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This is a painting by a Belgian artist René Magritte intitled The Treason of Images. I first saw this in high school, a copy hanging off the wall in our philosophy class. I thought it was nicely painted but had no idea what it said underneath. So I asked a girl in my class who spoke French to translate it for me and she said it read: This is not a pipe.

My first reaction to this at 15 was quite teenager-ish, I thought it was pure nonsense. I saw it as something irrelevant, shallow and pointless. Today when I see 14 and 15 year old teenagers react the same way, at first I feel like "How can they not see it?!" but then I remember back to my first reaction and understand...some things you just can't grasp that early on.

I was very into video games a few years back, especially into the GTA series. Not really because of the violence, I wasn't particularly into that, I was the one driving around as carefully as possible, what interested me was the story line, which, despite the abundance of violence, blood and killings, was there and was interesting. Nothing in it happened without a reason. 

I was playing it and the idea slowly seeped inside of me. In the game everything is set up for you, the individual, the player to explore. Everything is a projection, from the oceans, cities and buildings, down to every "person" in the video game which is supposed to give the impression of a busy city and everyday people. It's all a projection, all a calculated program to push you through its story line which you have to finish. It works like that in every video game, also in almost all of the books.

And this was food for thought. What if this translates into our every day reality, what if we are inside some sort of a program, a projection of things to influence us into a certain direction. The question immediately posses, who is the programmer? Is there something which directs us? Or is it a sort of free simulation, a one in which we all decide our future outcome...  

At first this lead me into a much more extreme direction. I first started contemplating that, maybe only I am real and everyone and everything else is this projection, like the video game. So this would mean, from my point of view, that I am posting a blog for the projections to read it, but from your point of view it would mean that a projection from your own "simulated" world is writing about being a projection for you to realize that you're the only one who is real.

I explored that idea for a while, in a sense still do, but it has changed since then a bit. I don't view myself as the only real thing in the universe anymore (which was an extremely selfish view, looking back at it), but I see everyone as real, the only difference is that we are both...for ourselves we are real, for everyone else we are projections. 

In my head it works sort of like this. When you meet someone, you meet this projection and the same thing is happening vice versa. Real person meeting someone who is also real, but they both see each other as projections. You enter a world of someone else, you can look inside it, you can see it, hear it, smell it and feel it, but you will never fully understand it. Like a glitch in the program, it will never allow you to fully comprehend someone elses reality because it could distort or even shut down your own. Just imagine what could happen if we could completely and fully fall inside someones world, not only view it and observe it, but completely correlate to it...wouldn't our own reality disappear?

Here steps in Magritte's painting back in new light. So the pipe really isn't a pipe. It looks like it, but it's only a 2D projections of the element manufactured in our world. The picture we see might look real, but it isn't. And here comes a dark twist to the whole simulation.

If it truly is that, only a simulation, then there is nothing  wrong for you to kill a certain projection. You won't feel the pain of  the fatal wound, and you can assume from this theory that the projection won't feel it either (just like in the video game). But our own program decided to ensure this wouldn't happen (as often), so it fitted us with a command inside (most) of us that we call empathy. The ability to relate to other "projections" and what they might be feeling, although we can never truly know what that may be or even if they are feeling anything at all! 

We trust our own experiences and we assume what someone else might be feeling in a certain situation. So that keeps us from killing everyone we dislike and prevents us, as a species, to evaporate. Again, imagine the world or our society in which there is no empathy...would we even be here right now? We would probably kill ourselves somewhere early on in our evolution...probably.

In this theory something else intrigued me quite a bit...everyone's experienced coincidences which are hard to dismiss as mere happenstance, which our logical minds find difficult to explain, and we all search from where these coincidences came...some find it in religion, others find magical energies floating in the universe and some say it's as simple as a coincidence,  nothing more than that.

My head was fucked a few times by these strange occurrences and I've always left them as just simple coincidence, I tried rationalizing them but I never managed to write them off. I left them in my sub conscious to float until something reasonable comes along and explains them away. But I also started imagining,...if this world is just a simulation for each individual, how do coincidences fit in?

Like a story-line which you are following, it pushes you back or forward into a certain direction you may or may not like. That brought a question...so, there are stories we follow? We don't have free will?  The "program" decided this was our tale and we must walk on its path no matter what? 

I explain it by the power of our sub conscious brains. We constantly give ourselves goals to achieve, sometimes without us knowing. The sub conscious observes and absorbs everything around us, all the projections... the ones it likes, it puts as a standard for us. So we constantly feel our own reality could be improved and should be, because of what we see around us. We try relating to the projection, to feel more a part of it, to look like another projection, be noninvasive, regular. 

