used her milkshake to bring 12 year old Justin to the yard, and then denied me. The personal alienation that followed, the scandalous/somewhat loose college years, my inability to commit to people: it all dials back to one thing... the milkshake.
But in time, all wounds eventually heal and time has a way of changing things. Kelis would go on to release much more provocative music before finally fading out into oblivion; I like to believe that her and Macy Gray share an apartment somewhere in inner-city New York. Kierra is off at college finishing up her undergrad; I like to think she's made friends that aren't nearly as ignorantly racist as I was as a twelve year old. Me on the other hand, I wander the streets of DC without any regard to any defining quality of a person. I just want someone to love--someone who will use their milkshake to bring me to the yard, teach me, but not have to charge.
And in the long run, I don't think my parents even care if I bring home a nice, white, Christian girl home anymore because I did that once, and that was the one girlfriend that I've had that both Kathy and Wendell didn't really like at all. In reality I think Wendell, who at one point could have arguably been classified as racist himself, dislikes white people more than he does any other race. Our Thanksgivings are void of color requirement (and religion and sexuality, for that matter) at this point. Raising Casey and me opened their eyes to a new world, and they've learned that there are much more important things in the world than a small defining quality.

Heart Shaped Box

"Heart shaped box, she eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak."- Nirvana

As I emerged from the metro this evening, I made sure that I had my earphones in. I turned up Edith Piaf's "Milord" to a deafening level to drown out the flurry of Virginia voting enthusiasts that attack you as you emerge from underground. As I squirmed through the crowd finally getting to the crosswalk, I thought to myself, Oh, God. They won't be there tomorrow. I don't even know why I was sad... but I was. The Virginia voting hawks waiting outside the Clarendon metro screaming at me were going to disappear into dust, or maybe just back home with their abandoned families. Either way, we were about to break up, and in the worst break up way possible. I never gave them the time of day until it was too late, and now, these people that have become something normal, something comfortable, in my life are going to be gone. I'm breaking up with the Virginia voting hawks, and I'm not taking it well because as stupid and silly as it sounds, when you're in a new place with new people and nothing seems normal anymore, then yes... the Virginia voting hawks are important.
But it's not the worst break up I've ever been through by any means. In the grand scheme of things, I'll look back on my time with the Virginia voting hawks, and I'll smile. But in the moment, a break up can be one of the most devastating thing the human heart can go through, and yes, I'm talking about the literal human heart. Okay, actually, maybe I'm talking about the human body in general, but there is a pain that comes with heartbreak. And that's why it was so hard to deal with the two hardest heartbreaks I've had in life back to back. Like the voters, they both ended slowly--one with a letter, the second with nothing at all.
Even when things are complicated and messy, it's nice to know that there's someone around that is living in it with you, even if that person is partially responsible for it being that way. As humans, we love the conflict because it's a reminder that we're breathing and alive and capable of feeling. So after several tiresome months of an on-again, off-again relationship, everything that had gone wrong was outlined in a letter. She explained to me everything that had gone wrong, everything she didn't like about me anymore, and how in the process of getting to where we were, I had somehow become a different person. And with no consideration for everything that letter meant, I immediately threw it away. Just like that, all the good and bad and complicated and amazing that came with that relationship was gone. The only thing not listed in that letter was that I was clearly in love with someone else for the last half of our relationship. She never spoke to me about it, and under any other person's standards, I didn't cheat. But soon after the break up and the letter, I found myself grasping for the hand that I loved more than her. And as time went on, that hand got further and further away until it wasn't even visible anymore. Everything about my life had been turned upside down, and that's when the numbing pain really started. And that leads me to "the heart shaped box."
At the time, no matter how shallow or simple it may seem, my life consisted of those two people. I relied on their consistency: one to be around to always love me, and one to be around for me to always love. And in what seemed like an instant, it was all over. It doesn't particularly have to be romantically charged, though it oftentimes is, but it's at that point--the point when you have seemed to fall into absolute no man's land, so lost you can't stand it--that the heart shaped box is emptied of all its contents. What's even worse is that you have no idea where all the things inside it went. You're just left sitting there with this box and for a while, it seems so appealing because with nothing inside the box, you have nothing to lose. There's so much room to fill within it, but the issue is... filling the heart shaped box is kind of like the opposite of packing. There's a sense of urgency that comes with filling it, but ultimately, there's nothing to put inside.
To tone down the metaphor for a second, let's backtrack. After I lost those two incredibly important people, I realized that I never really made enough time (or room) for anyone else. My life had become a dedication to the relationships I had with them, which is where the problem set in. There was no one around to help me understand what had happened or how to put it back together, and in essence, there was nothing inside of me to help me remember the person I was. In all that free time I had with myself, there were a lot of tears. No one ever saw them because most of them were in private, which isn't so hard when you realize that most of your life is being led in private. I had to reteach myself what it was like to sit with my own thoughts. It took awhile, but to even begin to refill that box with anything of importance or meaning, I had to understand the person in charge of collecting those items.
For people like me, even when you kind of begin to grasp what's going on inside of your head and start to reestablish the person you are, you kind of get over the self-reflection. Unfortunately, you usually still have a chunk of time left over, and it's bittersweet and frustrating because with that extra time, you get to evaluate that box: how much room you have, how exactly you can make everything fit, but most importantly, what and whom goes into it. I don't think that the emptying of your box happens an absurdly high number amount of times in your life, but it definitely happens more than anyone would ever hope it could. Each time still sucks because... well... you got your shit thrown out and you weren't really planning on it. But in time, you teach yourself how to adjust because you know that's what you have to do. You memorize what was once inside like a Memory game, and the most important things and people will find their place within your heart shaped box again. It may sound cold, but the older you get, I think you learn more so what shouldn't be in that box... your life becomes exclusive and important, not because you're above those around you but because you finally realized that your life is too special to just share everything with everyone.
I'm three months into living in DC, and sometimes I'll still get impatient. I guess I thought that everything would be sorted out by now, and I have to begrudgingly remind myself that filling the box takes time. Something I've noticed is that I've become more particular about what and whom becomes apart of my life, and in a way, I worry about the people that I choose because I hold on to them more steadfastly than I ever have in my life. It's a steady balance that you have to hold because you don't want to scare the shit out of anybody... no one likes a "Stage 5 Clinger,"but I do think it's equally important to realize how quickly life moves and morphs. We never know when we are going to be pulled away from one another and the circumstance under which it might happen. And sadly, I'm pretty confident that the Virginia voter hawks will not make it into the heart shaped box; at this point, I think we're going to cut our losses. However, I would like to believe that the very few that I have met in this new city who have a place in there not only understand that their place is eternal, but also how very much it means.

