GOOD MUSIC.  GOOD FRIENDS.

I have recently closed a chapter in my life that was three years long.  About a week ago, I ended a serious relationship that occupied the better part of the past three years.  His name is Ryan.  I feel like this final paper in my ENC 1102 English class will bring time kind of closure I need.  It will be the final knot on the string that keeps this box closed.  It has always been my belief that everything happens for a reason.  It was once described to me as a tapestry.  When we are alive, we are creating it, only we are creating it from the back.  All we see at that time is a tangled mess of thread, and loose, frayed fabric.  It is not until the end that we are privileged with seeing the outcome.  We witness the creation of what we thought was a mess in to something bigger – something beautiful.  Last December I started to question “the meaning of it all” if you will.  It happened December 16.  Now, I am not a stickler for dates, but I was in the center of thousands of people, behind me stood Ryan, next to me, my friend Nick, and in the distance, my father.  True, I am eighteen years old, also true: my parents are overly protective to a ridiculous extent.  I did not care so much, because I knew my father wanted to go to the concert.  So, there I stood drenched in other people’s various bodily fluids ranging from sweat to possibly urine, and most defiantly vomit, and I thought to myself the most chilling words I could ever utter: “I… am… alone.” At that moment, the headliner for the night, Korn, (a band that I have a great deal of respect for) played the song which first introduced me to their music years before.  Possibly the band single handedly responsible for turning me in to what people in junior high like to call “head bangers”.  Along with the band that, chances are, provoked me to detour the mainstream.  The song called “Freak on a Leash” is about not being free to be yourself.  At the moment that the song started, I let loose - both physically, and metaphorically.  I shook free from Ryan’s grip, and I just started moving to the music.  One line in the lyrics says “something takes a part of me / you and I were meant to be / (free)” That is how I felt.  I needed to break free.  I had been living this cookie cutter life for so long that I did not know what I was supposed to be.  All I knew is that I was not supposed to be this.  It was that night that I decided what better time to do all the tings that I always wanted to do but never could because I spent most of my education in private schools which were very strict on self expression and dress code.  Like have dreadlocks or pierce my eyebrow.  Few people in my life understood why I was doing what I was.  My cousin, whom you will often hear me refer to as my brother, for several reasons: 1: we are so loosely related that to call him my cousin is a stretch, so it is easier to call him my brother because 2: we are so close, and have lived under the same roof so it only makes sense.  The other person was my father, whom I was not always so close to.  We actually used to have a very broken relationship.  My dad actually offered to help me maintain my dreadlocks, and when I pierced my eyebrow seemed genuinely interested and asked questions in a non-condescending manor.  These, and other, things were not a cry for attention as many would like to say, but more like a wake up call to myself in more ways than I can explain in a paper for a class.  You would actually have to get inside my head to completely understand the method to my madness.  Since science has not gotten to that point, until then, my words and attempts to explain myself will have to suffice.

            I started to question all the things that I had been living for the past three years.  I had been ignoring emotions that I now see are vital to who I am.  I had been just settling for mediocrity rather that trying to find something better.  I had questions with no answers, and answers to questions that most people are afraid to ask.  I started to question my beliefs in religion, ethics, morals, and other things of that nature.  It was around that point in time when I started REL 2300, better known as A Study of Major World Religions.  I thought that this class might actually give me some clarity on mortality and the like, was I mistaken.  This class actually did the opposite.  It made me question all the things I had been taught and opened my eyes to other religions.  Michael Malloy, the primary author of our text book listed reasons for mankind having created religion.  One the main points for mankind creating religion is to connect us to the earth.  I never doubted that trees feel pain, and release energy, but now I know that I was not the only one.  I have this weird thing about me: I love to climb.  Yeah, lots of people climb trees when they are young, but I sincerely LOVE to climb trees.  My mother used to work for a company that developed software for travel agencies that made it possible to book your flight or hotel reservation online.  If you have ever done either of these things, chances are you have had an interaction with one of the programs that her company produced.  Because of this, we were able to travel for a relatively inexpensive price.  I have climbed trees on three continents, and have pictures to prove it.  This last year when we had several hurricanes, the three that I helped plant and helped grow came crashing down not a foot from our house.  The next day amidst the rubble, broken parts to mysterious things, and the chaos that follows any major natural disaster, I stood there, next to my tree as it lay on the ground.  I could feel its energy draining.  I could feel it dying before my eyes.  A week later I convinced my father to try to upright the tree.  Some of he roots were still attached to the ground, so I truley believe there was hope.  Father followed through, and the tree was once again standing reasonably straight.  Not before several branches had to be cut, and even a sampling that had grown from the same root system.  I went out one day and I laid my head against the trunk of the tree.  I could not only feel its energy flowing out of the tree and into my body, but I could hear the water running through the trunk.  It was then that I knew that this was not an inanimate object… this was life.  Because of this event I knew that there was something bigger going on; bigger than me, and bigger than my art.  I spent the next few months decided what I wanted to do.  I had an opportunity to move to Colorado and go to a really good art school, but that the time, I did not feel that move would have been right.  I started to seriously reconsider the relationship I was in, and was it healthy.  I started to feel like I was being taken for granted, and that Ryan did not see me for me.  He saw me as his sort of trophy girlfriend.  I became tired of having to walk on egg shells around him, and I got tired of him not supporting me in my passion for art and nature.  When I first met Ryan, he was very passionate about two things: his art, and his music.  He recently told me that the only reason he portrayed himself as being passionate for his art was because he saw that I enjoyed it, and he wanted to make me happy.  This made me realize another reason why I could not be with someone; I can not be with someone who freely admits to conforming to make others happy.  The epitome of what I am not.  What I have been trying to avoid my whole life. It was at that moment that I decided, either he had to change, or we had to end.  In time, the second became the truth.

