For Anthony...One Last Time

This blog is a special one. It's one that you might think should be delivered as an email, specifically to the person it is intended for. And maybe it should. But I've found throughout my life that a lot of the time, people tend to hide away from the rest of the world the things that are most crucial to who they are and who they will become; mostly, I assume, out of fear that someone will come to know something about them that may be construed to be weak or "deeper" than they may have wanted anyone to think they were. Some people are afraid to let the world know that they have felt anything at all. I know because I used to be one of them.

However, as I grow wiser, I understand that it serves me not to maintain that persona. It hinders my fluid movement through this life to dance around potential embarrassment or others' ignorant reprisal of alleged weakness. In essence, avoiding obstacles actually takes more effort and slows progress. I prefer to drive through life toward every new day in a straight and forceful movement. This is my new goal everyday and so far, it has proved to be a fascinating way in which to experience the world I exist in. But sometimes the experiences we most want to live at full speed are the ones that make us stop for a minute to try to figure out what the hell just happened and why.

Over the last 2 years or so, I've been moving through (and unknowingly out of) one of these experiences. And for its own reasons, it has come to completion. Well, sort of. Anything that rattles our chains in one way or another has the capacity to follow along with us long after we've moved on. What effect you carry with you is your choice. Ironically, the effect I have chosen to take with me from this will be positive... even though it comes from the very center of a broken heart.

By now, the person this is written for knows who he is. And hopefully, he knows that this broken heart of mine is forged solely out of the reality that you and I can no longer walk together. At least not for now. Maybe not ever. My proverbial tears flow from the knowledge that something so rightly placed into my life just wasn't rightly placed into yours. Time is a relative term. But it has the potential to rearrange your plans and heighten your awareness that every second is precious and eternally at risk for alteration, depending on who's in need and of what. I have no regrets. I've learned (though I still find it hard to accept sometimes) that sometimes things are in place but only for a tortuously short time. I have the privilege of knowing that my sadness has not been born out of any act you committed. It comes simply from not wanting to let go of something so beautiful that has graced my life in so many ways.

My "simple" angel.

I'll tell you something I didn't want you to know before, because I was afraid it would give you some subconscious motivation to let me go. Before you came along, I had shut down and shut off any desire to have love or compassion on any level in my life. I no longer wanted to love, feel, hope or thrive on anything that might bring a smile to my face and heart. I was dead, as far as I wanted to be concerned. The events of 9/11 offered me a new driving force. Hate. Rage. Vengeance. Emotions that would render me heartless and emotionally invincible. And for the next 3 years, that's exactly what I was. As far as I was concerned, I no longer had a single reason to seek the things which had destroyed me so many times before, and with all of that out of the way, I was free to numbly achieve my higher purposes. I had lost my kids, myself -through 2 horrible experiences that had been deemed marriages; and once I'd found someone new who temporarily changed my perception of loving someone and being worthy of being loved in return, he left in the worst, most silent way... and he took my faith with him. I had no need for anymore of this anguish people called love. What was its purpose anyway? I chose to fall at the mercy of my government and allow it to mold me into the empty shell it likes to call a soldier. At least, that's what I believed at the time.

Six months into this military game, I found myself weighing and sifting through my own small purposes in this chaos called war. It started becoming obvious to me that I really had no role whatsoever in the actual outcome of things. I was a tiny, insignificant source of energy. The greater intentions of our combative acts had not one single thing to do with any of my reasons for being available to carry them out. Once again, I was alone. Preferrably -in the beginning, but helplessly in the end. The contract was signed and my intentions weren't listed anywhere on it -not even in the small, illegible, unofficial print. They got me. And now, I didn't get me at all.

It's a cruel reality to face. Patriotism can drive a person right into the middle of an unpatriotic reality of being an asset to everything you think you're standing up against. It's terrifying to realize that you've become a weapon of the worst kind. One without a thought that matters. One with a mission carried out without your support, but using you, nonetheless. And there's nothing you can do to stop it. At least, not until your sentence has been served and the "ready reserve" time is up.

All of these realizations drove me further into myself, withdrawing me from any sustenance that life may mercifully offer me. I was no longer willing to accept anything that came packaged in an honorable disguise. Life was a lie. So was my role in it. My sky began to get dark once again. This time, I knew there was nowhere to take cover.

