Better than Math

I'm better than math because when you set out to disprove me and do so successfully, I'm happy and proud of you. With math, you just get mocked and ridiculed for a decade until a bunch of geeks finally say, holy crap, you're right.

"I hate me so much sometimes. Other times I'm content, but I can't say I'm ever really happy about me."

Luckily for me, sometimes other people are happy enough about me that it gives me drive to keep existing for just a few more hours.

I talked about a certain physics experiment with a cat in which the cat could exist as both alive and dead until someone looked to see if it was alive or dead. I said that I had a letter waiting for me, and that it would sort of hurt but not hurt until I looked to see. Strange thing happened.

Even after I read it, it both hurt and didn't hurt. Hopefully the writer won't be too upset if I share some of it, but I can promise, it's not for the reader. It's for me. I don't want it to be lost.

...actually, I tried just taking parts of it, and it's not working. Sometimes to say it all, you've got to say it all.

---

"I stumbled across an old hand-written journal of mine tonight. Strangely, it ranged from my sophomore to junior years in high school. Would you be surprised if I told you that you had more than one appearance in it? I didn't think you would.

"I started reading and chronicled in its pages was our relationship as it was to me so many years ago. Only surface details intermingled with "I love him's" had been written down. We both know how my memory is, but strangely, reading those few things brought back so much. I won't go into specific details because God knows that you remember far more than I ever will.

"Reading those entries left me with an insatiable desire to talk with you. Since I can't get onto the internet right now (dial-ups be damned), I figured I'd write you this letter that I will probably never send.

"I guess what I really want to tell you is thank you. You've been here for me beyond what I've deserved, especially with how much I have hurt you. I've hurt many people in my life, but you are the only one that I can't and don't want to ignore. You've given me so much, lives even, and asked for nothing - and nothing is what you got, unless you count the pain. Of that, you've had more than your fair share from me.

"Thinking back on when you first told me you were going to be moving, I remember one conversation. You asked me if I would keep you after you were gone. I promised you forever and you promised me all of your forevers. I did keep you after you were gone. I'm still keeping you and I think . . . I think shouldn't have. I've kept you and I still haven't let you leave. I've wanted you around because I knew that you loved me (in whatever form that love had taken) and I needed and wanted someone who loved me. I needed to know that, I needed that idea.

"I'm sorry. It seems like those are the only two words I have for you now. Those, and promises that will most likely prove empty.

"My journal was covered with promises of eternal love for you. I know I loved you then, I know I love you now, and I know that if I survive another 50 years I will love you still. You are the reason I am here; the reason for anything good left inside of me.

"You gave me ink and paper and made me write. You gave me Edgar Allen Poe and made me read. You gave me what is now a passion of mine. Words. Writing. Books. My love of them came because of your love of them. Can you imagine what you've given me with that alone? That's only one thing that has been borne in me because of you.

"You are my light and darkness. You were the first (and so far, maybe the only) to love all of me - the bad and the good.

"I don't want to give you empty promises and say that I will change, because I honestly don't know that I will. I'm making efforts to be a better person, for myself and everyone else, and I'm making slow progress.

"I want to give you this choice. I will let you go if you want. I won't keep you anymore if you want to be done with me. Don't feel bad if you do, I more than understand. Many times I would rather be done with myself too. My crimes against you have not been minor. I will let you go if you'd like.

"I won't give you promises, but I will tell you that I will try to be better for you. I will try to be a better friend for you. I WILL learn to love myself and I won't depend on you to do it for me anymore. I will make my best effort to not use you to feel better about me. I love you, Andrew. The least I can do is try.

"I hope I'm not too little too late. I like having you around. You brighten a part of me that no one else has ever touched."

---

This is a writer that not a month ago I said was too immature. If that's the case, maybe I'm not immature enough. I think that's a conclusion a lot of people don't come to until they're about 45, so I'll be glad to get my mid-life crisis out of the way now.

It gave me the happiness that someone feels witnessing a good friend make the right decision to not drink that night, or to leave a note under the windshield of that parked car he hit, or not to cheat on an important test. Only you could say that this is more like being in the dean's office watching your friend apologize for cheating on something quite a bit more important than a test. This test wasn't for something you could grade, and maybe it's not even something you can adequately pass, but you sure know what it feels like when you fail.

It also gave me the sadness of having to accept that the same friend is willing to accept you turning around and walking away. Whether she could accept me doing that or not, I couldn't accept myself doing that. There are people I wouldn't even call my friends, people I loathe talking to, and I wouldn't be able to accept myself if I turned my back on them when they just needed to feel loved.

Wanting to feel loved...I know what it's like. It's a place I dwell more often than I'm willing to admit, but if I'm not embarrassed by now I might as well just say it. It's not asking that much: I know, I constantly try to give the feeling to other people. It's such a little thing to ask, but matters in such a great way. Giving it entails a world of pain, let there be no mistake. But it's the kind of pain you can sadly smile at, knowing that you can suffer it in place of a comrade's hurt.

Someone asked him the secret of success, and Bill Cosby answered that he didn't know, but the secret of failure was trying to please everybody. It's taken me a long time to realize that that's what I've been trying to do, and that that's what can't be done. A lot of the time I feel like I'm trying to play on both sides of a fence, then wonder why I keep running into a barrier. As much as I hate to wash my hands of anything or anyone I feel that I can help, it seems to be an unfortunate part of adult life that sometimes all you can do for something or someone is feel bad and pray they figure it out on their own. That's a realization I try not to dwell on too much; I don't like the thought that I could mistakenly move on from where I was truly needed.

If you've got no destination, you can never be lost. I don't feel like I have a destination, and a lot of the time I feel like I'm just stumbling and wandering around. But I know I'm not lost, I know I've been working toward something and I'm trying to get somewhere. My life may not have any meaning to the world and my name might be erased less than a century from now, but I continue to force the world to have meaning for me, writing and erasing my own name as I please. Perhaps humans weren't meant to do such a thing.

A pastor was telling a story about going to college to become a minister when he was a boy in the South. He said that initially, he was ashamed of it and would tell people that he was becoming something like a teacher or social worker. One day in line at a market, a jovial old woman asked him what he wanted to be and he finally owned up to it. "I'm studying to be a minister," he'd told her. The woman laughed and told him, "Child, you don't study to be no minister. Either you is or you isn't!"

I constantly feel that I've betrayed hundreds of would-be students by leaving the teaching profession. I know that by taking up law enforcement I'll be serving people in a different way, even if it's not the way I'd wanted or intended. Sometimes the world intends something different for you than you do for yourself, and it's hard to accept. But I finally understand that I don't need a piece of paper telling me I'm a teacher. I can be an even more important kind of teacher out of a classroom than I can in one...and I either am or am not a teacher. I will continue to strive to be the best one I can, and of course the best student I can, all of my life.

Besides, I'm giving the youth a far better English teacher than I probably would've ended up being, anyway. A certain "immature writer" has decided that it's the path she'd like to walk, too. I think maybe immature writers are the only kind that should become teachers at all...they're the only kind that are still willing to learn.