Love Is Lovelier The Second Time Around

Ryan Dempster moves from the closer's role to the starting role and flourishes. Don Imus makes a slightly racist and derogatory comment on the radio and is taken off the air, and then reinstated months later...though he did the same thing again shortly after his reinstatement, so maybe that's a bad analogy. Anyway, even Senator John McCain was raised from the dead to run for president in a party where the other candidates' campaigns were as dead as...well...he was.

Okay, so I'll admit that being old(really, REALLY old) doesn't qualify you as dead, but my point is that in the day of instant gratification and a world where first impressions reign supreme(and apparently one where the should also be a MAXIMUM age for a presidential candidate), second chances are making a comeback. In essence, the rebirth of the second chance is giving rebirth to second chances.

On the one hand there's a friendship long since believed dead and buried, reanimated and rejuvenated. A testament to the power that one comment can have, and the difference one heartfelt message from an individual to another can make.

On the other hand is a love given a second chance.

It's crazy how big a difference very small things not only can, but do make in our daily lives. And proof of the key of communication to relationships is ever present. If one person doesn't tell the other what they want out of a relationship, the latter will never truly know what the former wants and will act on their own judgment. However, of the same concept, if the latter is too stubborn or afraid of hurting the former's feelings to just admit that they don't know what the former wants, they are just guessing and many mixed signals are bound to occur until the whole relationship short circuits and explodes in a ball of flame. And it is also ever present in the fact that one small problem which is easily fixed, goes unnoticed by one, and is let go by the other in hopes it will resolve itself, but then grows into a tumor that takes the whole relationship down with it.

All of this brings me to the true key of love and relationships, and its not love, caring, understanding, or even communication. The key is based in all of these, but is so much more, and yet so much simpler than that. The key is, for lack of a better term, early diagnosis. That is to say, the key is to have the understanding in one another to recognize the problem, the love and caring to express the problem in a constructive way to the other person, and the communication to work the problem out not only while it is still small, but also still treatable.

But.

There's another cure in desperate yet hopeful times.

Every relationship or friendship comes with a reset button. You can't always use it, because it loses effectiveness. Its like an EMP. When used, it does its job, quickly and effectively, however, it needs to charge fully to have its full effectiveness, and if you use it continually on half charge, you lose faith in it and abandon it all together.

The reset button is the ultimate in second chances. It doesn't ask why, or how, it just does it. Your computer crashes, you press the reset button, and it doesn't protest. It powers off as soon as possible, and then, boots back up, ready to allow you to go back to killing that 64 elite that is driving you insane in Terokkar, if only you hadn't been nerfed last patch it wouldn't matter, and if Blizzard could just make the game run smoother....again neither here nor there.

So, in this day of second chances, in this era where the end isn't necessarily the end, and where everything is negotiable, I pay tribute to the second chances that I've both given and received, and in looking back upon all this, I realize that it was never really a second chance for these things, just a continuation of the chance they deserved to have in the first place.



Quotes And Thoughts For The Day:

"The Atlantic was born today and I'll tell you how...
The clouds above opened up and let it out.

I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
When the water filled every hole.
And thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
Making islands where no island should go.
Oh no.

Those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flatlands to your door have been silenced forever more.
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no.

I need you so much closer

I need you so much closer
So come on, come on"

~ Transatlanticism – Death Cab For Cutie


"Sometimes, I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear
And I can't help but ask myself how much I let the fear
Take the wheel and steer
It's driven me before
And it seems to have a vague, haunting mass appeal
But lately I'm beginning to find that I
Should be the one behind the wheel

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
I'll be there

So if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive
Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive?
It's driven me before
And it seems to be the way that everyone else gets around
But lately I'm beginning to find that
When I drive myself my light is found

Whatever tomorrow brings,
I'll be there,

With open arms and open eyes yeah

Whatever tomorrow brings,
I'll be there,
I'll be there

Would you choose the water over wine
Hold the wheel and drive

Whatever tomorrow brings,
I'll be there

With open arms and open eyes yeah

Whatever tomorrow brings,
I'll be there,
I'll be there”

~ Drive - Incubus


-- Robert I is a freelance fiction writer, sports analyst, poet, and political cynic. His Blog can be found through his facebook LiveBlog or at Our Lives In Retrospect. His sports writing can be found at Bleacher Report.

