Eventually

Everything will be alright, eventually.

It's about time to invest in myself. I've always known I have a ton of potential, and I'm getting tired of not using it...or at least tired of only using it in ways that benefit others but not myself. It's time to start looking into ways to make money and to go to school...time to stop wishing that my family cared and that my friends were all trustworthy...time to take matters into my own hands and make the hard decisions and make a move instead of standing still and hoping. Time to take risks. Time for change of any kind.

Time to live, and really savor life...the way I used to. Time to remember that everything is beautiful, even the awful things...even the painful things.

Today I woke up in a new place once more, only this time I feel like it may lead me to somewhere that matters...to a life utilized for something of real, respectable worth. I hope that's true. Wanna publish some writing soon, but need to worry about necessities and getting on my feet first. That's about all...things are all business now, and it's funny how that affects one's typical train of thought. It's much more difficult to really enjoy myself these days...but somehow, I'm still doing it.

Viva la vida!
~W.V.~

A Meditation on Love

I wrote this out on paper just because I wanted to feel a pen beneath my fingers gliding through the words, but I knew that I’d eventually post it here.

The human condition is one huge, fascinating paradox to me, and I find the knowledge that no one will ever completely understand it to be far more humorous than vexing. One attribute of humanity that I think puzzles all of us is the most cliché and controversial of human devices: our capacity for love. Love itself is the cause of such an enormous uproar in human cultures globally. I speak from experience as I write that even those souls which are fortunate enough to taste love first-hand and fully embrace it do not ever entirely comprehend it. So, here and now, I present a few of my notions and contemplations on the concept of love. It’s one of those things that can only very poorly be put into words, but I shall do as best I can.

The word itself is so overused, not to mention misunderstood. Love is not an emotion or even the sense of completion that a loved one may bring to one’s life, but is rather the choice to put another person before oneself day by day. This is where the thin, tragically blurred line between loving someone and being in love with someone is drawn; when one loves someone they are absolutely beautiful, but when one is in love with someone they are absolute beauty. To be in love is not to make the object of one’s affections the core of one’s world, but is to relate one’s world to one’s significant other. Love is not an unstoppable force which binds people together without fail, but is the daily choice people must make to avoid failing one another.

Love is the most fervent madness the human soul may know, but is in the same instant the most resolute form of order on the planet. Love feels understated even when expressed through the sacrifice of human life, and yet can be fully conveyed through the simplest actions and gestures. Love is a feature of all intelligent species, yet is only worshipped and romanticized by ours. It is a razor-sharp blade, the tip of which we spend so much of our lives longing to balance upon. Don’t take me for a cynic; I have been cut many times and bleed copiously in the name of that blade, but I still believe in its virtue, and I still believe that it is one of the greatest treasures of life that one can possess. The trick of the balancing act is to cherish every second at the top knowing that sooner or later you will be at the bottom. All marriages end in death or divorce; love is only as lasting as we are, and is often only as lasting as our wills for it are, no matter how intense its presence may be in our lives. Love can be a sword or a shield, and is sometimes both at once. It may be a gift or a curse, or may phase from one into the other. Love is forever coveted, even when it has already been achieved. It’s the most intravenous high to be had, and, when abused or lost, can cause withdrawals or injury; it’s the hardest drug on earth.

Some believe love is only a chemical creation, a result of just the right combination of sympathy and sexual interest, a psychological anomaly in response to the mingling of personalities and random stigma. Others believe love is predestined, some component of destiny or product of fate, a force of nature that acts upon whichever souls it chooses to, a wayward agent of the powers that be. I believe that love is all of those things, both random and set, and that it’s so much more, and less, all at once.

Love is patient, kind, and understanding. If God is love and all things are possible through God, all things must be possible in love. Love is an incomprehensively big thing that’s all about the little things.

Love’s about pulling a blanket over them when they fall asleep on the couch during a movie. Love is about smiling past the faults and pet peeves at the tiny pieces of perfection behind their eyes, even if you’re the only one that sees them. Love is about finding pleasure in watching them sleep or being brought to tears by their smile. Love is about letting them cry on your shoulder and being brave enough to cry on theirs. Love is compromise, communication, passion, hope, determination, and all the little spaces in between. Love is the answer to its own question, a mystery and yet a fact of life. Love is both a factor and a product of hope in many ways.

