Turning 22

Love in Vases

Love to me is like a flower; beautiful and free as it blooms and then over time it slowly dies. Everyone would like to think they can tame it’s beauty as they cut it from it’s undomesticated, home dwelling place, and then jam it in a vase to call their own. But in reality as soon as the blade has touched it’s covering, all hope is lost, for flowers do not belong in vases but rather in the soil. True love exists in its natural environment. The love I have come to know, soil doesn’t exist. Soil with rich nutrients is far from real. The earth I have seen is often times so dry and cracked no flower could ever survive. And when it rains, it pours. So much in fact that it floods and drowns the hope that the flower clung to for survival. You see, the kind of love I know, is the kind that comes in vases. They are beautiful as they sit in front of you, but looks are deceiving because there is no soil at the bottom of that vase to help that love grow any further. For this reason I have planted myself like a flower. Planted myself in an open field far from the hands that reach for any beauty I may possess. I hide myself amongst the weeds so as to not be seen by those that would like to have me in their grasp. I know I do not compete amongst several of the flowers but loveliness of that sort does not concern me. What concerns me is never letting those hands try and tame me. I want nothing to do with this love. For someone to say I love you is a powerful thing. I have seen so many say those three words and then shrivel and wilt like a dying flower just after. How can this be? To me this love only lasts for a time. It is temporary. I am not interested in provisional love, which is why it would be better for me to not experience it at all. Would it not be better to never have loved than to love and be so hurt you slowly wilt away like a flower? I have come to think so.

Tears

I really need someone but the truth is I want no one.
I don’t want to be anywhere but I have to go somewhere.
I think I understand and yet I’m so confused.
I am at a loss for words but they still come out so fluent.
I feel numb to emotion and yet tears stream down my face.
I laugh and smile and yet I feel so miserable and sad.
I close my eyes to sleep but images flood my mind.
I am so tired and yet I always seem to lie awake.
Memories consume me as tears escape me.
My heart is breaking as I realize the things I take for granted.
Where does the time go I wonder?
And why don’t more people take advantage of its precious tics.
Instead we waste it performing useless tasks.
I will never know when my time is up and yet I live as if I do.
Change.

Masks and Steel

Here’s a thought. If you were in a pickle, like a big sliced dill pickle not just a tiny hamburger kind of pickle, whom would you call? If you need advice from someone where do you receive it? Now to some the obvious answer may be your parents or relatives, but how many of us have someone we know we can count on when things get rough? You see for the most part we all have acquaintances in our lives which whom we call friends but if this friend only shows up for you when it’s convenient on their watch, can you really call them a friend?

I read somewhere that you use steel to sharpen steel just as one friend should sharpen another. When I use that phrase and apply it to my friendships, I realize only a handful of them would be relevant to that quote. The others would be more like a piece of lumber. Steel and lumber do not run around together. It is not that I would likely want to see that pile of lumber on the wrong end of a match, but when I look at the big picture in life their purpose in mine is limited. It is not necessarily that these people are bad people, because all of us could potentially be somebody else’s lumber, but if you call yourself a friend you should not change the definition to fit your own.

I think a big problem in friendships is that we all try so hard to impress others around us that we put masks on to accomplish this task. I know I used to have a closet full myself but I did some house cleaning and got rid of most of them as I finally became comfortable with me. The problem with masks is you become somebody you’re not, and so these so called friends become friends with your mask instead of the you that’s underneath.

Show people you, not the you they want, but the you that you want. I just threw out a lot of you’s, wow that may have been a bit confusing. Basically all I’m saying is, we all have a story, and every person you meet wants to tell you their story. The reason we don’t though is because we want to tell real people what we are all about. We want to tell people that we know actually care. No person in a mask would care what you would have to say. So we keep reserved, and go on living how we think they would want us to. Masks are for Halloween and lumber sits in a lumberyard. Take off the mask and get the sharpeners ready. Friends are a valuable thing.

Always Moving (Column 3)

She gives the Energizer Bunny a run for his money and challenges most birds with her free spirit on how high they can fly. With batteries that only require minimum charge time you will see my friend Melissa always moving. Whether she is running by the beach or pacing in the kitchen while eating her favorite snack, her feet cannot seem to quit going. It’s almost like the stop/go switch programmed in her brain is permanently stuck on go, because the only time she stops is if she is sitting at a red light.