Sometimes the goals are more noble, trying to be a better person, being more giving, but it's never altruistic, it's never really to help other people, other "projections", it's also selfish, also egoistic, because we all know the feeling of giving, helping, it feels great. So it's again by our own reality that we are govern to be good or bad to the simulation around us.

But, of course, none of our goals or wishes prepare us for the bad coincidences. No one wishes to be hit by a bus or to be diagnosed with a disease, but then the question is, how does this fit into the theory? It doesn't, unless...unless the program doesn't work for each individual but for a planet or universe as a whole.

This all sounds very religious or religion based, but I must say I've never studied any of the religious texts, I only know the basics of the major religions and that's it. But if you imagine the universe as a computer program...it constantly changes and evolves, it upgrades on permanent basis. It gets rid of some projections and creates others...Getting rid of the viruses and objects which could destroy its existence and promoting the existence of those who contribute to the upgrade.

But to the matter at hand, we've gone too far off. The idea I had (which I know is not original at all) is that it may all be govern, like a machine, an artificial machine which looks real to us. We see the pipe, we know it is a pipe, but it may be not. Just a simulation, a projection. A visible element for us to grasp and push us in a certain direction.

Do we decide that direction? I believe we do. Here I believe the philosophy of deism, which states that god created the universe but then left it to evolve on its own. We may be put here by a "program", but I believe that it is us and only us who can determine the path on which we walk. If we set our goals and do all we can to achieve them, the coincidences will follow them. Nothing good comes easy, so the bad coincidences will come, but it is us who decide whether we continue on that path or walk away from it.

We may be a part of a program, but we are programs ourselves. The entire universe or "simulation" is also inside of us, too complicated for us to grasp. Here I'll close with a statement by the comedian Bill Hicks: 

“The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly colored and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question: "Is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "Hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.”

Part 1

bitter sweet sixteen years old. driving in the car with my sister and her boyfriend. away from my home, the church, my brother's, my angry  mother...and my illusions of love.

the highway at night. this song playing on repeat. the sounds of the piano penetrated into me like some ghostly echoes off a stone cliff and then back out onto the shore of my soul. the voice. somebody i knew from a dream? from some past memory forgotten?with that heart renching cry those words came rolling over and over and over, into my mind, into my heart. like somebody calling to me from very very far away out of some dark and mysterious void. the song breathing life into this body of mine that had felt so dead, until that song woke something up inside me.i had been awakening to some outside wonder. touched upon, briefly, before  and yet, i never could quite understand or have the capacity to explain it. still dont. repeat. for it to stop would be like taking away something when i was just only scratching the surface of understanding some deep truth hidden inside. i was completely one with the sound and watching my very own emotions unravel before me. they were being pulled with every tone, every word. i was unravelled.

I asked Rob, "who is this?" he replied " Radiohead"..."who?" I asked again not hearing over the music properly. He said more slowly "R A D I O H E A D". We sat in silence for the rest of the car ride from White Rock to Abbotsford. Rob kept the song "like spinning plates (the acoustic version)" on repeat, almost as if he understood that i needed it. And that was the moment...i fell in love with thom's voice.

This song is intertwined with my first experiences of life. Being Mormon. My first Love. High school drama. That totally lost and alone feeling that only a teenager really knows in that special and confusing way. No body knows or understands you. And you don't know or understand anything. So many questions were in my mind during this time.

So many questions for the Mormons. they couldn't answer my questions. they were good people. But i saw fear in their eyes when i questioned. just like i felt fear in my dad's eyes if i tried asking him deeper questions about god or life. that look of fear always told me that these people don't know what they're talking about. they always say to just "don't ask questions!"and "you have to believe god knows whats right" and "don't doubt god"... but so many things just didn't make sense!! and i couldn't accept blind faith. there were too many amazing mysteries in the universe and i wanted to understand it. not fear it. not hide from it.

 Moving away from home was a combination of all these things mixed together. and i just had to go away. but something in that song...spoke to me. spoke to me louder than any other person ever had. there was a truth in the sound that liberated me from my questions, somehow. like the only thing that mattered in the world was that sound. and it stayed in my head for the period of time i was thinking through what direction to take in my life from then on. the first CD i bought (along with sigiros) was the live recording of amnesiac, kida...the exact cd rob was playing the car that night driving. and i listened to it every day once i returned home. trying to relive that feeling, that emotion it pulled out of me. i had never related more to a "voice" in my whole life. the song didn't make me feel sad, it made me feel understanding in a larger scope. there is a tone of victory in the circling rythm and tone of the piano, and a cry of understanding out of this void...in the sound of thom's voice. it is still, to this day, my favorite song of all time.

my first attempt of running away from home was not successful. i cried a lot. felt like i was betraying my mom. felt like she needed me. was afraid. i returned home after i took some space for a weekend at my aunts house. i returned to my mom and the mormon church. to be really honest i returned not only for my mom and because i was worried about her, but, because of love.

