To love and act in knowing

These days couldn't have been heavier on my shoulders, if only for the burden of knowing and an ill-assumed propensity towards inaction. The past week appears to have been the last straw, and as it started, everything ended in tears. My academic performance, although so-so to good in one subject, has dipped drastically below standard and I fear that I might be forced to abort the other subject altogether.

My partner raised a very valid point sometime last week. It was something to the effect of: "You like the subject matter. This is something within your field and you absolutely adore your professor. What went wrong? I'm trying to understand but it just doesn't make sense. You're supposed to love this. If you love something, you don't just let it go that way. You do everything you can to make it work."

Like a wooden stake to a vampire's heart, my partner then burst into tears with what came next.

"Before you came along, I had no intention of ever going back to the academe. You did this, you made me want to go through all this again. If you're looking for reasons to get up when you fall, then just think of this. This might sound cheesy as hell, but love, I thought were in this together."

Everything fell apart in me. There was no way to rationalize what was happening without sounding like an excuse. To find the love of my life in tears at the thought of my recent failures was unbearable. "I'm not just doing this for myself. I'm trying so hard, and when I think of what I'm doing, I think of you." It's been on my mind for days. It rings endlessly, further accentuating how mediocre and selfish I've become or might've always been. While I'm getting by on what I could salvage from my parents' weekly budget, my partner, with a full-blown fever for days desperately tries to stay awake to study quantum mechanics. She would fall asleep in between pages and upon waking would immediately resume reading.

"Love, I'm doing this for us."

If I've spent so much of my young adult life trying to inspire action in people because of my involvement in hardcore punk, why couldn't I do this for the only person who makes me want to see value in anything?

I feel like the most undesirable person in the world for all of this. A lot of the time, it's this thought together with the idea that luck does not equate to worthiness.

What else could I do? She's already here and I'm sure as hell there's a reason why. I admire everything about this person and the life she leads and for all the good I see in her, she chose to see what good I had inside of me; regardless of whether or not I saw it in myself.

I still don't see it. I'm not sure I know how to see and act in line with the value in everything. My mother said it takes practice. I really hope so.

It might be too late to save that one subject, but I can't let this stop me from getting where I need to be for someone I love. My parents could only ever want the best for me. Alva chose to stay because she could see something worth believing in. I just found out that my grandmother gave her last breath setting aside pennies a week to send me to graduate school.

All of this, if anything, means the world to me. I might be sick but who isn't? If I kept myself from giving in to impulse control once, then what's keeping me from doing so again? No one. Nothing.

It's one thing for me to know things, it's another thing to take things to heart. It's everything to love and act in knowing.

Whatever I do, I'll do for us. If I have to get hurt to be able to stand on my own two feet, so be it. Seeing the burdens you bear, you can't do this alone.

Exit narratives

For my grandmother,

We enter the room in silence and walk away in tears. These are gestures known to every mother from the moment of your birth to the seconds leading up to her passing. In days, many unspoken, she takes to her quiet ways; leaving each room a little cleaner, always certain of your return. Like the spaces between days, months, and years, you always do. You know this because of the way the tables are set when you arrive. They are just the way they were when you left. We say little beyond greetings; interspersed between little words, strewn across little days. Things are hushed that way, but it's home to all of us. From the cacophony of traffic to the chattering of keys over the low buzzing of your office workstation, the calm and quiet of a mother's warmth is the safest place you have in life.

You may not have said you loved her, you might not have said you cared, but as long as you knew where home was, her warmth would always be there.

Not wanting to wake you as you slept, worked, or ate, she left in the same silence she lived. With the warmth that followed her, we entered the room in silence to walk away in tears.

Half-asleep

Years of radio silence compel me to speak in ways both familiar and far away. Each time I go on these extended writing fasts, the mantra echoes back: "You don't have to. Not anymore." Regardless of where I am or what I seem (in the truly perceptive sense) to be doing, it always comes down to those little patches of comfort that line the proverbial trenches of daily living. I thought I was safe where I was but the statement about "not having to" couldn't be more false.

The mantra was a lie that I always wanted to believe in. That is of course, until such time that the truth behind IDWTMYA became self-evident. Those safe spaces only exist here, in writing. It's a sad irony having to see that the only thing rooting me to my sense of reality is a volume of past regrets and projective fiction. Only half-conscious of their implications, I'd say (and consequently reaffirm) that the two things keeping me afloat are these acts of remembering, and the aspirations that follow them.

The truth? I couldn't stop writing to save my life.