It could be...it might be...HOLY COW!

Life, like women and various other things in it, is confusing. You think you have it figured out, and it go from throwing 98 mph fastballs, to that devastating Trevor Hoffman 78 mph change up. Then it comes back with that 92 mph biting back door 2-seam fastball that you watch the whole way SWEARING it's going to be a ball, and all you can do is step back for a second and smile and marvel at how well life knows what to give you every step of the way.

Sometimes you get that fastball you've been waiting for but you don't get a lot of it and you just slap a single to left field. It's may not be what you wanted, but you still go something, and other people supporting you can help you get where you want to go. Or maybe it's a bloop single that the gold glove outfielder almost caught, but it still dropped for that much needed base hit. That sounds like my spring semester at Purdue. It still wasn't great, and wasn't exactly what I wanted, and for a while looked like it was going to be too little too late, but it came out okay and I got things started.

Other times you'll get handed that first base, and since you like to work for what you earn, you feel guilty taking it, but at the same time you accept that you need to capitalize on the things that you are given by life. This sounds like part of my love for Miss Cassandra Lynn. I still don't feel like I have done anything to deserve being with her, and I your toes because sometimes life will throw that perfect 12-6 75 mph curveball that you can't even touch and it just makes you look silly. And you figure that if you can't hit that, why bother even trying anymore? But that curveball has had its fun with you, and now its out of your way, no longer holding you back from what you need to do, and what you want to do. Even if it comes around again, you know how to just watch it go by again, even if it's a perfect corner strike sometimes, because you know it's no good for you.

And finally, there are those times when life will give you something, and it won't just hand you the whole thing. It will make you work for it, just to see if you have the strength and courage to go after what you want, need and deserve. Which brings me back to my Cassie. I'm not going to be cheesy and lame and say it was like the stars aligned for me or any of that. But when I saw her that first night, dancing with her friends, the music faded away, the people seemed to all stop talking, and I knew all I wanted was to share that night with her. I wanted that moment to be special, to last in my memory for a lifetime. And I was so caught up in that moment, that one shot...that I forgot the bases were loaded. And wouldn't you know it, life gave me a hanging curveball right in my wheelhouse and I sweet stroked that ball over the Ivy, past Waveland Ave, and it still hasn't come down. And all I can hope is that it never does, and that I can make this 360 foot walk turn into a lifetime, because even though a lifetime also ends, I couldn't ask for more time than the rest of what I have with the woman I love the most. And even when I do round third and head for home, when I lift my head, I have every faith that she'll be there, waiting to greet me when I come home.


Quotes And Thoughts For The Day:

“Never let the fear of striking you out keep you from playing the game” ~ Babe Ruth

“Things are shaping up to be pretty odd
Little deaths in musical beds
So it seems I'm someone I've never met

You will only hear these elegant crimes
Fall on your ears from criminal dimes
They spill unfound from a pretty mouth

And everybody gets there, everybody gets their
And everybody gets their way
I never said I missed her when everybody kissed her
Now I'm the only one to blame

Things have changed for me, and that's okay
I feel the same, I'm on my way, and I say
Things have changed for me, and that's okay…

I want to go where everyone goes
I want to know what everyone knows
I want to go where everyone feels the same

I never said I'd leave the city
I never said I'd leave this town
A falling out we won't tiptoe about

And everybody gets there and everybody gets their
And everybody gets their way
I never said I missed her when everybody kissed her
Now I'm the only one to blame

Things have changed for me, and that's okay
I feel the same, I'm on my way, and I say
Things have changed for me, and that's okay
I feel the same, and I say

Things have changed for me, and that's okay
I feel the same, and I say
[X2]

