life

So, there's this guy at work whom I have a crush on. I want to say "crush" is the wrong word, but it's sufficiently light-hearted enough that it works perfectly to describe my emotions towards him. Which is to say, I simultaneously want to meet this person and don't ever want to meet this person.

Oh, didn't mention that part?

Yeah, I haven't met him, haven't said hello to him, haven't sent an email to him, haven't been in a meeting with him, haven't had any interaction but a small smile today. I am fairly certain he has no idea who I am, and I am not only okay with that, I also have every intention of keeping it that way.

See, this crush scares me. It scares me because this guy's personal representative is, as near as I can tell, pretty much everything I wanted to be, a physical manifestation of my idealized self.

In reading about his adventures, in seeing his works, in watching his talks, in noticing him interacting with his coworkers, you can see what drives him, what inspires him. You can see he works to make the world a better place with an idealized definition of "better" that nearly hurts in both its purity and its impossibility.

And my curiosity of him has caused me to reflect more and more about myself. To finally begin questioning what drives me, what inspires me, what motivates me. I've started looking at my goals, my choices, my decisions. I dug up and dusted off the buried rationalizations I've made for the things I've done, brought them out to the light of day and actually looked at them.

Looked at them and come to the conclusion that, against the measuring stick of my idealized self, I pretty much suck.

And this is why the crush scares me: because it is so much easier to be lost in the deep black hole of depression than it is to reflect honestly on your life and realize that the person you disappointed the most is yourself. That the years of self-hatred weren't because you were actually incapable of being a better person, but because you never moved beyond being that small frail child who craved love and acceptance. That it's okay to work towards an idealized version of the world: even if it is unachievable, even if you fail, the effort moves the world just a smidge that much closer to it, and that smidge can still be worth it.

Without having met him, without having said a single word to this person, he has inspired me to be a better person.

Problem is, I can't tell if my desire not to meet him is a fear of losing my idealized version of him (because let's face it, reality is dirty, and no one is perfect), or the fear of looking deeper and, instead of finding the strength to become a better person, giving up on myself.

Because, well, I really want to meet him and ask him a billion questions.

Every family has its stories, its tales of woe and triumph, of loss and redemption. With 6 aunts and 23 cousins, yeah, my family has its share.

Take, for example, the story of my cousin who was athletically gifted. First time out playing football, he goes up against some kid with an attitude, thinks he can rough my cousin up because he's the new guy, playing his first year as a freshman. My cousin tells him to stop, that if he continues, he's going to rough this guy up. Oh, think about it, it's football, the guy doesn't let up, no way. Next play, my cousin tackles the guy, breaks the guy's leg, quits the team and the sport.

And that's one of the good stories.

There's the tsk tsk tsk about an aunt, how life didn't quite turn out the way she expected it would, isn't that so sad. When does life turn out the way you expect it to turn out? I can't say ever. That aunt, from an outside perspective, has a good life and has achieved many goals. She's retired, with her husband, in a beautiful house, with great-grandchildren. I often wonder what demons she might have, if life didn't turn out quite the way she expected it to turn out.

And there's the story about my dad, and how he doesn't understand how relationships work, because he never saw one growing up that had conflict in it, never saw conflict resolved in front of him. He tells us how he saw his mother cry only once in his life: she and Grandpa had a fight about his spending so much time with his mom, and not enough time with my grandmother. My dad saw a woman sad because she couldn't spend more time with the man she loves, and that's the only time she cried.

I can understand that reason for crying. Very much so.

I can understand the snickering about ha, life didn't turn out the way she expected it to turn out, and I can understand life not turning out as expected.

And how that wreaks havoc on the soul until, well, you just learn to let go.

You can steer the boat of your life and not end up where you had intended to go, but both the journey and your actual destination can still be great.

I emailed Megan yesterday asking her, hey, up for lunch or errands or something? She emailed me back, then texted me that she was over in a local park today, hey, did I want to hang out. Hecks, yes, I thought, grabbing my late lunch and heading over.

The park is around the freeway from the house, so an easy drive over. It took me longer to find her and the kids at the park than it did to drive over. It's a good thing that Merrick was crying, else I'd never find them. I had called Megan on the phone to see where they were, and heard Merrick over the phone. When I hung up, I paused to listen for his cries, then followed them to find the four of them.

For the record, that boy has some serious lungs.

Six years ago, my mother's husband's sister died. Really, though, it's easier to just say, "An aunt of mine died."

An aunt of mine died. There. I said it that way.

She died.

One of the things that annoyed me most about her death, I mean, aside from the whole death thing itself, was the callous nature of the dissemination of her death. Look, I understand that her death was "unnatural," and I understand that sugar coating what happened doesn't change what happened, but it's still hard when a loved one passes away and people are callous about the whole thing.

(Wow, my site is all about death recently. Maybe a "Kitt, better to embrace life going forward than mourn its loss looking backward" is in order.)