To illustrate where I am in the texts of life, a friend in esoteric circles once read my cards out in response to the question, "Will I ever find ancient knowledge?". "Well...", he said. "You will find whatever it is you're looking for. What you aspire for, you will attain but in turn you will also encounter great misery because of the choices you make along the way." Getting into specifics, the cards spoke of the bearing and greatness of aspiration, drive, and the pains one must bear in order to attain them. These are narratives that are by no means unique to my plight but what I would deem specific here would be the symbols one may draw from each card in the Tarot. There is a certain number of possible permutations for the Tarot, but each hand you draw is yours. They are literally in your hands. Being a spiritually inclined atheist, I found his next statement particularly resonant:

"The cards aren't here to tell you which numbers show up in tomorrow's lottery. We simply need symbols to help us flesh out where we are and what we're doing in life. If you don't like what the cards say, don't pass the blame. You drew them."

Life trajectories are symbolic, and in this particular construct, we plot the course of value and valuation along our relative perception of time. Linear or otherwise. When I was 20, I sought to become a person who both generated and traded in terms of value. There were three things I wanted at that point in time: First was to be in a healthy, loving relationship with a person who I believe embodies the best and most beautiful parts of human endeavor, flaws and all. Second was to continue creating art with tools that seek to inspire. The third and last in that list was to be able to study in a school with virtues I could stand by and believe in.

Two years later, I'm in a loving relationship with someone I never thought existed and I'm playing a Fender Jazzmaster in an indie rock band while doing electronic music on the side for a popular independent label. That's two things off that list of things to do in my early twenties. Two out of three. Somewhere along the way to that third and last thing, life went awry. Things were quiet for a while, but only at the expense of what kept me up and running for years. I took writing for granted, and as a result I took life for granted. Apart from the huge boost in my family's economic standing, I'd say I had a lot going for me. At least for the things I wanted. Those were the cards. My decisions however have not been for the best as of late and probably won't be for quite a while. These cards, my hands.

I fell into a slump somewhere in the middle of my time with City Hall. Either way, as laid back as things were there (or as laid back as I was while I was there), I still got some things done. I regret having left on an abrupt note under circumstances that did not allow for closure on both my part and that of the people I worked with. It was unfair for me to leave them. Having left City Hall towards the end of my contract, the promise of better opportunities in the corporate world led me to question my motives for pursuing the life I wanted. Here I was, a month or so short of a full year working, jumping ship at the slightest hint of being where I want to be in life. That's how the press release went, at least. Unmotivated and uninspired, I was critically underperforming within the first three months of being an associate for a real estate firm. I had an attitude, my boss said. I didn't care much for what he said, admittedly. At that point, I took a sharp turn downward; finding myself sifting through gear classifieds or humor pages on the internet. Looking far and wide for something to compel me to work. Wealth and status within the corporation didn't do it for me. I wanted to be elsewhere, and the longer I stayed, the more I sought for an environment of open discourse. I didn't want to move up the corporate ladder. I wanted to transcend humanity; to live in a world of ideas and ideals. Something to benefit the greater human race. I saw that in social research.

That said, I found solace in the idea of enrolling in graduate school. I was poor from refusing to ask my parents for money, but I'd gladly pay for that extra tank of gas just to get to where my heart took me. I was in a bad place financially and emotionally but I was willing to take a chance on the prospect of learning to read and write again. Soon after school started, the company decided it was in everyone's best interest to let me go. Broke, unable to claim back pay for a month, and with dismal marks in my new favorite subject, the transition to academic life was and still is long and painful.

Looking back at the things I did when I was younger, I put shows together with scraps from my allowance. I pressed and sold my band's records, helped out at every single hardcore show and community initiative from 2007 to 2010 apart from little musical projects I did from time to time. Hell, I even got to tour with my band at that time. THRICE.

That dialogical spirit got lost somewhere. It took my aspirations with it. If anything, I had only hoped to find it here and with this long-winded return, it seems that I've come to the right place. I'm in a really bad patch of land where I am now, but not for long. IDWTMYA was always about my relationship with myself and the rest of the world. As with all relationships, communication keeps things together. To be able to communicate with myself after all this time, I hope to make this work. I'll be seeking professional help along the way as well. So in hopes of preempting further discontent, I'm setting up all my contingency plans.

This has happened before. Not this bad, but I'll only come back stronger. Take this as a reminder. Never lose touch. If my offset up there isn't enough of a dead ringer for my sentiments, to quote Adam Franklin, "never lose that feeling."