Friday, July 22, 2011

The Pain of Missing You

It hurts. It hurts so fucking much. It hurts more than when I broke my toe or all the times I’ve contused or burned my fingers. It’s worse than when I tripped and slammed my nose onto the edge of a concrete step. Worse than the largest, pulsing blisters on my fingers from guitar strings or my lips being cut open after a long concert series. More intense than the most painful cramps. And more agony than last summer when I walked more than a half mile downhill on a gravel road barefoot while the ground burnt. And I can’t stop it.

I can’t put a band-aid on this wound. I can’t just clean it, wrap it in gauze, and tape it up. There’s no bracing it and no relief. It’s just the phantom pain of something not there.

It’s the pain of missing you.

And I don’t know how much longer I can handle it.

Not being there with you. Not lying against you as we drift off to sleep. Not feeling you breathe beside me. Waking up and you not being there. I can’t grab your hand as I walk down the hall. I can’t reach that far. I can’t get to you. And it hurts. It just fucking hurts.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Introductions and Adventures

So I finally caved and got a blog. It's made sense for me to have one for a while as I like writing, I usually forget to vlog, and I feel like I have a fairly interesting life that I would like to look back on and remember someday. So a blog it is! And an actual one, too. I've had a tumblr for a while now but I think most people can agree that that site's not for blogging so much as it is for sharing silly pictures of Voldemort giving out hugs.

Now that that's out of the way let me share my 4th of July with you. I woke up planning to spend a lazy day doing nothing and then having and Experimental Barbecue. So named because my family has never cooked a steak on this grill. But I got a text message from my friend Chris saying he and out friend Elana were picking me up. We didn't have the slightest idea where we were going or what we were going to do. But after some initial suggestions of mini-golf, playing Apples-to-Apples in a park with strangers, and going to the airport to pretend we were picking up someone's grandmother, Chris pulled into a Ukrainian cemetery.

I know, I know. It sounds really weird and slightly sadistic. But it was actually quite beautiful. It was on a little, secluded, grassy hill surrounded by trees on three sides, and there was a nice breeze. Because it was the 4th I picked wild flowers and put them on the graves of servicemen.

If you've never just wandered around a graveyard I highly suggest you do. You come across such interesting names and years that tell half a story for you to imagine the rest of. And by definition they're quite peacefully except for the ghosts. After a little while of this Chris, Elana, and I decided to leave for our next destination.

It wound up being the mall. It was the usual mall experience with three friends with barely any money. We had an Ugly Hat Finding contest, played Guess What Scent this Candle Is, sampled overpriced gelato, and pretended to be polygamists and nearly fell asleep on a bed in Sears. When the woman working there told us to move she said "If you knew what was in there you wouldn't be lying on it." We decided that it would be best if we left and got some average-priced gelato from the grocery store.

After the gelato Elana was still sleepy so she suggested going to a furniture store and sleeping there. We tried going to one but as soon as we walked in the door we were pounced on by a salesman, forcing us to pretend to be looking for an ottoman for our college dorm. (My favorite part of this was when Chris whispered to me "What's an ottoman?") Eventually we took pity on the salesman and left. But when Chris was driving back to my house he took a wrong turn and we wound up in the parking lot of one of the sketchiest grocery stores in existence where our dear friend Tori happened to be working. Naturally we had to buy the cheapest things possible and pay Tori for them with exact change and request our M&Ms packaged in "double paper, extra plastic".

When I got home the steak hadn't fallen into the fire and my brother hadn't razed the deck by grilling dry corn. All in all it was just a really nice day that you wish could have lasted longer.

Oh and then eight days after that I left for LeakyCon 2011.