Eight Reasons That I Don't Want To Get Married Right Now

I love marriage. It's precious and beautiful and all those other really sweet words that people like to put in their vows. I look forward to the day that I find someone to spend the rest of my life with because isn't that all what we're looking for in the long run? We want that person that will stick with us through everything because the idea itself is a marvel, and I don't mean that sarcastically. There are days that I wake up and don't like myself, so to know that there could be someone out there that wakes up beside me and regularly sees something inside of me that I don't even see myself... that's amazing.
But, for now, I'd just like that in the "living in sin" sense. Give me someone to wake up with, sure, but I'm not interested in making it official quite yet. This past summer was full of marriages, and let me tell you... the horse is dead. You all killed it; you beat it with a stick, stuck it in a photo booth with a fedora, fake mustache, and glasses with no lenses, pulled it out, made it do the cha cha slide for an unprecedented four times, shoved red velvet cake in its face, then turned it to glue so that you could finish your latest Pinterest project. That poor, poor horse.

8. None of my friends can afford to get me the wedding presents I want.
I've seen you people. Everybody wants to go out, but no one wants to drive because we don't have any gas. And I can see it... I'll be asking for a flatscreen TV or something equally awesome, and your ass is going to roll up at my wedding with a set of coasters. I don't want your coasters right now because you'll be able to say Oh, well. You know things are tight for me right now. I want to wait until you have a good job with a lot of moneys... then I want to hear your excuses. The longer I wait, the nicer the presents I will get. In my opinion, weddings are not about solidifying my love for someone in front of all of my friends. If I haven't done that on a daily basis, then I have no business getting married. Weddings are for presents. The end.

7. I don't have any neat ideas for hipster wedding pictures.
I'm just going to go ahead and get it out there: I'm not on Pinterest. I like the idea of being super crafty, but I'm still cleaning up a glue gun mess from when I was seven. So for the safety of everyone in my life, it's really best if I don't try getting creative at my own hand. But that leaves me with everyone else's ideas. Cropped pictures in sepia of a girl walking around in casual clothing inside of a barn or pastoral setting. That's pretty much where I grew up, and to me, there's not really any unique, quaint sentiment that comes along with it. So, I'm going to wait until something else becomes popular... preferably painted family portraits. Put that in the newspaper and on your save the date. Paint me acrylic or paint me single.

