Requiem for a wedding.

I wonder why people make wedding receptions feel like a goodbye party.

I recently attended one for a dear, dear friend. Let me tell you about this friend. She was someone who, against all odds and reason, became my friend and was there for me during a difficult time in my life. Almost every day of last summer, she loved me as if I were her brother and helped me when I needed it the most. And I think I’ll probably never have that with her again. Things always change when people get married, which was all I could think about while I was at her wedding reception, and she was as beautiful and jovial and alive as always. Her story goes on without me. Exeunt: I have left her tale as a character, probably forever. Although I know we will probably speak again, it won’t be like it was in my last summer in the college town I loved…sitting there listening to her, and having her listen to me.

Sometimes when I wonder why it feels like the universe has conspired to make me exactly the strange person that I am, and destiny conspired to bring me to the people and places I needed to be at, that I was chosen for a role in people’s lives that brings so many mixed feelings. I met someone recently who sympathized with me on the feeling that our lives are not our own, but for her it was a joyful, pleasant thing. I would have to say that reading this blog would deceive my readers into believing that it is not so with me. I said mixed feelings: this is true. It was a joy to meet my friend, as it is a joy to have helped her in her times of struggle, and to have her in return help me last summer…all because of chance, it would seem. But the 'saying goodbye' is as painful as the 'getting to know' is joyful. I always lose as much as I gain. And that’s when I write about it. Because, what else is there to do? You can’t go back in time. So I immortalize my memory in type.

I do know that it is not truly destiny, chance, or the universe, but God that has done these wonderful things to me and through me. But as much as I wish it did, this has never brought me much comfort. Even when I sit in silence over the thought that God loves me and that my day will come, it never quite overcomes the feeling that the sort of happy ending I see at weddings is not for me, never for me. I darkle, I tinct, the Man in Black from the Dark Tower would say. It just doesn’t seem to “fit” the theme of my story. My life is about moving, growing, building an empire of love and friendship, watching it topple, and then building it all over again. Perseverance, not permanence; truth, not trust; cynicism, and not certainty.

But, of course, I still want it. Why not? It’s what I do. It’s all I do.

And so I go on as I always do, and I always make the choices that seem like they are the only choices…and when things go well, they go well. When things don’t go well, all I can ask is “what else was I supposed to do?” And there is never a reply.

For now though, I am happy. I am tired and happy, and I could not ask for better than that.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for a change in theme.

Railroaded.

"Maybe it's time to change...And leave it all behind! I've never been one to walk alone, I've always been scared to try. So why does it feel so wrong, to reach for something more...to wanna live a better life? What am I waiting for? 'Cause nothing stays the same. Maybe it's time to change."

I feel like many of the changes and choices I've made in the past year and a half were not my own. My career has never been my primary concern in life (perhaps a fault) but yet, in the past year and a half I've completely changed my career path, and made it a reality...almost effortlessly. I applied to a competitive program late and got in...two years later, I'm going to graduate. I passed both my major exams to become a counselor, with barely any effort. I've been getting congratulated on passing them, but honestly...I barely studied. How did I succeed?

Yet, the things I've put the most effort into the last six years have been mostly unsuccessful. The things I chose for myself, the things I wanted most were always out of reach. My career was always something off in the corner...a necessary burden. But yet, I've succeeded in that effortlessly.

It feels like a path has been chosen for me. Sometimes I wonder how I ended up where I am. It seems like just yesterday, I planned to ask my girlfriend to marry me within months, find a job in English, and keep in touch with all my friends...two and a half years later, I don't have any plans at all, but it looks like somehow I'm going to go off alone to a distant city to be a counselor with no plans to date anyone ever again. I could have never planned this. In fact, I didn't. This wasn't the plan at all, and I have done barely anything at all to push it this way. Quite the opposite. I've fought it every step of the way, laying down my own plans...good plans. I was very methodical, very intentional in everything I did. Yet here I am.

I accept this, now. I don't like it, but I accept it. My good friends tell me I should like it. I agree, I wish I could. I wish I could want what God apparently wants to give to me. But I don't. I don't yet understand or know how to want something that I don't really want. I'm just not there.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to unrail.

Control.

If you ever find yourself upset about something only to reply in your mind "Such is life" I think you've reached where I am in this acceptance thing.

I think too much about the way life should be, only to realize not long after that even as long as I've thought otherwise, I've never really had much control over my own circumstances. Things will just be as they will be no matter how hard I try to change them.

A friend of mine is moving away. It just came out of nowhere, like a summer rain. A friend that I wanted to make a part of my life in a significant way. But I know...I know that even though I've done everything I could to make that happen, it would not. It just wouldn't. Fate, destiny, God's will, call it what you want. That can only be the answer.

I puzzle over why my life is the way it is. Don't misunderstand, I am happy about some of the details. Others, less. This is mere genuine curiosity. As I don't really see too many things as mere coincidences, I know there must be a purpose behind it all...why the best friends I have are not the best friends I tried to have - I am grateful for the best friends I have never expected, but in other ways I must wonder why it never worked out between myself and someone whom I felt connected to in a special way.

Someone told me I like having control the other day, and I agreed with them immediately. But after I thought about it for a while, I could actually care less about most things. I don't mind the weather, I don't care who's in charge of my school program, I don't care who cleans the kitchen or how. I don't care about most random things that can change throughout my day, really. What I want to control is actually just people. And that's the one thing I've never had control over, though from time to time I fancied I actually could.

So many things just come out of the blue. Conversations, strange circumstances, accidents, insults. Try as I might to have some kind of master plan for marriage and life long friendships, it has never, ever really seemed to matter what I had planned. Even when I was discerning the priesthood, it didn't seem to matter because I ended up in a relationship not long after.

I suppose I could be mad about it. I'm certainly disappointed. But mostly, I'm just waiting. Trying to be patient. Watching the waters settle, and then flow in a certain direction...and then switch. I feel like the captain of a ship who has believed for a long time that he was an expert navigator, only to discover that his ship, in fact, has just been slowly sinking as he heads in a completely unknown direction.

Such is life.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for patient acceptance.