I gave up. For good. Fuck this. I don't want to figure it out.

Then life decided to throw something else at me to fuck me all up, as if I needed more uncertainty. You.

All of a sudden, the thought of not being open to everything good you obviously had to offer me seemed so juvenile. I couldn't feel like I was operating on your level or worthy of your interaction when I'd think of things the way I had been. It didn't stop me from falling back from hour to hour into those ideals, but at least for as long as you were with me, my brain was forced to think differently. And even the times I was alone, I'd catch myself wondering what you'd say to me if I told you what was going through my head. You gave me strength when I didn't even want it. You gave me reason to grab hold of the rope and keep my head above the surface.

I'd watch you from a distance and pick up on how people seemed to feel when they were around you. I'd notice how people seemed to watch you, too. As if they sensed that there was something they needed to see and knew that they could trust that your example was honest. You seemed to truly enjoy the people you dealt with everyday. Something I had never cared to do. And you seemed happy because of it. Your life seemed to flow in exactly the direction and at precisely the speed you wanted it to.

Slowly -excruciatingly slowly- I began to rediscover my reasons for being where I was. It was still confusing, but I began to sense that maybe the only way I was going to come to understand who I was and what I really wanted to be in this life was to be thrown against my will into a situation that would force me to permanently shed the things that would keep me from doing just that. My outlook changed once again and my sky showed signs of daybreak.

Then you loved me in return.

There was now nothing, no circumstance or occurrence that could slow me down. I had everything I needed to get me down the road. The next 2 years would prove to be some of the most valuable to my heart and mind. I smiled for no reason. I laughed at shit that at one time, made me want to cut someone's throat in their sleep. I was thankful for all of the heartache I'd lived through before you because now I could really understand how precious you were. Now I knew why love was important and accepting it was an act of respect; not just to you, but to myself. There were more stars in the sky, more light in the day and more reasons than ever to keep living without apology.

You told me that this was all like a dream. That you couldn't believe that you had come to love someone so much. We laughed about being unable to eat in each other's presence because of the butterflies from Hell that made us want to throw up. Those butterflies wouldn't leave us alone for another 3 months or so. We talked about how strange it was for 2 people to find each other out of so many potentially different roads we could've taken, or the fact that if only one single variable had been shifted, we would've never met at all. Surely, this was meant to be something significant to both of us. And in so many ways, it has been.

But now, time of all things, has pulled us apart and other variables have fallen into places not conducive to the two of us being able to walk down the same road. At first, this seemed to be an undiscovered excuse for one or the other not being willing to go through whatever motions would be necessary to put the right things in place. I thought you were just too simple -like you said- to step outside of your own comfort zone and experience life in a new way. But it wasn't about you being simple. Not that I can believe. I think there are things about your life that I don't know and maybe wasn't intended to know, that persuaded you to stay on the highway you're on. I also think that there are things about my life that maybe even I don't know that have kept me from losing faith in life all over again -regardless of the fact that I'm losing such a critical part of it by losing you.

Maybe I'm just getting more unwilling to be defeated anymore. Who knows. Maybe if I were to be defeated again, it would be all I could take. Maybe I sense that. What's clear to me is that if there was ever one person throughout my life that had the capacity to cripple my outlook or crush my foundation, it's you. Because you're everything I never believed existed, but now I know you're real. You were possible in my life. You existed in my reality. You are every lesson I needed to learn...

and one lesson I never wanted to learn...

Sometimes good things end for all the right reasons. Reasons I don't yet have the capacity to understand, but have gained the capacity to trust.

The biggest grain of salt I could ever swallow wouldn't be enough to ease this hurt. But the fiercest fear I could ever conjure could never frighten me away from love again. I owe that to you. Whether or not we'll ever relive what we've had, I wouldn't dare try to predict. I know better. I just hope that when and if we do relive it at some point, whether with one another or with someone else, I hope the love I've given to you the best way I knew how will motivate you to love without limitation. The way I've loved you. For the first time in my life.

You'll always be my angel. I may just have to settle for having you sitting on my shoulder through life, flicking my ear and laughing your Eddie Murphy laugh when I'm trying to be serious.

Don't ever let me be out of touch long enough to miss you.

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