6. You don't have to be married to have babies.
As many of you probably saw on Facebook, I'm expecting. It's true. After giving it some thought and realizing that I've become pretty good at feeding myself, Andrew and I have decided to bring another animal besides Ben into our home. If I have my way, it will be a little boy named Chico. He's four months old, and he's been caged for about a week now. I will walk around with him and refer to myself as "the man." If I can take care of a cat for at least a year without killing it, then maybe I'll entertain the idea of welcoming a human into my home. From what I hear, people that get married get bored after awhile... and when the sex gets predictable, they have kids. Even if I get bored in my twenties, I'm assuming that it's pretty easy to get a baby. People leave them at the park down the road from my apartment all the time. You don't need a spouse to have a baby when you have a nursery next to the basketball court.

5. I haven't had a successful relationship in... oh yeah. Awkward.
My longest relationship that I've had last six years, and now she's married, so that's over. Thanks, Kasi. But even when we were Bo and Hope from Days of Our Lives, our entire relationship was a roller coaster and a half. The last relationship I was in was nursed by too many indie record songs to count. I'm just not too good at making these things last too long, and that's frustrating, so I'm going to assume that without some further practice, I'm probably going to crash and burn... but with a license and a family attorney. I don't have a super athletic-like day then sign up for a 5K... the same theory applies.

4. I haven't met anyone with a super cool last name.
I know, I know. I'm a boy. But listen to me for a minute. You should never pass up an opportunity to upgrade if given the opportunity to, so I'm going to keep my options open. I have a pretty hard last name to beat. Not only is Kirkland a pretty strong name, but it also is the name of a pretty cool furniture store, and it allows me to have my initials be JK. I have a pretty sweet deal, but that doesn't mean there isn't a sweeter deal out there. Don't waste what really conservative folks say is the only marriage you'll ever have by getting a shitty last name or keeping the shitty last name you have. Don't waste an excellent opportunity to improve your drivers license by careless 20-something mistakes.

3. In 44 states, I'm limited to only a 50% selection of who I can marry.
I like my options. If I go to Burger King, I expect to be able to get chicken or a burger. And yeah, it's nice that I have the option, but what happens when someone who can't eat beef shows up and all the chicken is gone. It's stupid and wrong and an ugly, ugly idea to even consider. So, if everyone isn't allowed to get married, then I don't really care to get married either. Getting married seems like purposefully overdressing for a party...  I get it. You have nice clothes, but there's people here who don't. I guess for me, marriage doesn't make a lot of sense if it's only available for a certain group of people. And it's not like it's a crazy assertion to let two consenting adults pay their taxes together and have power of attorney... it's not like I'm trying to marry Chico (which would be a double hit, because he's a cat and a dude). If I find a dude and hit it off, and he doesn't want to watch sports when Grey's Anatomy is one then (gay)me on.

2. Even if it's without consent, I have someone to snuggle with anytime I want.
I forgot to put that I do this in my online roommate profile, but Andrew has quickly found out that more times than not, I'm going to corner him and then nuzzle against him for about thirty seconds or so until I get my physical-interaction-fix. I agree that it's important to have a physical interaction with someone, but I'm going to get a little liberal and say... you don't need a ring on your finger to do that. And I'm lucky because he doesn't try and escape me that often. And when I'm done, he listens to me complain and celebrate my life. Maybe it's a little too I Love You, Man for your taste, but I don't think it's particularly important to solidify a spouse early on as a source of love and support. Call me lucky, but I have a pretty great support system that I never have feel obligated to buy dinner for, and having him around is practice so that I can see what drives people so crazy that they don't want to be around me anymore.

1. I just recently realized that I have no idea who the $&#^ I am.
I mean, yes, there's a base. All of the stories I've written on this blog are evidence of that. But when you're 22 years old and move away from home and know not a single person, you really start having to look really hard at yourself. I came out of eighteen years of living with my parents followed by four years of living on a college campus. Then, you're thrust out into the world and you start proving to yourself who you really can be. And I guess you could argue that you're going to be changing forever, and I suppose you're right. I'm going to maybe be self-absorbed in saying this, but I think that right now is our time. This is your chance to figure out why you are you. And people say, we can grow together, but I want to share my life with someone... not forge it into one. My biggest fear is to look at someone that I love one day and realize that I didn't give them the time to become their own person and know that we have grown apart.