Strange, stranger.

His voice comes soothingly through the headset of my new phone, happily discussing everything and nothing at all. I dont even have to answer, just listen, as I love doing. He chatters on, anger or amusement coloring his voice at random intervals.
It's been a year and a half of this, his calls, my answering... we use each other as receptacles for the day's happenings, willingly loaned ears on demand. I have no fear of him lying to me or ever revealing my secrets, not ever. I trust him with my life, and, more recently, my heart.
He is my backbone, my best friend, my source of inspiration.

One day the calls slow, then stop coming.

When we do talk it's stilted "how are you?" conversations that bring nothing of our past intimacy into the speech. Neither one of us menions this new seperation for fear of scaring the other person off, or, in his case, perhaps in fear of telling the truth.

I feel like I have lost touch with a part of myself.

Train Love

The train's gentle rocking is slowly lulling me into a sleepy haze, despite the fact that i am standing with what feels like a building in the bag on my back. I turn slightly to alleviate some of the pain in my shoulder and see the door opening at the end of the car.
An obviously homeless man slouches through the sliding door, bringing with him the reek of stale urine and unwashed skin. He's dressed in a heavy, decrepit coat dotted with stains, ripped jeans, and mismatched flipflops that reveal sore-laden feet and black toenails (despite the 15 degree weather on the surface). Behind him he drags a bag that looks thirty times as heavy as mine, filled to the brim with a plethora of odds and ends.
He shuffles down the length of the car slowly, asking for spare change in the polite, experienced voice of a person who has done this before. I glance down as I do a quick check of my pockets, hoping for spare change to give him that won't leave me bankrupt for the remainder of the week. I come up empty and lift my head just as his path crosses mine. Shrugging apologetically, I tell him i have no change, expecting him to move through the door next to me and continue on to subsequent cars.
Instead he stands and stares at me, saying something quietly.
As I strain to hear, I realize he is asking me to take him home.. and love him.
Suddenly money doesn't matter to this man who lives in poverty, without even enough money to purchase socks to stave off the chill. He wants love. Not food, not clothes, not even a blanket. Just affection.
I feel worse than i did about finding empty pockets on my person. The man in front of me wrinkles my nose with his smell, is standing too close, has only the bag with him, and none of it matters. I wonder why he can't have love like everyone else.
He tells me I'm beautiful and begs me to take him home with me. My heart cracks and I cant even think of the proper words to say besides "I can't, I'm sorry".
His face crumples and he asks me "What's wrong with me?". The answer is on my lips before I realize that it's true.
I let him know that I'm not good enough for him.
Long after the man has left the train and I have found my way home, I think about the answer and wonder at why it felt so right to say. I realize that I wouldn't have requested love over money or food.. the fact that he could appreciate something so simple and intangible is more than I ever could have expected of myself.
He taught me the power of love without even meaning to.

The Beginning

Starting at the beginning and telling you why I'm writing.

Over the last few months (or years, give or take a few tragedies), life has been a bit of a bumpy road. Feeling lost and a little too sad too often, I set out to look at the beautiful complexities of life, instead of taking everything at face (and sometimes simply painful) value. Call it viewing the silver lining, if you will. Everything that happens in life comes accompanied by something good, and, if you dont see it, you can at least always get a pretty good story out of it anyway.
For this reason i took up the hobby of writing my life in a series of stories, describing detail, feelings, characters, and scenes as if I had made them up when I, in fact, have not. This doesnt necessarily mean that all of the things written here have happened to me. They have happened to someone, somewhere, someday, or will. The world is too complex for the situations that occur to never come up in the lottery of life.
And so I give you this, my ode to living. Story of a day.