Now, this is a really long story, so if you would like to stop reading at this point, i highly advise that you do. this is a very personal and detailed account that i am writing purely for my own sake. i have never wrote these things down before. never knew how to. i tried many times and the words just slipped away from me. or were too much to swollow. all these words just come tumbling down onto my head with no place to put them. until now. i have to get these things out into the material world, before these thoughts dis-appear completely, before it's too far away for me to understand anymore myself. this is my own personal therapy. a purging of the past. i must go on....i have to confide all of this...now. i am purging these things from me.

  i had fallen in love with this boy. he was a beautiful boy. inside and out. i had noticed in the summer time and i had wanted to go back to white rock, just to get the chance of seeing him, again. i knew he had a girlfriend and even though i knew this...it didn't matter too much to me. because. it was only to be near him. just to see him every now and then... that was what had been really important to me. i didn't want to "posses" or "own" him...the thought to be his "girlfriend"...seemed impossible to me so...just to see him. get that adrenalin rush every time he would walk by would have been enough for me, or so i thought.  of course there was the hope for something more...i had met him through a mutual friend. our mutual friend, ryan,  was kind of...a "mormon" but an "in-active member" of the church.

so i moved back to white rock for this boy i hardly knew, yet thought i loved, or could love... i thought...that some how some way something was going to happen between us. i didn't know why or how. it was something i saw in his eyes when we first met each other. when i looked into his eyes. it made me feel something i had never felt before. it was similar to how i felt while listening to the song "like spinning plates" a totally indescribable feeling. one soul crying out to another from a great distance. it was like i was looking into him and he was looking into me at the same time. it was like i could see myself through his eyes and he could see himself in mine?! this feeling of one-ness that is really quite rare when meeting somebody for the first time. maybe this is what people like to label"love at first sight". and so it has to be...there can be no other label, no other words for it...just a feeling of one ness with that person with this inability to explain why.

 All these emotions were sweeping me away, and at the point in time that i almost didn't believe in love at all ! i was questioning not only the existence of a god, a higher power, but starting to also more seriously doubt the reality of love. or if I could be loved by somebody. L O V E had never happened to me and i had never had a very good example through my parents of what love could be! All the boys in high schools were idiots and i hated mostly all of them...but he was different and i didn't understand why... so i just had to go back to white rock to find out what that feeling was between him and i...maybe it was nothing! i  thought, and maybe it was just my imagination. he made me ask myself the question, what is love? the feeling i had when i met him, there was just...-there was such a strong force behind it...such a strong force inside me to figure it out. i didn't only  have questions about god and life, but especially i had my biggest questions about love.

love, for all i was concerned, could be just as big an illusion as god...or what they were teaching me that god was...and i didn't like that. no. i just had to find out these answers on my own. meeting him changed everything for me, in a good way, in a life-changing way and for that i will always be grateful for, i will always love him for. through my experience with him,  he showed me that if you believe in something enough it very well might end up happening!

i had so many dreams during this time! always dreaming of us talking together. kissing. we were constantly meeting in our sleep. almost every night i dreamt of him and i pushed these thoughts out of my mind in order to stay sane. i really felt like i was going insane at times because my inner world of being in love with him was just so absolutely disconnected from reality. or was it? or was he feeling the same things as i was? i had this sense that he was. i had this sense that he was struggling with his feelings for me. like my dreams were more real than the classrooms i sat in everyday.

when i would see him walking through the hallway at school we would always exchange these awkward glances at each other. awkward smiles. he would ask me casually "where's ryan?" (our mutual friend) we never talked directly to one another. i never did because i knew he had a girlfriend and couldn't go there. it would be just, wrong. it would be crossing this invisible boundary we, or i, had made up for us in my head. no i couldn't talk to him and so i would ask him the same thing when seeing him if i didn't know what to say.. "where's ryan?"...and it was like this game we played back and forth with each other for a long time. wanting to speak, but not knowing what to say. neither of us did this knowingly although i started to notice this repetition over time and it amused me.

