Posts in category "Random"

hay. been a while.

You must be sav­ing the world as I write this, mak­ing it a bet­ter place for the ones like me who nev­er seem to care enough to make a dif­fer­ence. Aside from the easy things like recy­cling and sav­ing my laun­dry for large batch­es, of course, but that’s what you’d con­sid­er bare min­i­mum, and it always felt like you used some­thing like that as excuse to keep us at a dis­tance.

Maybe that’s why I’ve nev­er felt as in the way as when I was with you. It hurt to think I was only slow­ing you down, when I’d already planned so much. There were more shots to take, more cheeks to pinch, and parts of the world to explore togeth­er.

I know you need­ed a fight­er to match your heart, but that’s not why I chal­lenged you. Not cause I was a skep­tic either, but because I want­ed to be con­vinced. I want­ed to be edu­cat­ed. I want­ed you to change every pre­con­ceived notion I had of agri­cul­ture and cor­po­rate farm­ing and sus­tain­able growth with strong argu­ments and sound log­ic. But instead, you mis­took it as apa­thy and con­flict, and just gave up.

That’s why I won­der why you tried to kiss me last time, when things had already fall­en apart. And whether I should have turned around; if you would have seen you get­ting in your car and dri­ving off, or whether you would have lin­gered to see me wave through the glass. But I could­n’t look back, cause I’d had enough of you hav­ing enough of me.

The only things you left me with were a huge pur­ple bruise and three songs in my col­lec­tion, but I still need to thank you for some­thing rich and ful­fill­ing. Something that made me stronger, cause you were the only per­son to ever call them beau­ty marks, the only one to tru­ly make me feel impor­tant and desir­able and val­i­dat­ed.

That’s prob­a­bly why I think of leav­ing some­thing in the Dropbox fold­er to find one day. Something sweet and nice and com­plete­ly hope­less. But I real­ize it’s not cause I still like you. It’s cause I miss the idea of lik­ing you, the idea of hav­ing some­thing oth­er than all this mis­spent love.

I filled the void you left with the rest of my life

And that’s why I spend so much time with peo­ple now, why it’s a lit­tle eas­i­er to bend each pitch, and why I don’t mind hazy night dri­ves through pur­ple sky and deer warn­ings as long as Mogwai is on. Everything I do is an attempt to be whole again, cause I still think of you with me at every din­ner, movie, episode, nap, ride, gath­er­ing, and con­cert.

But sure­ly you can’t be the same per­son I see in these pho­tos tak­en so long ago. You’d be a lit­tle wis­er from the years, a lit­tle stronger from the expe­ri­ences, almost cer­tain­ly sport­ing a new hair­cut, but I bet your heart would always be the same. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to let go. I real­ized that no mat­ter what hap­pens, regard­less of how peo­ple grow and change, I’d always love that heart. That’s the only rea­son I under­stand what you meant by always have a weak­ness.

I filled the void you left with the rest of my life, but it’s still hard to be whole with­out you.

There's someone I want you to meet.

He’s a great guy who looks par­tic­u­lar­ly nice in a skin­ny tie. His deep, smokey eyes seem to slay every woman he meets, and even the ones he has­n’t yet. There’s a strap­ping mas­culin­i­ty that you like, car­ried in the angles of his face, but a gen­tle smile reveals his true per­son­al­i­ty.

He’s intel­li­gent enough to chal­lenge that mind of yours, but so down-to-earth that you’d nev­er feel inad­e­quate. He’s con­stant­ly cre­ative and a musi­cal genius, and I know you’d appre­ci­ate his work as much as he’d appre­ci­ate yours, even if they’re in dif­fer­ent medi­ums. He can let loose and have a great time, but he’s respon­si­ble enough to know when to stop. He’s con­fi­dent, but mod­est. Funny with­out being crude or clown­ish. Thoughtful and kind. Generous with his time, his thoughts, his pos­ses­sions, and his life. He’s the total pack­age, but most impor­tant of all, I know he’d make you hap­py.

And while I’ve always been unbear­ably jeal­ous when I think of you with any­one else (and maybe I chose him cause I like to think he reminds me of myself), he’s the only guy I would­n’t mind you being with if it can’t be me, cause it would be such a waste oth­er­wise.

he was never the same

I have a feel­ing this day will be the new divid­ing line in my life, some­thing that was pre­vi­ous­ly pre and post-kiss, and now also a sep­a­ra­tion between who I reached out to and who I did­n’t call. And, odd­ly enough, this song will for­ev­er remind me of what hap­pened, some Canadian indie-rock hit from ’94 I had on repeat the whole day.

Things are going to be dif­fer­ent now, even though noth­ing’s changed. I just wish I knew what that meant.

missed connection

(I was going through some old e‑mails when I found this missed con­nec­tion post I wrote years ago. Aside from get­ting in touch with the per­son I was writ­ing to, one per­son replied, “I am not her… but I read this page hop­ing that one day some­one would post some­thing this nice about me after a ran­dom smile exchanged on a street cor­ner. Well Done.” Don’t we all.)

I was walk­ing north on O’Connor around 5pm yes­ter­day, lost in a thought, when I turned the cor­ner and saw you look­ing at me.

You gave me an unin­hib­it­ed smile, the likes of which seemed to con­vey a strange famil­iar­i­ty. Like we had seen each oth­er at an office par­ty but were nev­er for­mal­ly intro­duced, so we knew of each oth­er’s exis­tence but were too shy to be the first one to say any­thing, and rel­e­gat­ed our com­mu­ni­ca­tion to giv­ing each oth­er quick glances when pass­ing each oth­er in the hall.

It made me think of this line that Emilio Estevez says in St. Elmo’s Fire:

There are sev­er­al quin­tes­sen­tial moments in a man’s life: los­ing his vir­gin­i­ty, get­ting mar­ried, becom­ing a father, and hav­ing the right girl smile at you.

Okay, so maybe Joel Schumacher got the entire con­cept of St. Elmo’s fire wrong in the movie, and sure, Andie MacDowell’s role was as chal­leng­ing as putting but­ter on bread, but she was per­fect for it. She had a fresh face with the right amount of charm and mys­tery to be the love inter­est of the guy who played the pop­u­lar jock in The Breakfast Club, and for a moment yes­ter­day, YOU WERE THAT GIRL. If that makes me the crazy, obsessed wait­er-cum-law stu­dent then so be it. At least I was­n’t the wild frat boy with a bas­tard son who could­n’t hold his life togeth­er that Rob Lowe won the Razzie for, right?

You were the girl who defined one of those four quin­tes­sen­tial moments, and it came at the right time, as I had just spent so much time curs­ing Ottawa for hav­ing such incon­sid­er­ate dri­vers and inac­ces­si­ble down­town park­ing. I was the guy you smiled at who prob­a­bly lives a lit­tle too vic­ar­i­ous­ly through 80s com­ing-of-age movies cause I was nev­er cool enough to have any “real” prob­lems, and your smile stopped me in my tracks. By the time I gained the clar­i­ty to turn around, all I could see was you walk­ing away, in a long black coat, black hat, with red hair.

All I need now is to lose my vir­gin­i­ty, get mar­ried, and become a father. Maybe you could help me with those too.