My thoughts, (original) (raw)

I wish more people would read and write in LiveJournal. I've been reading back over old entries a lot lately and it's a fantastic public record of how much I've grown over the past seven years. It's better than my private journal because I write for other people and therefore record more interesting events.

I had a dream about John the other day. He died six years ago and that shit still shakes me up. I don't know if I'll ever fully process it. My relationship with John affected every romantic relationships I've had in some way or another. I think he's the reason I take a very practical approach to relationships now instead of allowing myself to get poetic and flowery.

Truthfully, I think John and I would have continued to grow apart. He probably would have gone on to marry some punk-y Christian chick while I followed through with my adventures in Tucson. That, of course, would have been much easier to handle. I might even be able to have poetic feelings toward someone again. The best part would have been finally coming to terms with the fact that he was kind of a player and used the same little nickname for me as he did for another girl named Emily who he dated in between our little episodes.

I think what shocked me the most about the whole situation was this romantic, Notebook-ish idea that I got stuck in my head around the age of 16 or 17. I thought we would keep fatefully coming together over and over again for the rest of our lives. I was truly convinced that he would always be around. I really, really, really believed that God was trying to tell me something. And at that time, when I still had such a strong Christian faith, John's death was like a slap in the face. It felt like God said, "Just kidding" in such a cruel way.

Now I see that God never said any such thing. John was a gift, at the very least an incredibly rewarding friendship. I expected him to be something more. I expected him to be some kind of destiny or fate instead of appreciating what was happening in the moment. Most of me has matured out of such thinking about other people, but there's a part of me that feels as if it will never heal. As if it will always be waiting for another serendipitous incident where I bump into John at just the right time and we pick up where we left off and every other romance is just a placeholder in the meantime.