while i was questioning "my religion", the mormon church, i started experimenting with the normal teenage curiosities...alcohol being the first of these choices. the first time i got really drunk was liberating! i shared a bottle of vodka with my friend who i had gone to elementary school with. we went to this party in the park where music was playing and basically all three districts of high school where meeting up together.

i was so drunk, for the first time realised how rediculous everything is, i lost all my inhabitions, relaxed, for really the first time in my life. i had always been so held back in what i was thinking and feeling with others. alcohal unlocked that door really fast. maybe a bit too fast.
i saw him there with his girlfriend, instead of getting my normal anxiety, i walked straight up to both of them and said to them while laughing and pointing my finger directly at him, and then at her, in turn with their names ..."yoooooour jonathan fry, and yooooouuur lindsey rudder", they knew i was drunk, it was so obvious by the way i was slurring both their names, they laughed at me in return... and then i ran away laughing even more hysterically. their names together sounded so stupid to me. i could care less at that moment that i had just laughed in the face of the boy i had been dreaming about for weeks. at that moment i didn't care if he liked me anymore. i figured there would never be a chance between us. my friend and i proceeded to strip off our clothes and dance around in our bra's and underwear. i was completely unaware of anybody else around but us. we were laughing and having so much fun, until ryan got me under control and helped me get dressed. basically got me out of there before any real trouble would happen. he was protecting me. we were safely escorted home. i felt really humiliated the next day once i realized what had happened but at the same time couldn't care less, i just felt really sick.
it was only after that night that my imaginary lover boy started to have a crush on me, although i never connected that night with how things unfolded between us, until now. in some ways, all boys are the same!

one day, shortly after our school winter dance festival...thing, it all changed. and my dreams manifested into reality. for a short time period anyways. i was sitting in biology class when norma peterson turned to us and said "guess what?! jonathan has just broken up with lindsey!"...my heart rose into my throat! i was just silent. feeling this overwhelming energy pulse through me thinking oh my god, this is it. i knew something was going to happen between us. and now the chances of that were more a reality than before. my heart could have stopped right then and there.

Besides all these small things had been adding up. I noticed him more and more often in the hallways i walked through...and at the school dance when i was sitting alone with my shoes off to take a break because my feet were hurting. he came up to me and asked me why i didn't have a date for the dance, and i just looked at him, thinking, because i don't want to be here with anybody else but you, but instead replied," I don't know". He also asked me why i wasn't dancing. i said my feet hurt. this was the first time we ever really talked. later on a bunch of us all went to a restaurant together. he was at a different table than me. i kept on noticing him looking over at me.  i couldn't believe it, so i ignored what i saw and what i felt. i couldn't afford to get my hopes up over some stupid childish fantasy! and at the same time wanted so badly to believe that maybe...maybe he was looking at me because he liked me. like i liked him.

Things happened really fast after the news of him breaking up with his girlfriend. it wasn't long before he directly invited, asked me, if he could give me a ride to this party i was invited to, with mutual friends we knew. i walked everywhere...like i still do. didn't ever get my driving liscense. never cared to. still don't. i like walking. i was so shocked when he offered to give me a ride there..that i hardly knew how to contain my excitement. he met me after school at my house and from that moment on...i knew he liked me, and that it wasn't just in my head. That first night together we stayed up until 1:00am together. it was unbelievable.

i remember the strangest details of our time together. being with him was like time had stopped. like i could hear a pin drop in slow motion. i wished i could freeze time permanently. in the car on the way to the party i knew that he knew that i was mormon, and it embarrased me, because deep down i wasn't mormon.

 I didn't believe Joseph Smith was a true prophet of god...i didn't even know what a real prophet was supposed to be, let alone this clown, called joseph. the book of mormon confused me terribly. and all in all it was just an overload of information! i had seminary every morning at 5:30...a kind of bible study before school. we were studying the bible, not the book of mormon, and for the first time i started to gain an insight into who jesus actually was.... and this eventually ended up doing the opposite of what it does to most...knowing about what jesus actually said and did...i understood it in a very profound way, differently to how religion portrays this person...and this understanding liberated me from religion all together! but that comes later on in the story.

inside the deepest part of me i didn't belong to any religion and i hated being labeled...and also...i knew he was a christian. i knew enough to know that christians and mormons have very different viewing points.
In his parents van we had found a strange dradel, spin top thing...(don't even know the name for it, because i have never seen one before or since this time) and we started playing with it...spinning it around and seeing what it landed on. it kept on landing on the same mark! whatever that mark meant i don't know, and still don't know...as i have never seen a spin top like this one since then!

