Thoughts on a C.S. Lewis Quote

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

I have been living my emotional/romantic life for the past 3-4~ years terrified of a woman who would come by and break my heart. There. I said it.

Has this happened once before? Yes. Well, sort of.  My first girlfriend was a girl I met at a youth group meeting at church, and we dated for the majority of my senior year. When she broke up with me, she said that it was because she "didn't want a long-distance relationship" when I went off to college out-of-state and she finished her senior year. (She was about a year younger than me.)

I accepted this, and we had the "let's be friends" talk. Two weeks later, she has a new boyfriend and is telling me all about the dirty things they do in bed. Suffice to say, the girl who first laid claim to my heart was not a real girl, but rather a projection by my then-girlfirend of the kind of girl I was looking for.

 She became, afterwards, the polar opposite of the girl I had been in a "committed" relationship with for 9 months; abusing alcohol, illegal drugs, and generally living the high school party life.

Fast forward to freshman year of college, and the "OMG GURLZ" reaction of leaving the small pond and going to a huge lake. I was extremely flirtatious in college, I'm not ashamed to admit that. I had my eye on a number of girls, but there was one in particular that I really wanted to pursue a relationship with. She was cute, funny, extremely musical and a committed Christian, the "Proverbs 31" woman every young man in Bible college dreams of. I asked her on a couple "dates" (as much dating as one can do on a $20/week budget) before asking her about pursuing a relationship that could end in marriage. I think "courting" is the word I used. I was so noble in college, it's disgusting.

She said yes, and was very enthusiastic. A week later she came to me and told me that the nervousness she was feeling, she decided, did not stem from her first "real" relationship, but from the anxiety that our relationship wasn't something we could or should focus on. According to her, my direction in life was unclear and she couldn't commit to someone that lacked direction in life. I don't deny I lacked direction at the time, but what I needed then was less someone who wanted me to "get my poop in a group" and more someone who would help me along my way.

Since then, this young woman has gone on a choir tour that I could not attend due to my piss poor grades, and built a relationship with one of my friends that has led to their engagement. Am I still upset about "what could have been"? Absolutely. Was it almost entirely my fault? Probably. You can also see where this is going: Ron in a relationship is batting .00000000 and it's the bottom of the 7th with 2 outs.

Three or four emotional flings later, and here I am, 23 years old, without a meaningful relationship to my name these past 3 years. Am I being fearful about my next relationship? Yes. Part of it is being in the Army and adjusting to that kind of life, along with being overseas for the past 2 1/2 years and not taking too kindly to any of the locals, in a romantic sense. Yet here I sit. And I don't know where to go from here.

Today is All You Have

August Burns Red has a song called "Carpe Diem", which, as any entry-level Latin student/enthusiast will tell you, means "Seize the Day". The song is more or less a dialogue between the sinful and sacred natures, the demon on the left shoulder versus the angel on the right, and so forth. It's a great song to listen to on a run, because for me, the temptation to give up and just walk home is always there. To hear words like "I've chased this dream, to do what I love, and I wouldn't trade it for a thing" is very motivating.

I guess my point is that the best things in life that you can do are often the hardest.

Random Start: Lose Control, Stellar Kart

Honestly, I don't see much in Stellar Kart. They were one of a couple bands (along with Hawk Nelson, Sanctus Real, and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus) that I picked up pretty much on the basis of "I-liked-their-single-on-that-Christian-radio-station-so-let's-get-the-whole-album-for-Christmas." Basically, it's sub-par Christian-y punk rock that I didn't delete because I paid money for it.
That is all.

Christmastime...

This year was my first Christmas without the comforts of family and friends from home. Understandably, it was very different and kinda hard to get used to. So many traditions, like lighting the advent wreath candles, decorating the house, tree, shoveling the sidewalks and driveways, etc., went by the wayside. I tried to at least do the tree thing, but I didn't have my ornaments from home, and it didn't seem right to just buy a bulk pack of indiscriminate decorations. So the tree sat bare in the middle of the room, looking (and feeling, I'm sure, if the fairies in Fern Gully were right) pretty awkward there by itself. It's potted, so it could potentially last until next Christmas, if I remember to water it. Maybe I'll put it out on the balcony so it can get some sun and cold weather, like I'm sure a pine tree would like it.

But it wasn't all loneliness and no traditions this Christmas. I learned (more or less) this season that you're as merry as you want to be, and one of the best ways to make yourself merry is to make other people happy. I found that out when I gave out gifts of homemade jam to my friends and coworkers. The genuine surprise and happiness on their faces surprised me more than it did them, and it was nice to receive the gift of giving to others. I hope I remember this for next Christmas, so the gifts can be more personal and it won't be just my passing on gifts from my family. I think I will still get requests for my mom's jam next year, though. :P

Anyway, I still don't have plans for New Year's. Hopefully I can find a party that doesn't exclusively involve alcohol, like the last party I went to with people from the unit. We'll see, I suppose.

Inception

Seriously, Nolan? (Christopher, that is).
How can you be so gosh-darned talented at storytelling? It's not even fair.


SRSLY

Today was really weird

Do you ever have times where you're just sitting there at your computer, and you zone out, and then it seems like time just warps out of its natural frame and starts running away from you? And you want nothing more than to stop it from happening, but it's totally out of your power to do so?

I definitely had something like that happen to me today. I got back to the office after a hour-long drive back from Brussels for training, and was looking through some article or something on the Awesomer (which is a fun site in it's own right, and definitely not the cause of the time warp) and suddenly everything my NCO said warped into hyperspeed. I was unable to look away from the screen, or really move from my desk in any way, when out of the fog came an old joke Sgt. Karbowski and I hashed over a dozen times. I laughed, and that seemed to break the spell, only to send me into this weird mood swing where I could tangibly feel myself gyrating from manic to depressive and back again, the urge both to belly-laugh and to cry my eyes out ebbing and flowing, all with an undercurrent of anger that I wasn't in control of the situation.

I really have no idea what caused it. My best guess is that I had had an unusually large amount of coffee before, during, and after the drive back, and that maybe the excessive caffeine in my system may have triggered the "trip". Other than that I have no idea.

So that's what I did today.

Random Start: Under0ath: I'm Content With Losing

Early 2000's me was, in a word, angsty. As such, I listened to a lot of music like this.
Given that Under0ath has progressed the way they have the past couple albums, I regret nothing.