Thunderstorm Burns

I know I will be writing more about this, but for right now what I have to say is shorter and not especially profound. It is more problematic I believe.
It is easy to hear, to speak, to believe words like, "Just take it a day at a time," or "Life goes on." It ought to make sense to just move on from something, to shake off a memory, to shrug something away. But somehow I believe that doing that is to lose entirely what it means to be human. I am a man, a boy, a fool covered in his own mistakes, defined by his scars. And that is not special. It is not unique, as we would be so happy to believe. It is nothing unusual to be a fool. It is not a novel idea to announce yourself as being stupid. And neither is it an excuse. I am not less broken by pointing out I am indeed broken. So what of it? Why is it that when we open up to those near and, when we put ourselves into it,  far away when we will inevitably hurt them and be hurt by them? It will happen. No amount of romanticism or honeymooning the idea will last long enough to keep us from eventually tearing through a heart with the sharp steel of words or a cold action, and so often it is both. But life goes on, they say. Forgive and move on. Give yourself without restraint because that's what's good. Man was not meant to be alone. Indeed, but man was not meant to destroy everything he loved. Men were not made to snarl at the woman they swore to protect for eternity, not made to do push away those they love. So I suppose this post is a question I've been thinking on for quite a while, or maybe a few questions. It is not me doubting anything massive, only trying to make sense of what is. Why is it good to lose pieces of yourself to those who you know are leaving, to ridiculous, kind, and patient people you will never see again? Why do we get close when hurt is what inevitably comes of it? Do we shut our eyes, hold hands, and say that love will find a way? How can we trust ourselves enough to love like we ought?
Our lives are hurricanes, are screaming thunderstorms of tears and joys that don't mingle together nicely. They break each other. They strike, lightning bolt against lightning bolt, and the sparks come raining down, burning dark gaps into the bright earth of our world.

Beginning

People are not fair. We are not honest. We hurt and cut and spit and tear each other apart. We undo those we love most, drive away our best friends and push away our families. We let things be said that belong in the mouth of hell and speak words that we regret the second our mouths close back. Forgiveness is a weak word for what we need, a word used far too often.

And then we leave. Having lived in towns among people we never expected to know, we move on, as we're apparently supposed to do, and rip up the soil, the life, with the roots we laid down and let run out, far too often unintentionally. But this is how life works, they tell us. This is what happens. Your high school friends won't be your college friends, who won't be your married friends, who won't be your retired friends. Our lives are filled with faces of people who bear parts of us away, pieces we have lost and will never get back. And that is pain. Not a selfish hurt like watching the other kid grab the blue crayon, but the pain of seeing your love hushed by distance and time, the years muffling the laughs and tears that made you who you were.

I am not a fascinating human. I am not caught up in some deeply mysterious and difficult life. I have no catchy ideas, no quick witted phrases that I plan to give to the world. But I am not starting this blog to show anything off. I am a boy from the beaches of Florida, caught up in a hurricane of living that has, for right now, brought me into a small town in the Northwest. And the only hope of writing this can be to describe the colors and smells and sounds from in the eye of this storm that carries me back to where I belong, back home. 

But there is no real going back. I will never be the same boy I was before this winter. And this is what I have found to be true: I am made who I am by the people around me. Never did I think that I would find the friends that I have, that I would love kids from the hard north and the east coast. But I did, and I do. I am being thrown only forward, pulled through time watching those I now love leave to a good life. 

So this blog is to remember, in one way or another, the places and people and days that make up the wild journey that is my life. It is to make some sense of the way I will become who I will be. I cannot undo the words I have said. I will never be able to make scars disappear that I have caused. I can only live among those that I have, reach for those that are far, and, more than anything, look for miracles in their eyes. Because here, below these words, there is a current of memories and a thunderstorm of life that roars with the fullness of an entire world and will strike me with its laughing lightning.