Ever since I’ve known her, Melissa’s idea of relaxing was doing something active. If there was a hint of daylight outside you’d better be making use of it. Her time here at Kearney was spent playing on the women’s basketball and softball teams, and yes she even participated in a college golf tournament when the team needed one extra girl. So as a three-sport athlete, calling her well rounded doesn’t even give her justice. As a former teammate I’d never seen anyone work so hard at something in my life. Moving, moving, moving meant coming in the gym at 12 am to work on her game or running some extra sprints just for the fun of it.

After college days she decided she would keep her moving streak going and just go ahead and move right on over to Costa Rica. With a journalism major, she landed a job there with a newspaper where she found out fast that sitting at a desk was torture. While living there her and her quick feet trained with marathon runners which of course made things at the office not seem quite so bad. Her stay there was short however as she knew her and that desk would not be able to get along. So two months later she arrived back in Nebraska wondering where her and her feet would go next.

Then personal training jumped in the picture with an unexpected leap. Well, what better way to keep on moving then to teach people how? So going back to grad school and being a trainer was the next step on her busy road to success. After a semester of kickboxing, boot camp, abs, water aerobics, and some of those nasty anatomy and exercise science classes, Melissa decided she would up and move elsewhere with her personal training experience.

These days you will find her on the sunny beaches of San Diego, still moving. While most people think of the beach as a place to go and relax and catch some rays, Melissa thinks of running, playing football or sand volleyball, or maybe even doing a handstand or two. Her newest workout/hobby involves a ten foot board. You guessed it, surfing. This girl was meant to live where there’s water. Skiing, her old love is something of the past as she now flies through the air on a wakeboard and balances herself on the waves amongst the rest of San Diego’s surfing citizens.

Her day begins as the alarm wakes her at 4:30 every morning to train her first client. After a few hours of training in the morning she has a tiny break, where the couch rarely gets to see her bottom, as she would rather go get in a workout or maybe grab her board and hit the beach running. Her afternoons are filled with fidgety gestures as she sits impatiently in class waiting for the professor to tell her to move on with her day. Her afternoons are always filled with activities that vary from day to day but one’s that always keep her and her feet on the go. Oh and her definition of a nap? Ten minutes long.

A Response to Alex's Post on Dogs

Alright the whole idea that having a dog is as pointless as taming a giant squirrel is something I disagree with. Some people do not like dogs because they slobber and others because they are afraid of what could potentially happen if their chompers met his or her skin unexpectedly. On the other hand to have a dog for some may be the difference maker in someone's life. It may help fill that empty void that someone has been missing. What person that you know of is so happy to see you when you get home that they greet you at your car door every day wagging their tail in joyful eagerness just waiting for you to step out of the vehicle? What person that you know of can you yell at and they won't just yell something right back at you? How many people would love to see how far you can throw a ball so they can run after it as fast as they can to then bring it right back to you? I don't know of any.

Maybe that couple walking their dog down the street have tried and tried to have children and things just weren't adding up for them. So a dog mends the void. When I think of dog's I think of family time and laughs, and days down by the creek and summers playing catch in the yard. I think of sledding and riding horses, new puppies and new tricks. I think of great books I read as a kid, like "Where the Red Fern Grows", "Shiloh", and "The Guardian". Disney movies would not be Disney without a dog. "101 Dalmatians", " " Lady and the Tramp", "The Fox and the Hound", "Oliver and Company", "Homeward Bound", "Old Yeller", "Air Bud", "Eight Below", "Shaggy Dog", "Beethoven" and "Marley and Me" are all centered around dogs. Movies like these bring a family together.

Now, I'm not saying I'm a dog lover by any means. All I'm saying is I'm no dog hater. If you can teach a creature to sit, roll over, play fetch, chase some cows or sing you a tune, I say it's more than an over sized rodent.

A Place to Call Your Own

Let the song take you there. Let it take you to a place, a place only known to you. The song takes you back, to the intrinsic place, the one that no soul can enter but your own. You listen intently, with no objectives in mind at all but to be in harmony with the world. You are at peace with yourself as you listen and keen in on every note and every lyric so cleverly pieced together. As the notes smoothly flow up and down like the breeze just propelled them into place, you place yourself somewhere else. You smell those smells you had once forgotten and remember the exact feeling that was bursting from your body. The feeling you swore a person could only feel once in their lifetime. Your chest feels as if something inside must burst immediately through the wall it encloses. A smile crosses your face as you remember the exact memory. You stick yourself back in time and watch the re-run of the cherished moment play word for word, action for action, wondering if maybe you can just stay there a bit longer.
Music does this to some. If you are lucky enough to hear its power it is something that penetrates right to the bone. It is something I breathe in with refreshment and exhale with satisfaction. Music takes me there. To that place no one else can touch but me. What better thing to have than a place to call your very own in this chaotic world?