Oh… Well, things have changed for me
Come on everybody let's dance and sing
I'm singin' it all night long
Come on everybody and join along…! I'm sayin’…
Well things have changed for me
Come on everybody let's dance and sing
I'm singin' it all night long
Come on everybody and sing along…

Things have changed for me
And that's okay…!
I'm on my way, and I say

Things have changed for me…”

~ That Green Gentleman – Panic! at the Disco

A Light At The End Of It All

The crazy thing about saying goodbye to people is that you rarely want that to be the end. I don't mean the goodbye you say to your family when you leave for school, or your friends when you leave at the end of the night. I mean that real goodbye where you let that person out of your life and leave them free to go where they want. Its hard enough to say it in the beginning, but then to actually stick to it, to let that person go, it gets really hard. You want to know how they are, what they are doing, and how their lives are. And the worst comes when you do cave, and you ask them, and their life is great, they're doing all the things they want to be doing, the things you wish you were doing. It feels like lately everyone is living the life I wanted.

I wanted to marry a girl who's now engaged. I'd like to be like every other sane person and laugh and think what a mistake she's making, but really what I want to do is text her and ask her if she's really happy; if this guy is really what she wants, and what she needs. Half of me wants it all to be an internet hoax via facebook as we have all grown accustomed to. And a half of that half knows I want that because I still can't let her go. But the whole other half of me wants it to be real so that I can finally let her go, albeit forcibly, even though I know it will hurt me way more to know that she's gone forever as opposed to just thinking it. On the whole, I don't have a fucking clue how I feel about it, and I get the idea that I don't want to know. I'd probably scare myself.

I keep thinking that all I need to focus on is just moving forward from here, doing good on finals and going home for the summer. But then what? Work and save money over the summer spending most of my free time alone? And then what? I come back to school and go to class and then spend my free time alone again. It's nice to be optimistic, but I'm not seeing any light at the end of my tunnel. The years will go on and my friends will slowly graduate and move on. Yeah, I'll meet new people, but I won't get attached because I'll soon have to let go of them too. And then what you might ask? I get my degree, walk across the stage for my parents to look on and be so proud of me, then I find a job and a place to live and I do my 9 to 5 and the most I'd ever have to come home to is a dog and a cold glass of scotch. What a promising future.

Don't call me depressing, don't call me pessimistic. I'm being real. Some people just stay alone, they never find that person. Difference is that I found my person, but I wasn't hers. And she really was my one.

The problem with promising someone your heart is that from that point on, you have no direct control on where it ends up. That includes when they leave it on the side of the road for dead with a knife through it.


Quote and thought for the day:

'Time for the final bow,
Rows of deserted houses,
All our stable mates highway bound.

Give us our measly sum,
Getting the air inside my lungs is heavenly,
Starting out, with nothing but crippling doubt.

We'll rest easy justified.

Suffered a swift defeat,
I’ll endure countless repeats,
The gift of memory's an awful curse,
With age it just gets much worse,
But I won't mind,
I won't mind,
I won't mind,
I won't mind.'

~ Death Cab For Cutie – Stable Song

'I roll the window down
And then begin to breathe in
The darkest country road
And the strong scent of evergreen
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home.

Then looking upwards
I strain my eyes and try
To tell the difference between shooting stars and satellites
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home.

"do they collide?"
I ask and you smile.
With my feet on the dash
The world doesn't matter.

When you feel embarrassed then i'll be your pride
When you need directions then i'll be the guide
For all time.
For all time.'

~ Death Cab For Cutie – Passenger Seat

Strike Me With Lightning, Steal My Thunder, Just Please, This Once, Leave Some Wind In My Sails

The nice thing about not existing in the 'real world' is that no one gives a damn about you. And I don't mean that in a 'my family hates me' bullshit kind of way. But for people like me, family is different, they never really see you for what you are. They see you for your strengths, and try to fix your weak points. IF the rest of the world ever sees me at all, they only see the side I wish I could kill. Kinda gives a different meaning to 'you can take my picture, but get my good side,' doesn't it? And this may seem odd to people, but it can be nice if you don't exist. When you want to hide from people it's easy because no one is ever looking. I don't have to try very hard to be alone, which makes it easy...until I realize how easy it was and how sad that really is. Chances are only the few people I asked to read this actually are, and that's fine. I never started this little experiment for anyone but myself. And yet I want so badly for everyone I know to read it. You live your life so long trying to get so far away from people, and yet all you want is all of them around you.

