Milestones in the fold

These days my entire life unfolds like an origami crane. It all started with a plain sheet of rice paper, and now, even though the material is the same, it's something much more complex. These days it seems I'm forced to examine each fold, each step that brought me closer to what I now resemble. This is about deconstructing. This is about things that happened a long time ago.

In the ocean, a shark has to be constantly moving in order to stay alive. I have to remember that. I have to keep moving.

The last couple of weeks, it's like someone upstairs pushed the fuck-his-shit-up button. The range of emotions I've gone through have completely run the gamut. Black, white, shades of gray, you name it, chances are I've felt it and dealt with it. My life wasn't perfect, don't get me wrong, but things were going, smoothly. I was forgetting what I learned a long time ago.

Don't ever get too comfortable.

They say: that which does not kill you, only makes you stronger. Well, I should be approaching critical-mass sometime soon. On present course I'll be getting super powers next week. I can't fucking wait.

I say: that thing, the one that makes you stronger, it usually does get you in the end. It rings true about your past, it's never completely gone.

I think by now everyone knows what happened between Kelly and I. I'll spare you all the re-cap, I'm sure I'll be blogging about it for a good while anyways. This isn't about that. This is about the past, remember? It's only because these things all happened in the same week that they're being lumped together.

They also say: when a door closes, a window opens. Well, I wasn't expecting this window to open. This fourteen year old window I apparently forgot to lock.

So what happens when someone you've hated for fourteen years pops back into your life and apologizes? Someone who was your best friend for a long time, who just up and vanished one day. Taking with him an assortment from your mother's jewelry box. And what happens if you had that person wrongfully accused the entire time? For fourteen years! This person has been the beneficiary of most of your anger and hurt. This person who was your best friend and one day up and vanished, taking with him everything you ever trusted or thought was sacred. Friendship, honesty, truth, they're all just words. What if -- come to find out -- you've been hating the wrong person all along?

Well, this happens. It starts about 13 posts down and just gets deeper and deeper.

Yesterday, everyone who checked those comments had a front row seat in the theater of my past. This is shit I haven't thought about for years. A wound that was sutured a long time ago only to be rent open again. Made fresh.

Don't get me wrong, we were kids, we all were. Kids do stupid shit, I know that. But this is an event that haunted me my entire life. I never stopped thinking about it. A milestone. If someone I called friend -- a friend above all other friends -- could do this to me, then what's the world worth?

That was the day I grew up, and for a time, I stopped trusting everyone. Don't ever get too comfortable, I'd always say.

After that -- for what seemed like forever to a fourteen year old -- I didn't have friends. I didn't go out of my way to even make new friends. Sometimes its a dangerous thing to be left alone with only your subconscious to guide you. Your mind can wander, you can get caught up in thoughts of revenge. I was really hurt.

It's funny, we had this great friendship, him and I, but now I strain to remember anything but him leaving and the events that lead up to that departure. I can't for the life of me remember the good times. They're just not there. I'm sure at one point they existed but I just can't recall them with any solidity. They're overshadowed, shaded out.

It looks like he's got some kids now and is into all the same things I am. It's funny how fourteen years can go by with great distance between two people and somehow -- through experiences they shared together -- they come out alike. I just wish I could remember some of the good ones.

I really want to forgive him now, I do. I really want to like him, but I know I can never trust him, ever. It's just not in me to do so. I know my limits and I'll never set myself up for that fall ever again.

I have to keep moving.

These are the folds that shape us into who we are. The things under our skin no one sees, forming us. We're malleable under the pressure of our own experiences. We're folded. We all are.