Everything in its Right Place

So I was thinking long and hard about life, love and how we choose to live it today.  I just finished reading "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green.  It never occurred to me that when we choose to love someone, we also choose for them the power to break our hearts as well.  

Of course we never want for the latter to occur, but it does. I chose the one that I would love forever and it didn't work out.  She chose to break my heart and almost my spirit.  And I have had to slowly move on.  I can't really blame her entirely.  I have found a strange happiness and independence. You could say that the old Andy is finding a new Andy emerging into the light. 

Dealing with illness isn't what the movies portray it to be.  It is a mess of anger, tears and so many unknowns.  It brings out everything, good and bad, in everyone involved.  I can't change that nor can I promise that will never happen again.  But I can choose who to love again.  I can chose who to offer that love, that openness again one day. And now I know the real truth, that at the same time I offer them the power of rejection.  This time without my fear. 

Not everything is a fairytale life.  Not everything is perfect.  I have so many moments of weakness, mourning, anger and tears that I never write about.  I guess I am trying to please a wider audience and always find the shining light through every experience in life.

The truth is, there isn't always a shining light, a lesson or something better that comes from an experience.  Sometimes things just happen without reason.  Things are what they are just because that is just a part of life.  I have never really wanted to accept that fact but I have come to know that it is true.  Yes it makes me sad.  Yes it makes me angry to know that I am going through so many things that won't make a difference to anyone.  This isn't a plea for pity or a plight to have everyone arrive to a place where I have it all figured out.  That I am wise to the universe and what everything means.  It is a light I shine to help you understand me a little better. 

I am not entirely who you think I am.  The fact that I learn something new about myself every day, some good, some bad, attests to that fact.  The fact that I am constantly fumbling through a barrage of pain, facts, figures and what ifs is a daily example of my frailness.  I am awkward with new people sometimes. I make inappropriate jokes to mask my pain and my insecurities. Multiply that times ten if I find them attractive. I am not smooth at all. There are many jagged edges. 

In the end, the fumbling is useless and I usually arrive at a simple truth.  And right now that simple truth is whatever I do will never make the difference that I fully envision.  My writings, my gestures and my hope for inspiring millions and to change the world, will never happen the way I foresee it.  To say that it would happen the way I planned would preclude the notion that I am in total control of my destiny, my reactions and my emotions. Many unplanned things will happen and that is wonderful. I am beginning to accept that as a simple good thing...that not all things will come to pass as planned. And that is ok. 

And there begs the question why bother with what I am doing.  Why do I write and speak with such passion to a world that more often than not never responds.  Sometimes I feel like I am screaming into an empty night of a million stars hoping that maybe, just maybe in three hundred light years or so, someone, somewhere in this universe or the next will hear me.  The answer is not why, but why not. Someone will truly get me.  Because living this life without that one person that gets you, that truly loves you for who you are is hard. But it is what I have dreamed of since I was a child and I truly never had. 

I want someone to tell me to get over myself and get over my illnesses and loves me for me.  Someone that loves and accepts all my little idiosyncrasies and doesn't try to change them. Someone that I never get tired of looking at and I can say what I think without sugar coating or holding back.  I want the true flow of life. 

Yes I want to choose to love someone knowing that very same person can break my heart.  That fear I carry around every day that I am not worthy of another person's love and that I want to spare someone from the very painful and real what ifs in my life.  The fact that I know my life will end sooner than others.  The fact that my life will always be wrought with pain and suffering.  But that person will say get over yourself and be glad to share whatever time we have together when all the cards are down. 

I also want to share with a person that wonderful light I carry inside.  Something special that only I carry.  My unique views of the world and my love of life.  My hopes, my fears and my love of the way music moves my soul.  I don't want someone to love me on paper or be an internet match.  I want someone to look at me for me and not corner me into that inspirational guy that is defined by being so strong through all his struggles.

Because that's how I feel I have portrayed myself for so many years.  And I am done with it.  Sure people will always know what ails me and see me as a survivor and a warrior.  But it is nice, even for only a brief moment, when I make a connection with a wonderful person that sees me as ordinary, but in an extraordinary way without having to know the story of my health or my journey.  It would be great to take that feeling and then that same someone not slowly sink or feel sorry for me as they hear the parts of my life that aren't so great. The fear and disease behind the curtain. 

Yes life is about the journey.  Some say that the journey defines us.  I say that the journey refines us.  It allows our character and our smooth edges to be cut sharp, sometimes broken and crushed and then become smoothed out over time if we allow the forces of change and things we cannot control to happen and heal us. 

I am the person you see before you.  I am no hero or superman.  I am just me and I am fine with that.  I know that one day that special someone will see that in me without all the crap in between.  Because let's face it, if you haven't been through some serious stuff by the age of forty, then you have lived in a bubble and one day that bubble will burst.  It always does.  My bubble was just taken off at a very young age. I have seen the world as it is since I was about ten. Most of my life has been unfiltered. 

There is no perfect life but I don't think the very definition of life includes perfection.  That isn't what life is.  Life is beautiful, life is painful, life is extraordinary, life is boring, life moves you sometimes only one second at a time. It is in that moment when we hear the clock ticking by the second clearly and loudly in the background, we have to breathe and be in the moment. Not trying to escape or speed up the moment. 

But wrapped in the most wonderful warm blanket of getting over yourself is the truth about life.  That life goes on.  Life can be beautiful even in the worst moments that you experience.

So when someone asks you how is life going for you, always answer:

"I don't know.  Because my life has not ended yet.  Ask me again when my life has finished and I will know how wonderful life truly was.  But by then, you hopefully won't have to ask. By then, you will only need to be in touch with that which surrounds and connects us to each other. Because I will be a part of the invisible strings that hold us all together, present, past and future.  That twisted string you have always been connected to me with, now just connected to a spirit free from a confined body holding back infinitely more."

That is when you will truly understand what life is and understand me fully.  You will understand why I talk about life and love in the same breath. Because to me, they are the same. Life is love. And love is sharing life with another special person.  Life is beautiful. Explore the goodness within.