In the end, love is valued for the same reason our loved ones are; brilliance despite imperfection. To many love is a dream or a fantasy, but to others it is a very real source of pride and strength. To me, it is all those things. Power rests with those willing to risk everything to seize it, and love is the prize so often eludes the powerful. It takes serious strength to love with all one’s being, but strength and obstinacy should not be confused. The love should be wielded like a fine weapon; carefully and with great responsibility and skill.

“Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength.” -Henry Ward Beecher.

Truth?

Even the truth is suspect once it leaves a person’s mouth.

I’ve realized it’s pretty much a waste of energy to insist that my mother hear me out…she knows the truth, but refuses to acknowledge it, and the louder I scream it the more it sounds like a lie.

There are plenty of things I’d scream about, but I have neither the energy to nor the faith that anyone would listen.

It’s approaching 2 weeks that I haven’t heard from David…I don’t know how to feel about that. There was a span of silence last month that lasted longer than 2 weeks…and I don’t know how I’ll get through that kind of anxiety again. I’d like to give a shout out to deviantART and the amazing people that are using it to make the world a more diverse and interesting place. Here’s my page, check my gallery and those of my watchers:

http://www.wolvenvengeance.deviantart.com

“I’ve been building scars up, putting flames out with my fingers.

Tell me when my time’s up so my hope no longer lingers.

Then say no more, say no more, say no more…

‘Cause this is the sound of hurt, unrehearsed,

And it’s alright!

So what are you waiting for?

You can’t ignore the sound

Of someone breakin’ down.”

-”This is the Sound” by The Exies

Things change so fast. We don’t realize it most of the time, and I think that’s why we waste so much of our lives. I was thinking just the other day about an entire shopping complex…I remember it when it was just a gorgeous, grassy hill full of hay bales, but practically no one else does. I keep wondering if my special tree is still standing, or if the field it stood in has been converted into a parking lot yet. I’m not saying development is bad; I’m just saying things are constantly in motion, phasing from one thing into another in ways that are sometimes so subtle that we don’t realize it’s happening until it’s over.

There’s a 99.9% likelihood that I’ll be married in less than a month. What I’ll be doing or where I’ll be is a mystery thus far, but I’m both quite excited and quite nervous. It would be nice if I’d actually heard from my fiancée in the last few weeks…that would probably put most of my worries to rest as quick as a wink.

“And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

And you may find yourself in another part of the world,

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house

With a beautiful wife,

And you may ask yourself,

‘Well, how did I get here? Well, how did I get here?’

Letting the days roll back…

Into the blue again,

After the money’s gone,

Once in a lifetime…”

-”Once in a Lifetime” cover by The Exies

As you’ve probably noticed, I’m listening to The Exies at the moment. Their music generally both calms and inspires me, and that’s a good thing for me right now. A friend’s work recently inspired me to experiment with comics, which I have done. I’m eager to see how I develop at it.

Did anyone else see President Obama on The View? You could tell Woopie Goldberg was cheesin’ so bad. He’s actually a very good speaker, though my position on politics is “WTF” 24/7...I don’t know if I’ll ever feel strongly enough about an issue to make as much of an ass out of myself as some of these politicians do on TV. So props to Mr. Obama, he keeps his cool.

A short story I started to supplement my novel is slowly coming together into something I think I will be able to be very proud of. I’m also working on a short story for dA and the occasional poem or piece of art for my gallery. I think I’ll ask D for a premium membership as part of my wedding present…just to see what it’s like. If I don’t think it’s worth the money after a year, I’ll just drop back down to a regular membership. There really aren’t that many notable differences…by that I mean that a lot of the benefits of having a premium dA account are trivial, like enabling journal skins, advertising on the banners, etc., but if the critique feature allows me to get a little more attention and notoriety then I’m all for it. Art and writing is my greatest passion, and even if it’s only a hobby and I never make any noteworthy amount of money with it, I’d still like people to know I’m out there.

