:: Closing Time ::

:: Sunday, December 01, 2002 ::

http://www.xanga.com/home.asp?user=chiradawg

Interesting piece of work. Like many blogs these days, I think mine included, one line posts and token blogs pepper the sky around a thin selection of really good pieces of writing. This most recent blog is one of those. Go read it, before you read this. Because I didn't even think I was going to blog tonight, and I still don't know what I'm going to say about this, but in the spirit of action-reaction blogging.... I have to. And I know I'll feel good about it in the end, whether or not I feel good after what I've said.

The same frustrations that I had before leaving school, the things that I vowed never to feel again all ended up coming right back.

Terrible, terrible words. And far too true. The terrible truth. And I don't know what to do about it, now that he's identified it.

Everything I could tell myself - that I wouldn't feel things, that I wouldn't do things, that I wouldn't react certain ways. That I would change. That I would grow, learn, move on. Nothing worked - very few differences, almost none whatsoever.

I feel cold. Cold to the world, cold to reality. Like Chira, I'm coming back in less than three weeks - a week of classes, and then finals. I have three weeks left with the world that I've come to accept as normal.

I miss GW

Not because it means more to me than this does - in this life I have friends I can have more fun with than I even come close to at college. More trust, more understanding. Not surprising, given the time we've had to build it. But there......

... there I did get my clean slate, did get my fresh start.... and anything that I didn't want to bring that I accidentally did, I still have time to change. Nothing's final there, nothing's fixed. There are problems, obviously. Bridges I need to build that I don't have yet. But I've got no baggage there. No history. No grudges.

I read way further back into Chira's blog, and found out that (while I had forgotten to read his blog), he did some of the same thing I did. He said things about lots of people... except almost all of them were his friends. I'm unsure about one though. He says something about "Pete." Now I know he and Rossetti played together for a while, but I really don't know how close they were. Or if he would have said what he did about Rossetti. Burton? Possible, but unlikely. No.... I really have a feeling, paranoid as it might be, that what was said was said about me. And if it was, despite the caveat given, it's a little upsetting - because it's a clear illustration of what I -can't- leave behind here. What I -can't- shave off here. How some people must be unable to let go.

I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. Maybe some day somebody will tell me I was, and it'll be a weight off my back. A small one. For now, I've got a million and one other weights - finals, projects, the Beta semi-formal (hey, who had time to go out and meet lots of girls during pledging? Certainly not I!), booking travel, writing more, not breaking down, blog blog blog. Just immediately I have to write and italian composition, pack, sleep, say any last goodbyes, go to the airport, go through the BITCH of a trip back through BWI (first the airplane, then I have to catch the train to Union Station which is 40 minutes and only runs occasionally, then 10 minutes back on the metro and a 15 minute walk, IF I make it back before the metro closes, otherwise a $15 cab ride), all the while trying not to feel ridiculously sick. And when I get there, I'll download all the pictures I took off of my camera.

And in that moment, I may just cry. Because I'll be back where I feel normal - and suddenly have a glimpse of what I had. What I feel I've basically lost to inevitablity. It's amazing that we can come back and still have those close friends, still have that fun. Still make jokes, and mistakes together. Even still have those prejudices - those dispositions, those grudges. And yet, they all get taken away from us. Life really does have to go on, and there's no way we can keep the friends we've always had forever. There's no such thing as always.

A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant's rings make way for other toys
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar

His head was bowed in sorrow, green scales fell like rain
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane
Without his lifelong friend, Puff could not be brave
And Puff that mighty dragon quietly slipped into his cave

Jackie Paper is damn near all I ever wanted in life. Now that I finally feel I've found him.... life rips him, that is to say them, away from me. It kills me to even think about it.

And it kills me more to know that when I get back to school and read what I've written, with Steve sitting behind my and Jake to my right, Adam likely playing Smash and Mike slapping the ground, it won't mean what it did to me when I wrote it. Because I'll be surrounded by new friends who I trust - maybe not as instinctively and wholey as the ones I've made here, but they'll be there. And I'll be like a whore, my feelings swayed simply by who comes close, and I won't feel the same remorse and loss. I'll trivialize the distance between us because the pain of it will be softened by the proximity of friends. Not yet friends like I have here, but friends close enough to make me feel better. And I'll be a fucking whore.

Funny how we got to me calling myself a whore, from Chira's pushing that we all be completely honest. For as some of you know, that was the basic inspiration behind the creation of this blog - "Closing Time," the title I've quoted quite a few times in itself, was supposed to be my tying up loose ends, and cutting other ties that I couldn't wrap up. Well somehow ties refuse to be cut, and loose ends manage to fray even more, but the one thing I -have- been is honest, and open. This blog was where I threw off all the bullshit and shot from the hip, writing from the heart.

And I can honestly say, I do not know if it has been a good idea or not.

I don't know what everyone else truly feels because of it. I feel so little additional clarity, that it hasn't been worth it for myself, which is ok because it was never supposed to be for me. I haven't once received any kind of obvious evidence of good occuring because of this blog. Therefore, I have no idea if it was a good idea.

And that said, I can't truthfully reccomend that path, of total openess, to Chira. Because I have no feedback to show that it worked.

I guess, as he would say, that's just the nature of the game.
:: Peter 3:33 AM [+] ::
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