Making Memories

Making memories is an important part of any relationship, be it family, or friends, or a lover.  I have beautiful memories which fill both my mind and heart of the life I have lived until now.  Sometimes, though, there is a shift if your path, and the memories begin to feel like dreams, and the dreams begin to get cloudy, and clouds begin to fade away.  

My great shift happened about seven years ago.  An ex of mine died and the only thing I could see was darkness.  Only storm clouds cover my days now.  Happy days, pleasant memories, are harder to come by because they are seen through a filter of thunderstorms and decay.  To me, now, the temporary state of everything ruins the joy that can be hidden inside of it.  Sometimes, the people around you refuse to believe that an event like this can alter your entire perception of life, largely, because it didn't affect them at all.  Well, being struck by the permanency of death in an instant is much like being struck by the lightening from one of my clouds.  I'm damaged.  And nothing will ever take that scar away. 

As for the man I love now, I can't speak for his shift, but I can assume there were two.  And this will show you how he is a better person now than I am capable of becoming.  He took a life, was tried, found guilty, and imprisoned at seventeen.  At which moment in this process he shifted, I do not know.  But there was anger.  When an already rebellious and trouble youth is locked in a cage to remain in his final developmental years, things happen to the psyche, bad things.  For years, rebelliousness reigned and he fought through his survival.  He got in trouble, he got warned, he got chastised, but did it matter?  Why would it?  When you're 17 and you're told that the next forty years of your life look like this, lock-downs, bad food, angry people, no support, no love, no outlet, everything just goes black.  I was lucky enough to have clouds where the sun could shine through on occasion.  He begot forced blindness.  

I am fully aware that many will believe this is deserved.  And I always pose these questions.  Are you the person you were at seventeen?  Would you make the same choices now as you did then?  If you are honest with yourself, the thought of being that same kid now should strike you with fear.  We were all ignorant to consequence, long term choices, the meaning and depth of real love, and we all made ignorant decisions based on what we knew to be true at that age.  And what do you know at that age?  Nothing.  Truly nothing of any value.  

As years rolled on, and a man began to take shape behind those walls, like a shape-shifter, he took on the image of what he wanted to be, and he took another road.  We hear of "becoming institutionalized" and how most people re-offend because that's all they know.  We can all see the image of Brooks from "The Shawshank Redemption" carving his name into the wood of the beam that would take his life because he couldn't figure out how to cope on the outside.  It was too hard.  There is too much freedom.  There is too little support and compassion, because everyone you knew has gone and made a life without you.  But not him.  He evolved into something we should all desire to become.  Today, I love a man who has a heart as open as the ocean and as accepting as a truly free world.  

Rather than allowing himself to be molded into the prisoner the institution thrives on, he learned.  He witnessed lying coming with severe consequences.  He got to a point where he doesn't even know how to speak an untruth.  He silences himself because he doesn't understand passive aggressiveness as purposeful.  He turned inward to the only person he could trust, himself, and learned how to be his own support.  With this came the evolution of a man who sees a need to support others, to let go of anger, to be honest all of the time, and to love without condition.  I don't know anyone else who does that, but me.  

It is an exhausting process to be a support system for everyone you know because you understand the lack of it in your own life.  It is exhausting to find a reason to keep doing it.  But, once you shift, it is who you are, and you're simply incapable of anything else. He and I are the same.

I don't know how to explain how he and I came together.  All I know how to explain is that the clouds are gone, and along with it, all of the faded dreams and memories that might have once been important, but are now superficial in depth compared to what I share with him.  

We discuss our future and the memories we will make together.  We talk about the things we hope to achieve.  There is nothing negative or dark between us, because unconditional love, in its true state sees its reflection in another.  One day, my home will be our home.  No, that's not how it works.  Our home is here.  He's just away, waiting for the ticket to arrive.  One day, we'll share talks about the things we endured and how they shaped us.  No, our spirit combined and we understand each others' form.  One day, we will read books together and talk about what they mean to us.  No, we talk about what everything means to us now.  

This year alone, I have made memories so beautiful that the only thing clouding my perception now are tears of joy for the man I love.  We laugh, every single day, to a degree of ridiculousness to outsiders.  We love, more wholly than our entire pasts combined.  We catalog every word, every letter, every want, and store it all for our future together.  We are making memories now and we are creating new ones to come, every single day that we are allowed to love one another.  The world will become our memories; our walk upon it will become our existence.