"Heaven restores you in life?"

I was digging through some things from my junior year of college that I hadn't ever unpacked, a true sign of my laziness and neglect. I found these tins that once housed these French cookies, from France. Maxims bakery or some such thing. Good little morsels. One tin had pencils in it, one had silverware, and the other had little knicknacks and baubles. The bauble tin was the one that gave me a little bit of a pause.

I found a cheap little ring in it. Soft metal, horribly bent out of shape and actually broken in one spot. It has some sort of Celtic-y design on it. I looked at that and was just taken out of it for a moment. I had found a relic from a long lost relationship that I had completely forgotten about. Then memories just came back like a flood.

Speaking of floods, I had a dream that my kitchen flooded. I was standing there and suddenly all this water just came washing over me. I don't think I was scared, not panicky at least, but there was something mildly calming as all the water came in. All I could focus on were the other people in the house and how this would be terribly inconvenient for them if they wanted some coffee.

Back to the ring. I looked at it and in every misshapen centimeter I could conjure a memory, those rose tinted kind that when you really think hard on them you realize they're not as good as they seem. The ring is the physical embodiment of reading an old journal where you pine on and on for someone. Read that when you're removed from that love and that affection and it all seems so childish, so dependent, so foolish.

But in that foolishness I see something that was good then, in spite of all the issues and fights and drag out brawls, the bawling and the baggage. There was that kernel of pure childish love. I'm convinced most people can't have really rational relationships until much later in life. There are some wonderful exceptions that I know of, but for the most part we get too caught up in the emotion of the whole thing to realize when something is going wrong. When we're young we miss the signs. We want to make things work. Sometimes though, the bravest thing in the world is just quitting.

Funny how kids in love can point to Iraq. Funny that indeed.

The ring itself (though) was a gift. It was the first thing that I had ever gotten from someone who said they loved me. I remember one night we were in a Stop and Shop and got some sparkling cider, myself and Shannon. The cap needed a bottle opener, and not realizing how soft the ring was I tried to pop the top with it. It bent horribly, I mean it went from round to very, very oval. I remember feeling such shame at messing up the ring, and trying to hide it until we got back to her house and I could run to the bathroom and try and reshape it. I don't know if she ever caught on or not, but that was the beauty of that time. It didn't matter. We had each other and that was all the world was.

Now there are things like employment, taxes, money, insurance to take minds away from each other. I wonder about people who really fall for each other now. I wonder how they make it work. So many married people I know say it was the worst thing they ever did, and they're happily married. They just can see that they limited themselves, got tied down. Love does that to us, ties us down.

For however long I've maintained this bloody thing I've spoken of love a lot. It's just always been a driving force behind almost everything in my mind. It makes people do things that they would never do otherwise. For women, men, nations, objects...people will do irrational things for this concept of love. I think more irrationality comes from love than hate. There is a cold logic to hate. A problem exists so I eliminate (kill) it. Love is nebulous and frightening in the way that it's constructive, therefore difficult. There is no logic to it, though it's very simple on paper. It's just a step above like and one below obsession.

That's all I have for now though. It has been a while, and I feel like this post is incoherrent enough to meet the high standards of this blog.

I wonder what I'm going to do with this ring and all it symbolizes...

-CCMAS