the markings on it looked hebrew...or indian? anyways we were laughing because more than five times in a row it landed on this mark, and we were asking each other "what does it mean?!!" while laughing..."maybe we're all going to die!!? a bad omen? or a good one?"... then that got us starting to talk about religion a little bit...and i said something along the lines like " i'm probably going to go to hell"...looking down...waiting for his response...he replied with the most sincere expression on his face, looking me directly in the eyes he said " you are definatley not going to hell"... i was speachless...and looked down shyly, smiling. He definatley likes me!..i thought. 

we went to the party and he continued his persute of me, and very directly and fervently. i was so shocked. i hardly knew how to flirt. never flirted before purposefully and now, here, when i had the chance to, i became a complete idiot and didn't know what to say to him or anybody else at the party. he did a good job of making conversation. while we were in the kitchen he came over and told me that his brother has the same name as me. ouch... i was thinking. there goes our chances of a happy make believe life together. i couldn't share the same name as his brother! how horrible is that!!.. every time he hears or says my name, he also thinks of his brother, robin!!..i thought and a bit disappointed at this news. wishing my name could be anything but his brother's name! he said this with a kind of amused smile and i could never quite figure out what it meant. whether he liked that i had the same name as his brother, or that he thought it was funny that i have a boys name? he could have been thinking the very same strange things i was about the coincidence! 

when we were watching the movie he got up to go to the bathroom and demanded that nobody was to take his spot while he was gone...or he would beat them up...haha. something rediculous like that, because he had been sitting next to me. he had brot back a bag of candies and put them on his knee, one at a time, he was feeding me like a little bird, haha and i would take a candy every now and then... it was so exciting for some reason, just sitting so close to him. i think he felt the same way. oh young love. what funny things us humans are! love makes us so silly and yet it's so absolutely wonderful. the small things become profound. that's what love is. it's the small things...all these little details of a person that add up until it's a mountain of information. i felt so jittery in my body and calm in my spirit. cold and heat at the same time...the body cannot transmit the signals properly.

later on that night we all went to the swimming pool, i had to go home to get my swimsuit and towel, and it started to rain really badly. he played david bowie on the way to the pool and that was my first introduction to bowie. who i fell in love with instantly. he is still one of my favorite musicians. he also introduced me to t-rex. both those artists remind me of him and are a little bit hard for me to listen to at times. it was pouring rain outside and we came up with the stupid idea to go out in the rain with our swimsuits on, i had mine on under my clothes, so we stripped down and went out into the parking lot and danced around doing cartwheels and hand stands. then went into the building shivering and laughing. 

 after the pool, we went to a friends house where we played video games. the game pogo? it's an older video game like the digital version of ping pong. and you use this type of gear stick to move the paddle back and forth. and so  i made a bet with him that if i won against him in the competition we had to jump of the peer in white rock, at night (and this was winter time)...and if he won, he would have to come up with something outrageous for us to do. but we had to play on the terms with left handed ONLY. haha. i knew i would win this one...because i can use both hands equally as good. sure enough he lost...and i won getting a chance to have one more night with him. it was like my tricky way of winning our first date. and i really wanted it to be something he would never forget. so he agreed." ok we will jump off the peer together one night". i knew he was a thrill seeker and would love this. my plan had worked. i was slowly hooking him in.

 we stayed up until the early morning. it was soooo much fun. i even drived his parents van in the empty parking lot. i went crazy with it. driving really really fast, and then stopping just before turning. we were laughing so much..and i think i really scared the people in the vehicle, his friends were screaming and laughing. in a way it's a good thing i never got my licence. i would have had an early death, for sure. finally it was time to go home. i will never forget the look he had on his face, or the feeling i had inside. i was smiling so hard, it hurt. my mom had been waiting up for me all night worried. i felt bad. but i just couldn't get over that this had happened...everything i dreamed of was manifesting and i was falling in love too fast. it had just been our first night together and it was blowing my mind. it was like a real life dream come true being with him.

i will never forget the first time he came to my mom's house. i was so embarased. our house was really small. my mom didn't even have her own bedroom to sleep in. she slept on the couch to give us space to ourselves. my bedroom was such a mess and the light had gone out and i never found the time to replace it

the room was really messy, and i mean reeeeeeeeallly messy. good thing at least it was too dark to tell exactly how bad it was. at first i protested to him coming over. i really didn't want him to see our house, or my room! i went into my room to take out some of my artwork to show him, because he really wanted to see it. we sat in the living room looking through my book. i felt so naked and vulnerable showing him this stuff. it was showing him all my inner thoughts. welcoming him into my own strange world, and i didn't know if he would accept it, or reject it...or even understand it. we sat for hours looking through my drawings, and through my family foto albums of when i was little and south africa. at one point he turned to me and said..." i haven't had so much fun in a long time, and I have a lot of fun!"...i was relieved that he wasn't turned off from my morbid mind, and strange artwork. somethings in there i had even forgotten about, and was really shy for him to see. my artwork was like my diary. with him saying that, i felt relief and hope. maybe he could love me? maybe...