For a few of you, this is my way of saying goodbye. I need to cut loose. It's not that I don't like you. In fact I love all of you in your own way. But I can't do this anymore. Each of you has been either forced out of my life by my demons, or walked out of it because of your own, or a little of both. Whichever of those you think it is in your case is up to you, it really doesn't matter, I don't want or like to point fingers. But I can't live under this Illusion that I can bring you back into my life. Each of you hold a special place in my heart, or rather in the hole where my heart once was, as the piece you hold, is the piece in each of your hands, and I don't want it back. Keep it. I doubt you'll acknowledge it exists, but it does, don't get me wrong. The fact is, I gave each of you that piece of me because you earned, some by force, other more gently, but in the end you each deserve it, and nothing you or I did changes it. The fact is that life goes on, and people and friendships and relationships change, but true promises don't, whether you like it or not. In each of your case I'm not sure whether or not I regret my promise, but even if I did, it doesn't change a thing either. Anyway, regardless of how crazy you all think I am at this point, if you're even still reading this that's good enough for me.

A wise man once told me that you always have to be aware, especially when things are going well, because that's when you're closest to disaster. Those weren't his exact words, but I imagine that he knows who he is, and the point is still valid, the only difference is that I no longer see him as a pessimist. He's a realist. Which brings me to the other point for this blog. And the reasoning behind the title. It seems like I can never have one really good day. Dad, no offense, but until further notice do not say you are proud of me, because every time you do, that's when my days go south. This time with the realization that I screwed up simple addition and in one fell swoop I went from a guaranteed C or better in chemistry to anything but that. Sorry to my parents, I failed you guys again. I swear its not on purpose.

Walking to breakfast this morning I was thinking many things, mainly what happens IF I fail out of here, (which is not impossible, though not likely) and why oh WHY am I in this place again? Am I really doing the best I can, am I really giving 100% or is that just bullshit I tell myself to feel better? Am I really cut out for this whole college thing anyway?
First off, for so many reasons its not worth listing, I don't have a choice, even for the sole fact that I would rather have $100,000 worth of student loan debt and truly fail than just give up. Yes Dad I know that's stupid but IF I'm going to succeed at anything, truly succeed, overcoming adversity and all that other crap, college needs to be that first one, and even if I fail, no matter how much money it costs me, at least I will be able to hold my head up high knowing that I tried my best. And I know that I am. Am I doing the best I possibly can in every class? Not even close. But knowing and accepting that doesn't allow me to just do it. I can't explain it. It's just a fact of life. And the only person who ever even remotely fixed it no longer exists. I know I can do this. I know that somewhere inside of me there is strength. I just need to find it. And Fast. I AM however, giving life 100%, unfortunately, at this point, that's not all that important to the academic board at Purdue University, and right now they matter a lot.
But so do all of you. All I ask is not from any of you. All I request is to not always completely blow me away. Please. You can strike me with lightning and steal my thunder, but please, please, PLEASE, just this once leave some wind in my sails. At least until I can right this ship. Because that's not easy to do alone, but I'm the only one who can crew this ship, no matter how much anyone else wants to help. Eventually the mother bird has to push the babies out of the nest. I know that at least some of you want to catch me and bring me back into the nest until I'm 'more ready,' but you can't. This is the only way I can figure out how to live the life I've been given, no matter how hard it is to figure out.

