Current Mood: Pensive
Music Playing: Radiohead, In Rainbows
It has been a year that I would much rather just forget… 2007 started with high hopes; I really began to appreciate the people that I was surrounded with, I looked to the future with a positive outlook and an ideal girlfriend to share it with. The end of 2006 and moving into 2007 saw some difficulties, a very ill sister and myself, in a struggle to find my scholastic identity. Things didn’t get any better for my sister in 2007, and it wasn’t before long that my dad turned up in the hospital, and it wasn’t long after that, that I found myself in the hospital. During this time, I finally started to feel good about school, but there were many other things that began to compound causing so much internal strife that I slowly found myself withdrawing into my head and no one was allowed in. I don’t know how I ever let myself become so despondent, but it festered and I became a person that I didn’t know existed, a person that I hope never returns. After such an optimistic outlook for 2007, between the health of others and myself and the thinning relationships with family, friends and girlfriend, I worked myself into a crestfallen coma that I nearly never woke up from. As hard as it was to endure, the break up of a relationship that I thought would last forever was the tipping point to set things in motion to breathe life back into my vacant soul and heart. I spent the better part of two months extremely inconsolable because in the blink of an eye, I lost everything, a best friend and lover, a home, a second family, friends, everything… My life was completely altered. While watching one of my favorite Scrubs episodes, I found a morsel of encouragement. In the Scrubs musical episode, a patient hears everything in song, and just before she goes in for surgery, everyone sings the song, “What’s going to happen;” the lines that are repeated over and over again are, “everything’s ok…nothings going to happen…plan for tomorrow…because you’re going to be ok.” I found myself so moved by this song that the waterworks started flowing, but as embarrassed as I am to admit that the last show/movie that I watched that made me cry was Scrubs, it's actually kind of humorous. It was this song that motivated me to lift my spirits because everything was going to be ok. During those two months I realized the importance of friends, and how powerful an impact they make on your life; I reconnected with old friends, even went to visit one in Portland, made new friends, and reinforced the friendships that I already had. I started seeing a therapist to help me get through this rough patch and help me realize things about others, and myself, and how to keep from reverting back to such a dark place. I found solace in writing, something I had forgot about doing. I loved to write, but had I got away from it for so long, and it was invigorating to dive back into a notebook with pen in hand. Writing helped me more then I could ever fathom; I blogged and I journaled and wrote more poetry in the last four months then I probably had in the past three years. In the end, 2007 went out in a rather un-exciting fashion, and it was rather fitting that it be so. New Years Eve encompassed what 2007 was all about, a few highlights, but mostly pretty shitty! I had an incredible dinner, had a few drinks at a bar with friends and ended up at a party where upon walking in the door I nearly got in a fight with a tight pants drunk hipster; Neil got attacked and nicknamed “hot dog” by some drunk thirty something Annie look-alike, but overall it was a rather uneventful and drab evening. But the way 2007 has ended has kept me hopeful for 2008, because it can only get better and everything is going to be ok. I’m emotionally stronger and healthier then I’ve been in some time I’m looking forward to the coming semester and meeting more new faces and living a whole new kind of life. There are already plans in the works for a two-week European vacation with Neil and possibly others, I’m continuing to write on a regular basis, and don’t be surprised if you find Neil playing an acoustic set with me singing the songs that we wrote in a coffee shop somewhere in 2008. I got an email this morning from a family member of some things that George Carlin said about the state of humanity that I found rather fitting to starting a new year. So I will close this blog with a few quotes from that… “We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness…. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often... We've added years to life not life to years…We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less…Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you. Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind…AND ALWAYS REMEMBER: Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” So to everyone; remember to breathe life in everyday, because you only get to live your life once, so make the best of every day. So goodbye to 2007, you have been rather unkind, but there’s so much more to live for in 2008.
