effulgence

and all the world is green

one time a few years back, a friend came home from living abroad. she had a difficult time adjusting to life and it didn't take an einstein to figure out she was a mess. she called me one night with a shaky voice. i could hear her discomfort through the phone because it felt as if she was looking behind and around her every five seconds, as if nothing seemed right. tired, she confessed she wanted to hear a familar voice; that she wanted to maybe hang out for a few minutes, nothing special, just to be around something that reminded her of home. i thought that was funny because she was home, at least physically. naive me, i thought she was being a girl, being crazy. we eventually met up but in all my immaturity, i didn't know how to help her. i did more harm than good and in the end, she left more sullen than before, defeated, and worse yet, more alone. i was an idiot.

because irony is my second middle name (my first being, awkward), it only makes sense that i should come to a point in my life where i can understand where my friend was. or at least maybe think that my current circumstances are similar. after a long and treacherous semester, one that left me bereft of the comfort of close friends, i took off for a small island in the north. prior to leaving for iceland i believed that three weeks would be nothing. my social environment had sifted largely into a nascent (thus superficial) one, where acquaintances significantly outnumbered my go-to-when-all-the-world-is-amiss friends. i mean, not to discount my new friends, not at all. i was not held down as i once was to life here at home. so, i put my foot forward but before i knew it, i was thinking of home: the places and things, the responsibilities, the people both new and old. driving towards husavik, iceland, i thought of laramie, wyoming. i thought of my hospital bed and the phrase that was literally knocked into me, "that life without love is meaningless." i cut my trip short and came back a week early. glaciers and beautiful scandinavian women could wait. it was about community.

after a few hundred dollars, i leaped over hoops of fire and voila, i was on the 105 eastbound. i was bound for an island of a week's worth of good times. or so i thought. it was a mixed bag. there was disinterest and indifference with the ones i held especially close, yet outright smiles and cheers with friends and acquaintances made from this past year. ah, i said to myself, but this is how people are. people are people and that's life, that's community. love? love. but now i feel disjointed, not in a proper place, where my life is just a death in progress. almost as if my identity is being sandblasted away. of course, i'm being overly dramatic. still, my lego city of reality has been deconstructed, block by block, and as i wait for my flight to china, another three-week venture, i frantically struggle to find something left, some remnant that was untouched. something, or rather someone, i can rebuild from.

my ex-girlfriend always told me that i had a lot to learn. i resented the fact that she had such little faith in me, but whether or not she really understood the implications of what she said, the truth is, i'm just a kid. i wonder if growing up means (or at least partially) really understanding your mistakes. i am certainly old enough to have the years under my belt where i do have the "sorries." i also wonder if becoming more mature is recognizing that life is really about how you treat other people: how you love or unlove them.