Quote and thought for the day:

“Fred gets his paints out and goes to the basement
Projecting some slides onto a plain white
Canvas and traces it
Fills in the spaces
He turns off the slides, and it doesn't look right
Yeah, and all of these bastards
Have taken his place
He's forgotten but not yet gone
And I'm sorry, Mr. Jones
And I'm sorry, Mr. Jones
And I'm sorry, Mr. Jones
It's time”

~ Ben Folds – Fred Jones Pt. 2

“Save Me Take Me Home,
When I Come Up For Air,
Save Me Take Me Home,
When I Come Up For Air,
Save Me Take Me Home,
Over And Over Again.
Save Me Take Me Home.

Will I Come Up For Air, Come Up For Air.
After A while The Coroner is Calling Me,
Lulling Me Waving Goodbye.
I’m Out Here Alone, Oh God Can You Save Me Now?
Sinking My Heart Turns To Stone.”

~ Atreyu – Lead Sails and a Paper Anchor

HELP!

It's great when people try to help. Because they really do try. My mom and dad like so many others try to give me the answers to problems I don't have, or they insist that their one solution, which won't work for me, is the only solution. Or my counselor who is very sweet and surely cares a lot about her clients, but is so fluffy and overdone that I spend the whole time picking through the glittering generalities, and I feel like I'm at Sunday mass. For me, Sunday mass was always a gathering of people who felt that they needed more than they already had. So many people praying for things they don't need. And the kicker for me was the contradictions. These people all believe that when people die it is because God takes them because he needs them to be with him again for one reason or another. Contradiction number one is here because they claim that God is all-powerful, so why would he need some human soul to help him do whatever it is he needs to do? I'm no scripture scholar, and I have no belief that I know a damn thing about God beyond what the 10 Commandments and Jesus told all of us, but that just seems a little silly. But I'll go out on a limb on this one. The main problem I've always had with this is the fact that if someone is dying, then obviously God needs them right? So if we are praying to keep them alive, all we're really doing is begging God to not take someone from us whom He needs, right? That boils down to a 4 year old begging his mom to let him do the exact opposite of what she already told him he must do. But a lot more four year olds. In the end death is inevitable, and God will eventually take all of us, so why not let it happen when you know it is coming, where you can prepare yourself for the grief, and expedite the situation so that the dying person doesn't have to be suffering. Plus that was you aren't blindsided by their death. Maybe that's just me and my bad experience with being blindsided by a death, then again this is my blog, so I suppose you're reading this to hear my opinion, aren't you? Poor you.

However, this isn't my way to test peoples' faith, because in the end people believe what they need to believe in order to survive and thrive, me included. This is, in fact, about help. The reason I started about Sunday mass was because even though I don't get anything directly from the fluffiness, I can pick out the things that do help me from that fluffiness. However, my counselor unknowingly helped me discover something today. I always avoided going to counseling because I despised the fluffiness of it. I have always, in at least some way, felt like in those situations I was treated like a child. However, I have realized I only have myself to blame for that. It works for me exactly how she(my counselor) wants it to, just in a roundabout way. It makes me look inside myself and see the value and hope within. It helps me really see how I feel about myself and start to get at the roots of the problems I have. The only difference is that this happens because the fluffiness makes me smile( sometimes because I feel silly) and it gives me hope. And in the end that's what I need, is hope by the truckload. So in the end, I end up conforming to exactly what she wants and her plan works perfectly.

But I wouldn't be giving you my full opinion today if I didn't tell you the irony of today. Because my life, as the one or two of you regular readers will find, is full of irony. And as today is about help, this is about the irony of help in life. As many of you could probably see coming, the irony here is that most people offer a lot of help, but don't know how to receive it. I can also say from experience that the people who offer the most help(usually in the form of 'friendly advice'), are typically the ones who are crying out for it. Unfortunately this is not usually a quid pro quo relationship. Rarely do people offer help with the intention of receiving it and actually get what they expect. Yet they keep trying, not because they have too much pride to ask for help, but moreover because they don't know how to ask for what they want.

