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. 

I sit on the eve of another life changing event. I am well aware of it. Too aware of it. The details aren't important. This isn't the first time I've faced the eve of something like this so I've become somewhat of an expert at going through this. But that doesn't help at this hour, it only helps long before the news or dealing with the reality afterwards. 

I am intimately aware of the numbness, mourning and eventual surrender process that I will have to endure yet again. And I will. Not because I am greater than anything out there but it is because once hope has found your heart, you fight to never let it go. 

Hope is more than me. Hope is more than my daughters. Hope is about something within me that believes that all of this is for a reason beyond my understanding, beyond my comprehension. Through all of this, my solace, my comfort has been in that I can take this breaking and remolding process into helping others. I can take all of this darkness and shine my light. Each time shine this light brighter to show people a path away from the darkness that tries to extinguish all of our hopes. Without hope, we are lost. 

We all are always on the eve of a potential life changing event. We are just unaware. I have been through both forms of knowing and not knowing. When you know what is coming, it is better in a strange way. You have time to prepare for what you know may be ahead. When we are hit in the face with life, it is infinitely more painful. 

We should be aware of this. Not to constantly think about and be depressed about it. Because who wants to live in a world of depression?  I don't. But let this prompt you to at the very least pause and enjoy the moment you are in. Enjoy the wondrous gift of life. I'll say this for the rest of my life to everyone:  Life is beautiful. Explore the goodness within. 

Feelings don't often run dry.  At times, I feel like I have come up empty after so many trials, after so many times going through the same thing.  Over and over again, I am pushed past the brink of what I can deal with to what I feel is the point of running dry, void of anything left.

But you can't really empty a feeling as long as memory resides.  My mind is often a steel trap of feelings, emotions and experiences.  A lifetime of happiness sometimes is replaced by one bad instance, one bad experience or a tough trial.  I can tell you that after spending what is approaching a quarter life of trial, I feel that I have run dry.

But really I haven't.  For some reason, I still run like that old car that shouldn't be able to still get around.  I remember hearing the advice of elders that I ignored in my youth that is becoming true wisdom.  I couldn't fathom nor did I relate to the suffering of others.  I did however wonder how a person could keep running for so long when the only reward was a life of more suffering.

The realization then came to me that a life of suffering is better than a life of oblivion.  Suffering is something that is defining me less each day.  Sure it is something that I deal with on a daily basis.  It is something that I can't personally glaze over.  But I can say that there is more to life even when I feel like I've run dry.  There is an dwindling emptiness that is being filled.

It isn't being filled by another person but it is being filled by having a purpose.  It is filled by having a hope that I will be able to help others that share this same path of suffering.  I want to help others get past the yolk of suffering and find the freedom to live life.  It isn't because I find some egotistical fulfillment in this.  It would be much easier to focus only on my struggles in my own fulfillment.  But I feel like I can't have gone through all of this, I can't keep going through all this without realizing that my life is being tugged by what connects us all.  That feeling that an unseen force is tugging me towards others like me.  Every time I stray from this path, I am painfully reminded of what my purpose in this life is.

Even when I feel like I am empty, when I feel like I have run dry in my soul, there is something that pulls me back to where this place of balance is.  Not a place of suffering and self loathing.  But to a place of solace.  A happiness that is hard to explain.  A life that I can't explain that makes sense to me.  Sure I struggle against the tide of life.  I am very human to a painful degree.  But when I feel that I am empty and I cannot go any further, I feel the light of others that haven't given in, haven't given up.  So it isn't me powering this engine of hope, it is the power of others.  It is the binding that we all share.  Never ignore that tugging you feel to help others.  Because one day, it may be what sustains you and keeps you going.

So I was once asked, "how can you go through what you've been through and still believe in God or a greater force in the universe?"  It is a fair question. After all, our natural logic would say that if so much bad has happened to you and you see no end, how can you believe there is some unseen force out there controlling the universe. We believe this because we expect things to go our way. We expect to be in control of our health, our work and what we get out of life.

But if we switch the scenario and do believe that we have worked hard, eaten right and done all the right things and everything goes mostly our way then how can you believe in an unseen force then guiding your life?  If there is no room for doubt in what you believe, then your faith truly cannot be tested. One might say you lack faith because you haven't been tested.

