Feeds on life, feeds on you.

"To all my friends present past and beyond, though you weren't with us too long, while you were here the fun was neverending. Laugh a minute only the beginning..." ~ Pennywise, Brohymn.


How do you measure a year? By time, experience, pain, love, joy? Every change that could happen in a year also happens a million times in a life. What makes one year stand out from any other? How does the mind choose which memories to hold close and which to let fade away? Every person is built by the memories they keep but what happens to the ones we don't? In a year I've watched my world change in ways I never imagined but how is that any different from anyone else's? Maybe I'm just paying attention now. In a year I've gained a sense of self I'm not certain I even knew I needed. My reality has been checked and rechecked. Still the things standing out don't seem real.


A year ago this month I lost a job I only loved when I was drinking the Koolaid. Since losing that job I've learned alot about who I am, not the least of which being toothpaste can double as deodarant in bind and pasta is the poor mans filet mignon (mothafucka)! A year later I think finally, I'm reaching a point where the standard corporate bureacracy applied to carry out my firing, by a company insisting they were different, no longer stings quite as bad. Still, I'm not able to say it was just business. Getting fired is always personal and though it may not have been personal for a single person at that company aside from me, I'd be willing to bet the majority of Americans who've been fired over the last few years would agree. It's fucking personal. It's not personal in any one singular way, yes at points you cry and your angry and you have your little pity parties and your depression but the reality of your fears and the overwhelming feeling of failure is not nearly as personally affecting as your literal reality. It's not that I was fired, but that I couldn't find my way, couldn't be sure how the bills would get paid or how long I could live off of pasta and hope that made the experience deeply personal. I never hated the company that put me out over a quota that was changed mere months after I was fired or even spoke badly about it. I will admit, to a now minor grudge, against the woman who fired me. I can't help but wonder if she even has a clue as to how inappropriate it is to text people you've fired about how you miss them. Looking back at it maybe if she did that every day I might have gotten out of bed earlier just out of pure anger at her. After a year of thought on her role in particular I'm still not in a place where it's not personal, but I no longer hate her. I learned from that experience that the people you stand up for will not stand up for you. The reality is it was my failure that was the most personal part of losing that job and it was that failure that was the easiest part of this year to overcome. There is nothing about the dynamics of that situation in its current state that I can honestly say I want to be a part of. As much as I may hate my current state of employment I breathe a little easier knowing this time it is nothing but business and the only back I care about is my own.


I've lost much more this year than that job and its those things, these people that I've struggled the most with. With the death of my Aunt I've found myself questioning the importance of friendship and family, trust and memory. I've looked back at the secrets I've kept for myself and for others and come to a few conclusions. Maybe if I'd told her a few of the things I didn't, she wouldn't have been where she was. The oh so important conclusion to that is there's not shit I can do about that now. Just the seperation of things I can do something about and the things I can't is a daily struggle for me. The maybes and what if's of our lives will eat us alive if we let them. For me its the active struggle that reminds me that I'm not trying I'm doing and if its getting easier its time to move towards the next challenge. The most recent conclusion brought about by the death of my Aunt is that the only addiction worth having is life and time is short. I may not be able to live the life I wanted right this moment but time is not a given.


In the months following my Aunts death I lost a friendship I thought I'd have forever and relearned a crucial lesson she had taught me years before. I can't say my own crazy didn't feed on the spoonfed crazy of others in this case but I can say I got lost in the grey of it all. Still I can't help but wonder if maybe I told this person a few things about the story I was getting things wouldn't be different, then I attempt to embrace the idea that some things are just better left alone. ~Sometimes the people you meet are just people you meet along the way and the love you have for them is just part of a cycle. A cycle in desperate need of breaking. The memories of a good friendship are still not something I'm sure how to categorize. How do any of us really figure that one out. Ten years from now will it still bother me that the addicts in my life were the people I loved the most even at 27? Will I still wonder why the fuck I opened up to someone I didn't trust in this situation or will I be where I want to be in life and this unfortunate experience will have faded away with all the other memories we forget in a lifetime. ~File this in the trying to struggle, not quite understood pile of minor what if's I'm still allowing to nibble at me. The lesson relearned doesn't need to be repeated, It's a secret I feel better kept inside the vault. The paranoia and disgust induced by this chapter of a year of unfortunate goodbyes is an active battle and exorcise in letting go, so far, demons be gone, but temptation still lives.

In a final twist of deaths platinum sickle my Grandmothers death brought a whole different feeling. My anger at my Aunts death, at my foolish belief in friendship, at my inability to instantly have the dreams I wished for, all came into perspective with this confusingly final and freeing end. I loved my Grandmother and in her end I saw her, the full kaleidoscope of her. She was in every way a queen, of what I still don't know but a queen nonetheless. In her life she did everything her way and everything was done her way. It is family folklore she was dying since she was sixteen and it is in this that I now, after her death find perspective. She lived a long and driven life but the reality is she and every one of us are dying from the day we are born. Time is what we make it and she burned as many bridges as she made but therein is the meaning of her life to me. The ancient Egyptians are said to have weighed hearts against a feather to determine worthiness of the afterlife. In my Grandmothers case I'd put money on her bringing her own feather and even more money on her getting in. She was crafty like that. The final image of my Grandmother was that of an extremely confused woman putting her pajamas on backwards yet still refusing to walk with a cane. The peace I find in knowing who she was has recently motivated me to fight the safety of the cycles my life once repeated so easily.

A week from today will be 5 years since I lost my first friend. His life was more lived than most peoples. The memories of the people you love live long after they pain of losing them to change, stupidity, craziness and even death. But I wonder if the pain and hurt of being left behind ever really fades. If the loss of that first loved friend ever fades to the loss of the next or the one after that. If we are unfortunate enough to outlive the people we love does the hurt ever fade like the sting of questioning your self worth or the loss of a friendship to lifes growing pains. Is death just a business we can grow to take less personally or is it an ever personal mind fuck? Though this is yet another question I cannot answer, I know I am closing the door on a mostly unimpressive year with one word as my biggest lesson ~ Live.