The other problem is that the majority of the populous doesn't want help. The problem with living in a country where every person can be independent is that if given the choice, most people will do just that. The empowering nature of independence makes them believe that they know everything and nothing that anyone else can tell them can help them more than what they already know. Moreover they don't think they have any problems for anyone to help them fix. It's these people that I feel for because they are different and worse than people like me. People like me are willing to ask for help, though they don't know where to find the type of help that they know they need. The others though, don't accept that they have problems, and therefore don't want to fix what they won't accept aren't broken, and of course have no idea what type of help they need, how to find it, ask for it, get it, or use it effectively. My life is full of hope. The reason my heart bleeds for these people is because their life has no hope until they become like me. And in the end that's what they need. They need that wakeup call. And all the while they are fighting the one thing in life they need more than anything else.

Quote and thought for the day:

“Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form--no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space--ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.”

~ Walt Whitman

Throw Fate Out The Window

For the first time in my life, I don't want to know what's going to happen. That's the problem with believing that everything happens for a reason, with believing blindly in fate, that certain things are meant to happen. You can never take ownership of anything. You can never believe that anything happened because you made it happen, because you worked hard to make it happen. It just happened because it had to. But when you are living in a state of mind like mine where accomplishments are worth more than Fort Knox's gold, fate robs you of everything you will ever own. You are never the reason for anything good, only the things that are bad.” He smiled to himself as he took a sip of his scotch, “fuck man, in this self centered world you try not to live in, that's exactly what you become, but worse. Instead of believing that the world turns because you live and breathe, you think that you know that the only way for it to keep turning is for you to stop living and breathing. You do battle inside yourself not knowing whether you are a Nihilist like some, or a Determinist like most. You like to think that there is something else out there, something else to catch you when you fall, something which guaruntees your happiness, your survivial. But on the same token you wonder, 'where is this wonderful being who is supposed to lift me up from all this destruction and take me away? Where is my happiness? Why does everyone else find it but not me?' You like to think you're not alone but you are. Because just like you wish to not exist, the others who are like you wish the same thing. They put on that mask smile and they act like they are happy. They learn so much about the mood of happiness, that they learn, in tiny ways, how to feel it. Which only feeds their desire to be alone. They feel this happiness but once it is gone, the void, that inner voice, the 'Dark Passenger,' inside them and inside all of us, convinces them that the initial happiness was never real.

We, as in me and people like me, we chase this ideal of fitting in, of being popular. But what does that even mean? I have friends all around me, but I never stop to appreciate them. The 'Dark Passenger,' convinces me that I can do better, that I should strive for more, but when I get the gumption to do so, He also takes all the power from me. And what is it that He drives us towards? A large group of rich preppy friends who don't have a clue? The kind of people who act like they feel great around everyone, like they are happy-go-lucky, but in the end, they are just all of us? All they ever see are their flaws. The only difference is that they are better over-actors and they have enough of the 'happiness' to keep their 'Dark Passengers' quiet for longer. But in the end, He's still there. He tears at them, until they finally give in.

The people that people like me idolize are just like us. Like a tree with termites, we look fine on the outside while the inside is hollow, until one little breeze knocks us over and everyone sees the shattered remains of our insides. The difference is that they have people who block the breeze and kill the termites. Not because they care more, no they care much less than friends like mine do. But if they ditch one of their own then their own popularity goes down(so Clueless they are to the entire world of 6.4 billion people around them(only their own small problems such as fashion emergencies concern them)). And if they have someone who is empty inside, void of emotion, around them for too long, they're afraid they'll catch it, like some kind of plague. Plus someone who is sad will put quite a damper on their happy-go-lucky mood won't they?
The big picture though, is when someone like me blows over, its too late to catch me, too late to put me back together again. The sad part is that we block ourselves from killing the 'Dark Passenger,' we feel guilt in seeking help from others, we don't want to burden them. Our lives are bad enough, we don't need to spread it. How ironic then that the clueless ones are so afraid of catching what we can't give them, and we are likewise afraid of giving them what they can't catch.

Quote and thought for the day:

“Not all that Glitters is Gold; Not all who Wander are Lost”

~ J.R.R. Tolkien