we continued this sort of unspoken romance, and things just unfolded. talking more and more at school. spending time together. winter holidays had come and it was like we escaped from the world of high school and had a week of this time to ourselves. i felt as if we had stolen time away. who would have thought at that time that we had so little of it...that this would end so soon. so unresolved. that it would end just as mysteriously as it had started. these memories haunt me like nothing else. like the song. that whole time period is like a massive ghost haunting my mind and my heart and my soul. uh i'm rambling now. i have to go on...

i remember spending time at his house often, we went there because it was bigger and there was more freedom to talk without the whole house hearing. one time when we had been at my house in my room...haha..we even wrote on a piece of paper back and forth to not be heard by my family! although the next time he came over my room was perfectly clean...and with the light working. it was so original, and romantic, to be writing back and forth in the same room without speaking. i loved it. i also played for him the song "like spinning plates" that time...but he didn't understand what it meant for me...he just said "wow, really beautiful, but it's too sad for me", which is true, it is a sad song, but he couldn't hear what i heard, he couldn't feel what i felt. there is a triumphant sound through the sadness, that was what i wanted him to hear, that was what i wanted him to understand. but he couldn't hear it....and for some reason, that was when i knew, a person can never completely understand another person. in one way or another we are always alone in what we feel and how we will see things differently.

we did end up jumping off the peer at night, like he promised me we would. it was an unforgettable night. dark cold and mysterious. we got our towels prepared and went  out really late at night for no body to be around. it felt like we were the only two people in the whole world. walking down the long stretch of planks leading off into the darkness of the ocean. i have to admit that when the moment came to jump, i was afraid. afraid of all that dark black water below. if i wasn't jumping with him...i wouldn't have done this. i was trying to impress him, trying to show him that i wasn't afraid. i jumped off in only my underwear. i may as well been fully naked because my underwear was white. i felt so insecure about exposing my naked self infront of him. i knew he was curious to look at me, but i didn't have the courage to show him. we very insecurely stripped off our clothes. me more insecure and shy than him.

he jumped first. i jumped after. and i remember the thrill of that cold black water hitting me like knives. freezing my brain and burning my body. as i climbed out up the edge of the lower dock below, he was watching me. now he really had seen me fully naked. and it was then that i wished i could read his mind. i was so clueless at that time...when it came to men. and my body was some alien thing to me, that i myself didn't understand...and felt so insecure about. if only i knew then what i know now. we quickly wrapped up into our towels and walked the long stretch of peer back to the van, shivering and buzzing from the rush. 

one time at his house we had been takling about christmas and presents and all this stuff...and i asked him randomly what he thought the greatest gift to be given is...and he answered "the greatest gift is love"...it was...in that moment...i knew that this was why he was different from the other boys at school. he understood things on the level that i could. other boys would never say something like that. most of the boys at school were just concerned about sex, naturally, and if a girls hot or not. none of the boys where deep enough to think about what love really is...let alone to say it is a gift!...none of the boys in school could see through me, and he could some how. maybe not all things. he couldn't understand all things,but love he seemed to understand... and his answer was exactly the answer i was hoping to hear from him. 

he took me into his grandmother's room, she lived with them in their house, it was there that he pulled his grandmothers bible out and showed me a note he had written when he was little, and he told me that when he found it there in her bible one day....and saw that she had kept it there all those year. when he found it there...it made him cry. i had never been so touched by the emotion and honesty of somebody before... of a boy saying something like that. in that exact moment i wasn't looking at a boy in that moment. in that moment i saw jonathan as a man...a very great man. a boy isn't touched so deeply about something like that... a man is.

those weeks together with him felt like a life time for me. it's a strange thing time. probably, could be, one of this worlds greatest illusions. maybe.

