I’ve got a little red bow…

And you wanted it so,
And you let me go down,
To the end of the road.
And the black and the white,
A technicolorful life

Breaking Benjamin, Home

I have this bear. I’ve had it forever. Since before I was old enough to have the concept of naming things down. My bear doesn’t have a name. It has a gut feeling that’ll never fit into words.

Bear (I’ll name it that now because when we get older, things need names) was made in Korea. He’s got two beady black eyes, matted fur and a broken music box in his back.

He faithfully played “The sun’ll come out tomorrow” for years. Until I was well past needing silly things like stuffed animals to keep me safe.

He spent a long time tucked in a dark corner, forgotten. When I got old enough to feel a little nostalgic, I found him again.

The gears are stripped in his music box, and it makes a pretty horrible noise now, but I keep thinking that I should get it fixed soon.

A lot of my stuff, I keep it because it’s a memory. Part of writing this blog is trying to keep that memory withouth keeping all the clutter that goes along with it.

You wanted to.

You wanted to.
Grab a brush and put a little makeup
You wanted to.
Hide the scars to fade away the shakeup
You wanted to.
Why’d you leave the keys upon the table
You wanted to.

System of a Down, Chop Suey

My friend J, he’s not so much like the lyrics of a System of a Down song as he is the sound. Brash and abrupt and yet somehow, so compelling.

J probably has Asperger’s Syndrome. A very mild case, to be sure, but still. It all fits.

Since I am drawn to the crazy like a moth to the flame, we’ve been friends since we were about 8. Which is to say, since he moved to Michigan. We’ve been friends since the first day we met.

J was weird as a kid. For the first few years that he lived here, his catch phrase was “Fuzzy Cheese!” If I need to make him shut up, I can usually pull that little gem out.

He’s a pretty steady character (which I like, because my few and far between friends will all tell you I’m an Ent).

He’s not the one that I go to when I need comfort.

J is my mean friend.

He will look at me and tell me that yes, I do look fat in those pants and have ever since I started gaining weight.

J firmly believes that if someone is mean to me, I will grow a backbone and say a lot of things that I need to say.

I will never admit it in a million years, but being his friend has made me a lot stronger. His version of mean is a lot different from the one I grew up with. Instead of making me afraid of facing it, I learned to deal with it. I can take a lot more criticism now, thanks to him.

It’s not a bed of roses (or even molding dairy product), but it’s a solid relationship.

It could take years to find myself

Am I still breathing?
Have I lost that feeling?
Am I made of glass, ’cause you see right through me.
I don’t know who Iam and you’re the only one who sees that
I can’t ask these questions that cannot be answered today.

-Trapt, Made of Glass

I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: I am a very auditory person. I’d rather be blind than deaf. I can usually tell by their tone of voice when someone is angry and who they’re angry at.

But most of all, I connect sounds and places. There are all those commercials talking about smell being closest to memory.

For me, it’s sound. If I hear a song, I can tell you all about the last time I heard it. Sometimes, I get a taste for a song or album or artist and that’s all I want to listen to. When I went to England, Ireland and Scotland it was Trapt.

I can’t escape winding down these halls/had to find a place where there are no walls.

It was the right sounds and the right lyrics for the trip. It was the first time I was really away from my mother. I didn’t call her for the entire almost-two-week-trip. It was as close to freedom as I’ve gotten yet, which was a really big deal then.

Plus, I was with A, who was still my alpha and omega. She was the epitome of what I wanted to be and the person that I would have happily spent the rest of my days with. I listened to I’ll run away with you by my side and daydreamed about the two of us living together in a sod hut on the moores for the rest of our days.

Took me another two or three years to figure out that I liked girls. I’m quick like that.

I spent a lot of time mad at A for the way things went, but it’s not really fair. I knew that when I was mad, but it felt good to indulge in a little irrational emotion for once.

We grew apart. That’s really all that happened. She took care of me through high school, filled a need that I had (still have) that I don’t think anyone else would, could or possibly should fill. She was the bubblegum and twine on my almost-gone muffler. She understood my problems.

I feel bad that I’m not doing that for her. I still feel like I owe her something, for all the crap she put up with from me.

I drove her nuts listening to this cd on repeat for the whole trip overseas.  But I didn’t know how to explain that it was the best way I knew to remember the details forever.

Because right now, I’m in Ireland, and we’re still best friends and my life is perfect.

The last time you cared about anything, the last time you allowed yourself to be seen.