What If's

I'm not going to pretend to be some fantastically fascinating person. I consider myself average in almost every aspect of my life. I live in an average house, make an average income, doing monotonous average work, and spend an average amount of time posting anonymously to an online blog.

Honestly, even as a 22 year old, I never liked going to clubs(unless it was the last hour at my favorite gay club because they always ended the night with 80's)and I never enjoyed being wing-woman to my oh so fantastically fascinating high school best friend. I just went along with the charade because it's what everyone else was doing, and they all seemed to be happy doing it so why wouldn't I?

On the night of my 22nd birthday my former bff got completely blitzed(which was nothing new, but it was my birthday so I thought maybe this once I wouldn't be the designated driver.) For once I was the center of some random guys attention, until the bff became belligerent, started shouting insane things and ran off into the night. After an hour of searching the streets for her, I went to drop off random guy- who went looking for drunk bff with me- at his hotel. He was in the air force and only in town for one night. When we got to the hotel parking lot, a few of his buddies were hanging out and invited me to continue my birthday celebration with them. (Bare in mind this was a nicer hotel and there was a mix of guys and girls there. This is not the beginning of a Lifetime movie of the week...)anywho...my random nice guy went off to bed and I ended up having one of the best conversations of my life with an air force pilot named Justin who was nothing like you'd think he should be.

He grew up in a large family who moved around a lot when he was a kid, but not because of the military, and he never had dreams of becoming a pilot or even joining the military like most of the guys who fly. He joined the air force to pay for college and major in engineering. Through a series of aptitude tests he was recruited to train for flying. His call sign was "Goose" - yes, like Top Gun, and yes he bore an uncanny resemblance to that Goose- He wasn't a career pilot like most of them, he didn't have a long family tradition of flying like the rest of the guys did, but he'd accidentally found something he was good at and actually liked. I confessed my secret career I'd always wanted, that was so much more fantastically fascinating than what I was doing then (or now)and we talked and talked some more. When we realized that everyone else was gone, and he had to be awake and ready to fly in 2 hours, we rose from the hotel hallway floor we'd been planted on for three hours and slightly paused before hugging goodbye. It was one of those odd moments where everything seemed to line up so perfectly that I thought fate might actually exist. We left each other knowing only our first names and a few details about our families that we had shared. No way of contacting one another. What had started out as the crappiest birthday, ended as one of the best nights of my life.

Five years have passed by and I still think about Justin. I still secretly hope that the fates will steer us together again. I wonder if he ever thinks about that night or even remembers my name. So many what if's going through my mind right now.

Feeling it

feeling |ˈfēli ng |
noun
1 an emotional state or reaction : a feeling of joy.
• ( feelings) the emotional side of someone's character; emotional responses or tendencies to respond : I don't want to hurt her feelings.
• strong emotion : “God bless you!” she said with feeling.
See note at emotion .
2 a belief, esp. a vague or irrational one : [with clause ] he had the feeling that he was being watched.
• an opinion, typically one shared by several people : a feeling grew that justice had not been done.
3 the capacity to experience the sense of touch : a loss of feeling in the hands.
• the sensation of touching or being touched by a particular thing : the feeling of water against your skin.
4 ( feeling for) a sensitivity to or intuitive understanding of : he seems to have little feeling for art.

I stopped feeling a long time ago. It's been so long that I don't remember the last time I really felt. Anything. It became so easy to switch it off, that I just stopped turning it back on all together. Is it too late? It still seems to leak through somehow. In the wee hours of the morning, when I am alone, when I am the only one who can see it. I'll remember for a minute or two. His fragile words, laid out so quickly, not carefully, not planned, just honest, and my first thought. Just shut my eyes.

I can always shut my eyes. When I wake it's off again. Let's just pretend.

Taking in the reins

I've slowed myself down a lot. I can stop and enjoy the moment now. There is no sense of urgency to get the next check mark on my list. I've still got a list. You have to keep that list, something to keep you moving forward, I just don't have to put a time stamp next to that check mark anymore.

It really is all about the journey. No matter how often you heard it before, no matter how many times you said it before, when you do finally get it, it's gotten, forever. I can recognize other people that get it too. I like to think we are all aware of each other, silently acknowledging our own awareness, nodding to our friends who say they get it, but are so far from it... we were there once. One day they will get it too. They will turn silent too. They will look back on when they swore they knew, and smile at what they thought was missing all this time.