False Friend

I can't believe after five years, this is how it ends.

I can't believe how I've supported you and how I've been there for you even as your family was in crisis and even as your father hurt you. I can't believe that you are so selfish, how you are so uncompromising and how vindictive and mean you are. I've never had anyone treat me so badly and while it hurts, I know that you are going to miss my friendship because there is no one else like me out there. I can't believe that in the end, you haven't even acted as though you'll be sad to see me go. 

This is all I can say: you aren't worthy of me. I deserve so much better in a friend and all you need do is look around and see all the people you've hurt and driven away, even if in small pieces. It's sad that you wouldn't let me have something as small as a cat to make my quality of life better. And it's really sad to see how little you care about me even though you've always been the one to say that "you're friends are here to support you" and "if someone can't be with you at your worse, they don't deserve you at your best." Maybe you should take a dose of your own medicine.

I've always been one to say what I mean and mean what I say. I can't believe it took me five years to realize that you don't mean what you say at all. And in a lot of ways that makes you just as bad as Sean. 

I just hope that one day you'll realize what it is you've lost when you want to laugh at something I would think was funny, or something I would say. And I hope you'll feel a lot of regret when you realize you want to talk to someone empathetic and when you reach for the phone or want to send me an email, you realize you've burned your bridge to me. 

This should come as no surprise: I'm an all or nothing person and I also have a healthy dose of forgiveness. But I'm done and I can't forgive you for the pain you've put me through. In the end, I acknowledged my mistakes and said I was sorry and it's sad that you can't own up to your own petty and mean behavior, which of course you wouldn't do because you don't take responsibility for your actions. This is why you've lost friends and driven people away. 

It took me five years to see how false you are and though it'll be sad to see a friendship end, I'll be better for it. 

music

One, singular note, a voice weary with tobacco, tears and too much booze, and fingers sliding across a discordant guitar: this is music. This is my music. This is my passion, the thing that keeps me writing; possibly because I feel myself every time I hear the echo of that wailing and Waylon voice and that scratchy guitar. It is the thing that moves me to write because the music is beautiful beyond words. And perhaps, that in the end, is what I like so much about the music. It is a confluence of events, a convention, where words are amplified by the beauty of sound, something, despite communication and words' beauty, cannot be replicated in writing. 

Reading the Signs

I'm a semi believer in signs. 

I can't remember if I've ever told any one this, but one of the main reasons I decided to go to school in Portland, and therefore, change the course of my life in a fairly radical way, was because I saw a truck that had "NAVAJO" painted on the side and it had Oregon license plates. I remember where I saw this truck too; it was on the 134 East/ 5 Golden Gate exchange at Griffith Park. The truck's placement at this park, which means so much to me, as well as the Native American reference on its side, at a time when I was into reading Hillerman novels, was a positive sign--an auxiliary sign that told me to stretch my wings and go to Portland. 

The problem is, what if you misread the signs? After all, the way they are interpreted depends on a person's emotional state at the time, and that being said, isn't it possible to read a sign in a shitty mood and do something really foolish depending on your skewed analysis. 

And it's not in my nature to be a fair weather friend so I hate saying that maybe signs should only be followed when your in the best of moods. Like maybe they don't count if you're in a bad one. 

But I will say this. Perhaps the most strong signs are the ones that come from within. Your Gut. Your Intuition, that voice or movement inside of you that urges you in a particular direction. This is the sign to be followed and if outward signs help point the way, then so be it! And if they seem to go opposite of your Gut, then fuck 'em. 

Hey, I did say I was a semi-believer after all.