Ever use formspring.me? It’s completely pointless, but occasionally nice to quell boredom with. I recommend quizilla.com as usual, but that’s probably just because that’s where my online writing venture started J

Well…life is moving along. Time to move with it and dance every step that I can.

Clouds

I had a memory a few days ago of something a friend said to me once. When he did it caught me off guard, not only because it was incredibly random but because I had never before thought about what he said. “You know clouds weigh thousands of tons? They’re massive bodies of ice…but they float in the sky above our heads.”

I got a little freaked out when I thought about it. Clouds are huge and remarkably heavy…but they float, higher than any living creature can fly without the assistance of machines. While my friend looked at the marvel of condensation from a scientific standpoint and I from a more spiritual one, we were both fascinated with how clouds exist.

When I was reminded of that conversation recently, I began thinking more about how we can relate the human spirit to clouds. The reason they fascinate us is not simply physical; we wonder how anything that feels heavy could float.

I think that maybe hope is the one thing that we have to have to understand the clouds. Not hope like the way we think about hope, either. People say, “I hope the weather is good today”, “I sure hope she starts feeling better”, or “All we can do is hope,” without even thinking about what they’re saying; They use hope in place of “wish”. To hope is not to wish or will that something will happen or be a certain way that is convenient…hope is knowing in the core of one’s being that something will be.

I have hope that no matter how bad things get, they will eventually get better.

Whether life has a good or bad ending all depends on where you stop the story…so I just keep writing mine.

Hope is what really separates us from most other species; we have the ability to think beyond the present, beyond circumstance, and beyond ourselves and say, “It’s gonna be okay. Let’s just keep going.” We have that ability, and we so rarely use it. Discouragement becomes a disease when the discouraged cannot keep it in check…I of all people know that. To look up at the clouds makes me feel comforted, but not because they’re shaped like cute animals or because they’re fluffy or colorful or pretty in any way. They comfort me because they are. They are so heavy, and they just float on until they dissipate, as though without a care.

Take a minute and just think about that.

We can’t be that heavy and float on without a care…but we can float on. I think human beings get so caught up in ourselves and our lives that we never really think about anything else…about what our lives could be like if we did things differently, about other people, other places, other possibilities. We allow ourselves to become so tied down by our own worries, paranoia, and fears that we don’t respect or appreciate anything, not even our lives.

Having hope through every storm is not to be accomplished without difficulty. But it is very possible, and it is how we survive. Without hope, we are feel like nothing. With it interwoven into every facet of our lives we become nothing, and are then able to see everything. And when that happens, we realize that everything is beautiful.

When the world is beautiful, we’re become a valuable part of it, and are something once more.

I’m starting to think life is completely cyclical, only with new places and players every lifetime or so. This is a gorgeous system we live in. Enjoy is while you can; when we reach what’s beyond, we’ll never have the chances we have every day of our lives…but there will be many new ones. Maybe when we get there we’ll really understand the clouds. As for now, they’re my reminder that anything is possible under the right circumstances.

Status...

Where to begin?

So much has changed, and so much remains the same. I'm in Florida with my biological father, who I honestly never thought I'd see again. We're a lot alike, and we connected well from the beginning. My stepmom is really cool, and things are generally good.

When I return to Bama I'll be spending a little time with my friends while trying to get my crap together...then I'll be off to South Carolina to watch my David graduate from basic training for the United States Marine Corps...I wish I knew how to describe how proud I am of him. He worked for a year just to get to go to basic...he's wanted this for so long, and even though it's hard on both of us it makes him happy, and seeing him happy makes me happy :) When he returns, we're getting married.

And every time I think that it hits me- I'm getting married! To the love of my life! Things are about to get really difficult...but they'll also be so much nicer.

I just keep thinking about whatever the next step is to make it through...if I try to think beyond the very next step I get very stressed and anxious very quickly. I couldn't be more excited or more nervous or more blessed or more at peace with all my pain...

Life is slowly coming together.

Love,

~W.V.~