Forever

I like this from Ms. Frizzle. I myself was thinking just this morning, quite introspectively, that a lot has changed in just the last few days, and it has a lot to do with the last few months.

This time last year, I was preparing to go to none other than....California. San Francisco even. And the trepidation that I remember feeling was prudent in hind sight. Only a few short weeks after returning, the idea of living intentionally had sunk its teeth into me, through the skin nearly shredding the bone. And I was sold. Sold like the salesman had tried to sell me a baby not just a new vacuum cleaner.

And I have, for the most part, lived by its tenants. Transparency, intentionality, community. But I have also not.

I know, full of contradictions.

So...the reason I went to SF was because I had fallen completely in love with a good friend. The kind of love that I didn't know actually existed. The kind that overlooks any flaw, any inconsistency of character, and forgives endlessly with does eyes that everyone except you can see. The codependent kind. The truthful kind. The kind where you push yourself past your own limits of comfortability because you trust that they are too, trust that they are entrusting as much of themselves to you, as you are to them.
So when you find that it's not mutual, it's crushing. The kind of crushing that closes down the conscious part of your heart and opens the instinctual, animal part of your being. The part that you may never knew even lived in you. I lived on coffee and tears for far longer than I should have. And then anger and pain, and now not regret, but something shockingly similar and unnameable.

And so...the reason I'm suddenly so introspective is that this truly formative relationship was followed up shortly by a truly destructive relationship. And very few know about it. Somewhere between the tears and anger, and then the anger and the unnameable thing, I proved that I was worth something to someone. What, and to who, I'm not sure. And how much it was worth, I'm now sure it was worth a lot more than was paid for it.

But in the wake of the unnameable thing comes some clarity. Clarity that even though these people are gone, even though the world around me has changed a little, the knowledge I come away with them will and have impacted me forever.