...You There?

Something's up. My intuition might be on high or something - either way, I'm super aware of what's going on around me, all of a sudden. Maybe I'm trying to gather all that I can before I leave and disconnect myself from the world for a week. Who knows.

--

I visited my friend Caleb Tucker two weeks ago, because he said he wanted me to record a song with him. I took my viola over to his house and from the minute I walked through the door I could tell that he was not there. Whenever he talked to me, his voice was not talking to ME - he talked to the air. He tends to speak rapidly anyway, but his voice was like a cheetah. He would not look me straight in the eye, and even though we listened to the song a few times, he was not listening to the music like I was.

I thought to myself, "What did I do? Does he...not want me to be here anymore?"

I stuck around for a while longer - and I ended up staying there all day, practically. We went out to Guitar Center, and grabbed a bite to eat afterwards at about 9:30. It was only during dinner that I saw a glimpse of the old, light-hearted Caleb Tucker that I recognized.

I visited him again on Tuesday night, even though I was pooped from the day's activities. He acted the same way - we went to the mall and I helped him pick out a necklace and a bracelet, but whenever I talked to him, his mind and his reply was always directed somewhere else. I almost said, "Yoo-hoo...can you hear me?"

So Caleb, if you're reading this...I hope none of this offended you - I don't want to do that. I'm just telling it like it is.
I miss you. I hope you're back when I return.

--

June was a weird month for me. It contained the orchestra tour to DC, which was one of the best trips I've ever taken in my entire life...but it also contained a lot of sadness, mostly fabricated from my own mind.

I remember back in May, when I told myself that Andy Sturm would not be someone that would cause negativity in my life. When I started talking to him after a week of NOT speaking to him, he was happy to talk to me again and I thought I had gotten my mind and my heart (regarding him) back in a good place.

But I was wrong.

In June, I had a nightmare about Andy that really shook me. I wondered if it was a nightmare or if it was happening in real life. I didn't know what to make of it. I knew the message clearly, and it scared me when I realized that it was the truth.

While I was in DC, I had enough. I wrote an ultimatum. I didn't end it with an "I miss you", "I love you", or "I'm here for you."
I spoke what I felt.

I got a response from him about an hour after I sent it - which meant he read it, and that made me feel somewhat heard.
He visited me a day later, after work. He came to my house at midnight, and we sat on my sofa for a hour, talking and talking. We laughed, we talked about the tough stuff, and I gave him a notebook filled with quips of wisdom from Mr Wall and little quotes I found from various sources.
I didn't speak much, during that hour. But I remember I said something, and he just looked at me with such an expression on his face. It was like his entire face softened, his mouth slightly curved into a little smile, and his eyes looked directly into mine.

I wish I could see that look every single day.

There's no way I can describe how much I wish I could look into his mind to see how he thought when he read that ultimatum.
After he read it, he kept on saying how he was going to change and how he was tired of letting people down, all this good stuff.
I reread that entire chain of conversation - not his response, but my initial note. My voice kind of threw me off-guard.

I didn't sound angry. I didn't sound sad, even.
I read it, and the only word that came to mind was this: torture.

Like my heart simply could not put up with any more promises that fell through, high hopes that kept on crashing down, me beating myself up for his false deeds, and for being unsure of exactly who I was sticking up for whenever someone said something malicious about him.

I still read it...and I still think, "Chloe, you sound so tortured."

Was that what he read, too?
I'll never know, I don't think. Unless he messages me with no fear, like he did once before.
...that's one of my three wishes for my eighteenth birthday: for Andy Sturm to speak to me with no fear as to what he feels deep within himself, in that part that he doesn't like anybody to see because he doesn't know what to make of it.

Little is he willing to believe, that part of him is what I love to see the most.
It reminds me that there really are humans left in the world. The real kind that fuck up and still find beauty in life either from their faith or from getting back up whenever they're knocked down...and still love life for all it's worth.

I understand that this might just be a small chapter of my life...him and all that comes from knowing him...
But it's worth it. It's totally worth it. My life would not be what it is without him there.
Besides - just because someone might leave your life at any second is no reason to not get to know them (or love them) at all.

Why else do you think we live life? We can't do this alone - how miserable would that be, right?

--

Well, that's one wish down. Two more to go.

I hope that the trip to New Orleans will give me an opportunity to become more in touch with ME. I won't have my family around, and I won't have my friends around - at least, not my best friends.

I'm going to be totally out of touch with all of them.
And I'm going to turn eighteen without my mother calling me at the exact minute I was born to remind me that it's my birthday, and that I will now be a legal adult.

(...why 6:58 in the morning, Baby Me? Why??)