So what do you believe then when you are tested. I can't answer that for you personally. But here is what I have learned. In the process of losing everything, I have had to also let go and surrender those things to an unseen hand, an unseen force guiding my life. I realize with each step how little control I have over this life. But I am thankful for what life I have been given. For what is greater than being held tightly by the unseen hand, the guiding force of the universe?  Nothing if you allow yourself to surrender and learn what is being shown to you.

Breaking and molding, crushing you at times, this force can be very real, very painful and the greatest view of life's essence itself.

A greater gift is to share your story with others so that they may know how precious this gift of life is and how beautiful it can become. You can help not only those suffering and searching for peace but also awaken those around you to help those in need. Only a few are chosen to tell this tale. None live to tell this tale without first suffering or caring so deeply for others that they lose themselves in the process completely. It is only when we are completely immersed in this process that our eyes are opened to the truths in life, the real truths.

I have been told that the only path to true forgiveness is by letting go of the past.  Many people say the words, including me, but they aren’t really ready for surrendering to letting go.

It is a very painful process.

When I talk about forgiveness, most people assume it is about transgressions that others have bestowed upon themselves.

That is only half of it.

Most of the time we forget to forgive ourselves as well for our own transgression against others.  We can’t move forward in life without letting go of what we cannot change.

I was in a group counseling session last year learning how to transition the best life for my two girls.  The main purpose was learning how to transition from one unhappy home to two happier, well-adjusted homes after divorce.  The two child psychologists spent four hours explaining the process of not only raising the children the right way without anger, but also how to give the children room and an environment to flourish and love both parents without barriers.

One man stood up during the session about two hours in and really said that he was having a hard time forgiving his wife for what she did.  He felt that he was wronged in the end and was having to pay not only emotionally and spiritually but financially being punished as well.  I expected a short snippet of contacting a mediator or lawyer by the psychologists.  

Instead one of the child psychologists said, “You have to just let it go for the sake of your children.  Whatever has happened has happened.  And it happened for a reason.  You may not understand that reason right now but eventually you will.”

The man asked the psychologist, “then how do I get to that point and find forgiveness for my wife?”

The psychologist without pause said, “Tell her thank you for the things that she did for you and the things that she does right for the children.  Hate and thankfulness cannot live in the same environment.  Don’t allow hate to consume you.  Your children will pick up on that and that will stick with them their whole life.”

I was really taken back by the profound statement.  I wished that I had heard this as a child.  It would have made the greatest difference in my life in helping move past so many past transgressions of others against me and my transgressions towards others.

By thanking a person for what they have done right in your life, you cannot express hate and regret in the same space.  It feels as if your heart, at least for that one moment, isn’t so empty anymore and you feel something besides that emptiness, that pain.

I think forgiving my failures may be the hardest part of this transition in life for me.  The previous chapter of my story has been a painful one that I would like to close and turn the page.

Like any good book, in life there are moments of joy, pain, celebration, suffering and hopefully redemption with all things coming together in the end.  As we travel through a good book and life, it feels good to finish a chapter, good or bad, and turn the page to see what is next.  We can reread the parts we have finished or the past but we can’t change how it was written.  We can skip ahead forward, but we will miss the part about how we arrived there.

In the book of life, we can only live in the moment, the chapter we are writing right now.  After writing the last chapter of our book, the book will be closed and that will be the legacy we leave behind for others to follow and hopefully find inspiration and hope.  Fear of the past and fear of the future is a choice.  It is the only thing that you can control.

The past has happened and you should not fear it anymore.  It doesn’t define you.  Yes you have gone through it and it has molded your character, but it doesn’t define who you are fully.

Fear of the future is always uncertain so why fear it.  We cannot control our future fully.  Whether we think we know it or not, the only certainty in life is that everything can change.  In fact, sometimes everything must change to get where we need to be.  Sometimes this is a painful reality, sometimes it is a wonderful discovery.

I have been through so many things to get to this chapter of my life.  My turning page is here.  This new chapter is one that I wish to write in the moment, without fear of the past or fear of the future.  I still struggle with my fears, forgiveness and so many other things, but at least I am aware of my “demons” and what only I can work on myself to build a better person.  I am working on becoming a better person for myself, for my children and then to help others.  Anything beyond that would be an unexpected welcome in this lifetime.

But I still have hope for the future and not so much fear anymore.  I do have bad days that consume me.  Each day I work on having less of those that I can control.

I live in the moment, the hour, the minute that I am in and I am turning the page to move forward.