And so it ends

This will be my last blog post.

There are certain situations in life that change your perspective so severely that it becomes quite difficult to even remember how you perceived life before.

The past few months have changed my life in ways that I am not, as of yet, fully aware.

Change is gradual, and change is fast. When you are faced with a choice you never thought you would be faced with in ten lifetimes, followed by making a conscientious decision that is violently contrary to the one you previously thought you would make, interesting things happen.

You become the choice and the choice becomes you. It is hard to distinguish between the two, as if you would want to. Black and white fade to grey…and then slowly fade back to white. I am blinded by logic. I am smothered by the inconsequentialness of my decisions. I am scared by how little fear I feel. I feel inspired by the pain of my decision.

I am neither arrogant enough to go as if this never happened or to ever seek any type of redemption, nor humble enough to retract my decision and give myself up for the sake of someone who was once a friend.

“I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.” Hermann Hesse in Demian

I haven’t found out who I am completely yet. I’ve barely scratched the surface. But I’m a whole lot closer this month I was last, or the one before.

There’s darkness there. There’s light there. There’s fervent laughter and deep-seeded hatred and altruistic humility and extreme selfishness and burning passion and intense numbness and uncontrollable joy and life-defying sadness.

But it is all me.

I’ve spent the past 10 years of my life trying to find ways to fit into this world, and I made it a long way perfecting my façade.

I’m sure now that I’ve never been fully Nebraskan, or Christian, or Agnostic, or American, or even *my last name.* Instead all of those labels I have assumed over the years have been attempts towards a vain hope that one day the mask would finally match the man.

How many relationships have I destroyed or sabotaged because I couldn’t handle the pain of someone putting their trust into my ruse.

But the person that is finally emerging, the person beneath all the defenses I have set up for myself and others…that is the person I want to be.

And I’m thankful to the person who could see that.

So, I’m going to take some time away from the internetesphere and work on figuring out how to develop this person. I will be fighting for my life. Not against the possibility of death, but against mediocrity and stagnation.

So long friends.

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son! 

If – Rudyard Kipling

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