Part 2

he never told me that he loved me, but i knew he did by the way he looked at me and the things he would say to me. he said that my smile made him feel weak in the knees. and he loved it when i would wear my hair in a bun on the very very top of my head. it made me feel rediculouse but it drove him crazy so i wore it the way he liked. we would climb onto the roof of my mom's house at night and watch the stars together. talk for hours.

one day we were wrestling on the ground because he wanted to see how strong i was...i put up a really good fight against him and then there was this moment when he was on top of me, had got me almost defeated, the moment when he should have kissed me, but instead he got up from on top of me and said "your really strong!"...one of those awkward moments, and i could just reply with, "uh...thanks", but he continued, "no really, i think you might be like the strongest girl i've ever met!" again not the reaction i was expecting. i really would have preferred to be kissed. but i was thankful for the compliment and that i surprised him.
lots of little things he would say to me where really sweet and assured me of his feelings for me. he loved my arms for some reason, and he would always squeeze them in his hands. i really liked the little things he did like that. but my favorite of all was when he would attack my neck like a wild animal, smelling my neck and hair savagely...then he would pull away, and act like he was about to fall over saying "oh, oooh, you smell soooo good"...his facial hair tickled my neck and turned me on like crazy. if i hadn't have been so young and pure i would have jumped on top of him right then and there.

we went away together to his cousin's house on the island for two days during the winter break. we had only been hanging out with each other for a week or two? and we couldn't stay away from each other. he said that he wanted me to come with so badly that he couldn't be away from me. that trip changed everything. in the car on the way there he would put his hand on my leg and stroke my inner thigh, knee. every touch from him was electric. i felt so alive for the first time in my life.

things started to get complicated when night time came. both of us struggling to supress our sexual desire. when his cousin had left with his girlfriend to the other room, we were left alone, and really awkwardly cuddling on the couch together. he started having this inward debate with himself out loud...saying how much he wanted to kiss me but he just couldn't because it would be wrong, he couldn't get into a relationship with me so quickly after finishing the last one. i pleaded with him and just said "why can't we kiss. i've never been kissed before"...it didn't take him much convincing after that. we started slowly and then started kissing so passionately to the point it got heated really really fast, as he went to lift up my shirt, i stopped him. i got scared. he got up from on top of me for both of us to cool off. we decided to distract ourselves. we watched a disney movie..beauty and the beast was on tv. we didn't watch for long before we were kissing again. he had the pillow over his lap...to hide...something. we kissed for the entire movie. so...that would be for...longer than an hour and a half. now that i think of it, poor boy, i must have given him blue balls! after he got really scared. he felt really bad about kissing. i did only because he did...and he said we needed to pray, right then and there. and so we prayed. we asked god for forgiveness, and asked for direction. 

turns out my direction would be a different one from him. that weekend changed everything for us. after kissing. after returning to school we didn't know how to be with each other normally. i couldn't handle this game of pretending like we were just friends after all that had happened between us. he told me so many times that he wanted to marry me...in a joking scottish accent like in brave heart..."i luv yuh, always have, i wunt tah marry yu"...he would say this in a joking way but i knew he was speaking the truth. he told me not to tell anybody what happened between us. and would constantly say in an almost painful groaning way "oh why did i meet you now? why not later in life, your perfect, your perfect!perfect girl at the wrong time.. why now?"...what i didn't understand was why now had been such a bad time to meet? because we were still in high school? because he had decided not to date anybody? why? i just didn't understand how it was bad timing. all i knew was i was in love. and all i wanted was him...i never told him these things. i kept everything inside. some things you just never have the words for in the right moment. i never told him that i loved him, either...but i thought he knew that. like i thought i knew he loved me. too much was left unsaid. unresolved.
this got too complicated and it was breaking my heart now every time i would see him at school, and had to pretend like he was some stranger to me. i started thinking really dark thoughts too, i knew that if i were to see him with somebody else...i would want to die. i had to protect myself from these dangerous emotions. i was in a really vulnerable situation and i had to be careful. i was afraid of what i would do. i was afraid that i would commit suicide if i stayed in the same town as him, not being able to be with him. my love turned into fear.
    the fighting at home was escalating as i got more and more defiant towards my mother. one day was really bad as she dragged me down the hallway by my hair and nearly threw me down the stairs, forcing me to go to church. i went. shortly after this was when my brother and i decided to move away from home and go live with our aunt four hours away, leaving our youngest brother behind. we had gotten into the biggest fight we had ever had, my brother and i went off into the woods to talk like we always did when mom lost her head. we did all of our serious talking there. this had happened many times before. but we always changed our mind and stayed. this time was different. i knew this time that i had to go. i had to leave everything my family, the church, my friends, my school, and my first love.
it killed me thinking of leaving so quickly without explaining anything properly. i knew that he just wouldn't couldn't understand what i was going through, he came from a happy family, whereas i came from a disfuncional one. i knew he would't be able to even begin to understand. there were lots of things that went unsaid. lots of things i just didn't tell him about. lots of sadness in my family that i wanted to protect him from. and in a way i wanted to protect him from the sadness in myself. i felt it would be too serious for him to hear the truth.