            The climax of the past five months was the most unexpected, random things that could have happened.  Two weeks ago today, I met Anti.  Anti turned my life upside down in the best possible way.  The following is an excerpt from a journal in which I write to Anti.  I attempted to document the first three days of our relationship from my point of view:

“          …Our story starts off as a day were we didn’t expect on meeting anyone new.  I was on my way to meet Ryan, and you; I don’t know where you were going.  I know you were with your friend.  I remember when I looked up from the Stacky Cups and I said to myself “That’s what I wish my boyfriend would let me be.  Let me be myself.”  That’s just one of the many thoughts that ran through my head.  The other consisted of “What are the chances that he comes and talk to me? Slim to none.  He probably sees me and thinks I’m fourteen years old and some chick who is a Hot Topic whore.  I’m not.”  Then you came over.  Then I got a little nervous.  Then we started talking.  Nine Inch Nails, Ecuador, Anti.  The thing that I noticed first, then the not so surface.  Your jacket, with the word “ANTI” embroidered over your heart.  That made me think of a poem from the book “The Pain Tree” entitled “I”.  The poem simply says “I AM TOO (FILL IN THE BLANK) TO DIE.” According to a list my supposed twin sister, christen, had made after a failed suicide attempt, one of her fill-ins was “ANTI-(YOUR OPINION OF ME HERE).”  It was speaking to the idea that people had driven her to want to die and their opinions about her.  Things that are trivial suddenly became amplified in their importance.  I also thought about my former screen name on AIM: KultureKamp which is a variation of a German word: “Kulture kampf”, meaning Culture Struggle.  Also the name of a magazine published by the German people [during World War II] who did not want to be associated with Hitler, even though Hitler himself was of Austrian decent.  Culture struggle, to me, meant fighting for what you believe is right.  [It] meant making sure that people didn’t see you as another clone of a stereotype.  [That] they formed their own opinion of you, rather than opinions based on “hear-say”.  In a nutshell, “the hardest fight you will ever fight is the fight to be yourself.”  I took it as a call to arms against society.  Against the flow.  Against all odds.  (Notice you and I are against all odds.)  I thought “ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTTARIANISM”. The people who are not necessarily for the establishment, but are against those who are against it.  Your jacket reminded me poetry and war, of words and workers unions.  And now, the word “ANTI” reminds me of you and Nine Inch Nails.  As does the Scion xA and the smell of cigarettes.  Weird music and that tiny pavilion at BCC and the tree by it…

… I stood there for half an hour.  Half an hour that I should have been spending with Ryan, but I chose to spend that time with a complete stranger and some plastic cups.  Even if I wasn’t interested in you at the time, I didn’t go to Ryan, and that is a sign that we [Ryan and I] were doomed from the get go.  I fell in love with you two days later while you were telling me about your music and all the things that went with it: frustration, heartache, love, and drunkenness.  I love that I had to try to quit you like I had to try to quit cigarettes.  You were my cigarette.  You made me free.  You made it ok to be me.”

That was about two pages of nine.  I went on to describe why I kissed him, and how a double standard which allowed girls to kiss guys, but not vise versa resulted in a shortage of breathtakingly romantic stunning moments in our world.  Then I discuses how men really do know what women want, but are too lazy to do it.  On a similar note, how the fault is not entirely male.  For women often let themselves be mistreated for momentary pleasure.  My final point of this entry was that the men who respect women are few and far in between, and sadly, the number of women who give themselves to just any guy is growing at a disturbing rate.  The chances that a respectful guy and a self respecting girl will meet are slim. I then said how we beat the odd by chance.

            Finally, the conclusion: Be honest - to not only those around you, but to yourself.  There were several events that I chose not to mention in this paper.  I let white lies get the best of me, and I ended up hurting people who I care a lot about.  A Chinese proverb states “Speak only kind, honest words, and you need never whisper.”  What did I get out of all of this?  My new phrase to live by:

GOOD MUSIC.  GOOD FRIENDS.

IF YOU HAVE THESE TWO THINGS, ALL ELSE WILL FALL IN TO PLACE.