on our own

i have realized that i sometimes struggle working in such a collaborative environment. its not because i want to do everything myself or hate working with a group. it's because ultimately, i feel like it comes down to the individual. that when mistakes are made, it is my fault and i should take the blame. that success or failure is mine alone. i know this isn't the truth, at least not always, but on some level it makes sense. it's like the point made back in pearson—we are a team, but at the end of the day we are hired or fired individually.

when i think about this i realize other things about myself, like the fact that i always put my own life first. is that selfish, or just survival? he would say that if you care about people you have to help them, but sometimes i disagree. we are each where we are due largely in part to our own choices, and it is no one's responsibility but our own to deal with the consequences of those choices. i don't expect those close to me to bail me out if i screw up, and i would never ask them to. i don't believe they would either. perhaps it is just my stubborn independence, but i don't believe you owe anyone enough to bail them out of their consequences at the expense of your own happiness and wellbeing.

does this make him a better person than i? probably. but i guess this is what life has taught me, turned me into. and how could i regret that?

expect the unexpected

halfway through 2012, this seems to have become the theme of the year. first atlanta, and world 50. then him. now, the one person i expected least of all.

i knew we had come a long way, and a long way further than i ever thought we could, but this . . . this was unimaginable. utterly impossible. i guess we both really have grown up. to the point where he can confront me about it out of concern, rather than anger or disappointment, and i in turn can answer him honestly, without denial, and own up to my decisions. to be able to claim them as exactly that—my decisions. to have him speak to the value of our relationship, and his pride in me, and the fact that this nor anything else could never change that. how far we have come.

we dream of the people those close to us could be, the people we want them to be, to grow into. but that was all it ever was with me and him—a dream. and now that it is real, i don't quite know what to do. it is both relieving and terrifying to have crossed that line, where there are no more secrets. it is a land i have yet to discover. what will come of it? i can only guess.

i suppose it really is true; all children do grow up.




i know we've come a long way
changing day to day
but tell me, where do the children play?

letters to boys

I've written a lot in my life. Papers, stories, journal entries, poems. So many words on paper in my short 23 years. But perhaps the most interesting and revealing of all writings are not the diatribes of my day or the creative fantasies of my child brain, but the letters. The letters I'll never send.

Yes, most of them are to boys. Typical, I know. With the notable exception of my journals disguised as letters to my long-passed mother, I can't think that I've ever written a letter I didn't send to a girl. There were love letters, hate letters, hurt letters. And as I got older, there were apology letters. Most of the time they were my way of conveying feelings I knew I would never have the chance to, or was better off not to. It was a way to gain closure when there was none. You never got an answer, but at least you didn't get one you didn't want.

I'm sure some people would say this is the cowardly way out, but what I've realized is that it isn't a way out — it's a way to heal.

But what happens when one day, someone answers the letter you never sent? As if he had been trying to write the same letter you always were, only he actually sent it? How would you respond?

It isn't as if I've been waiting for that letter, because I never expected it to come at all. Does it change everything? Surely not. But it changes some things.  It changes my view of him. It changes how I look back on those events. That perhaps I did do the right thing, at least in part. That perhaps it made a difference, even if he couldn't appreciate it until now. That perhaps it wasn't all for nothing.