 i hoped that by going away i could make the right time happen between us. i could go away, finish my education and then meet him in the "right time",hah, if there is such a thing as that, this special right time that he had been talking about. turns out...after i went away he never contacted me again. i had left a message on his phone telling him that i couldn't explain the situation, because it was complicated, but that i was leaving town and wouldn't be able to see him anymore.
i tried staying in contact with him. wrote him a letter. called him once, to ask how things were going. he didn't seem to care that i was gone. didn't even ask why i left. that really broke my heart. i had taken too seriously everything he had said. i realised that maybe he didn't really love me after all...and after that phone call. i never spoke with him again.
i often wonder what would have happened if i stayed in white rock. but it's too late to regret anything. he is happily married now, and i am happy for him. the eerie thing is that, whenever we would bump into one another years after graduation, that look in his eyes was still there...only i was looking into this ghost of what was. it's sad really. it's like we both just moved on and pretended that none of that stuff ever happened between us. i was not brave enough to fight for love. and i loved him enough to let him go. i still dream about him sometimes, but not like i did when i was a teenager of course. we talk a lot in dreams. i sometimes still wonder, if he thinks of me, if he dreams of me...but it doesn't matter now. it's the past. my present reality has nothing to do with any of this emotional dribble.
jonathan helped me to believe there is such a thing called love...and it was more real than anything else i have ever experienced. i will always love him. once you love somebody, i don't think it's possible for that feeling to ever go away. at least for me anyways. people are different though, and i'm starting to realize that i love people on different dimensions than most. sometimes love dies between two people...or more so...rather than the word dies...it moves...like a wind...and can pass into a different direction...like what happened to my parents...and that is the most horrible tragedy in this world. i have no regrets in leaving at that time because it helped me to protect the memory of him and i will always have him in my heart. there were too many good things in knowing him to have any regrets. i would rather die a million times than to never have had that experience, at that time in my life. it was exactly what i needed. exactly what i was looking for. 

i went under a form of depression for a while i suppose, but it was nothing i would have had to endure if i were to have stayed in white rock. more so a kind of absent period. a period of deep reflection and i remained alone quite a lot. didn't trust any of the boys i met at school. didn't fall in love again for a long time after that......... after that experience this thirst started to grow in me for everything...to experience and see...feel everything. i became a thrill seeker...that was what brought me to make a lot of the choices i did afterwards. i wanted to push myself to my farthest limit. maybe it was to get back that feeling i had... maybe it was to distract myself. i don't know these things. but my curiosity grew, my questions got deeper. and thats when everything turned inside out. reflecting inwards to understand whats out. i had to rewire my brain from a lot of messed up thinking, from the mormons, from my mom. music was a huge mentor to me. music and reading had become my professors, my pastors, my parents, my friends...my window into worlds where i could find understanding, acceptance, love. 

i lost my religion when i realized that..."god is love"
i started to realize that love is the most powerful force there is in the universe. love is living. it is love that moves, forms, and shapes all things into matter and all of our choices and decisions may be attributed to how love effects us or not. love has a will of it's own and that will is powerful beyond what i can understand, and i respect that force more than any other forces of nature on earth or above. love is a force that moves you, like the wind, and for those who have the courage to follow it...love sets us free. surely love is the greatest of all that there is above and below. greatest of all stories of all time. all greatness in history has been only that which has flowed out of love. all else is vanity, but true love...for it is the closest we as humans can experience what we call "god". love is ALL and we are love. some force, some energy that lives inside us, moving breathing with in us, and at the same exact moment is outside us. we connect and relate with others only because of love. love is not blind. that is a lie. love is the only true force, when it is true love, that allows us to see clearly the purpose of all this whole wide world. love is the key. without love we are blind and lost...lost to fear, anger, power and the hunger to control. the only darkness in man is this, that without love, in that great void, mankind cannot see, and in that blindness stumbles and this... his darker nature takes over. when you are walking in line with love you are in line with all nature, all creation, all things and people. everything in this life flows together if you are walking in and obeying the law of love. there is no other law but this. love is the law. there is no need of commandments why is there a need, when they are written into our very hearts, our very nature!? it is mans going astray from love that the mind has taken over, tried to control, and in trying to control with rules and regulations, has missed the point completely. love is the message. love is the beginning. love is the end.
                             

     "if there was no love, the sun would go out" --Victory Hugo, les miserables.