Once again I find myself sitting in the dark, wondering about the meaning of life while going through old memories. Funny thing is that I found my old journal today, one that I owed through what I thought were good times only to turn into lies later. Reading through it, I remember things that I have forgotten, mostlikely for a good reason, but the inquisitive fool I am, I read it anyways, damn the consequences. These memories of mine…how can i describe them without sounding so jaded; they are of life and of love, of the lies waiting to happen and the crushing of my soul. I would cry, but the tears long ago dried for these events, my mind more or less glued back together after it was shattered repeatedly in such a short time. I mockingly can call these events as character building, but that isn’t totally correct, because events such as those can take so much out of you. Recently a friend of mine in her blog brought up a question of why it is so hard to let people get close to you, and i do know why all too well, all painfully well. You don’t want to risk getting hurt again, of finding your heart once again broken. Yes, I guess that events such as having my heart broken by the one person who was to love me for the rest of my life, who I was going to love for the rest of my life, changed me. It built character all right…if you believe in those sorts of things. I am a different man than what I was almost 3 years ago, most people I run into that haven’t seen me in a few years note how much I have changed. Quite a few I have disturbed by how much I changed.

Thinking back to this summer I had the fortune to attend one of my best friends from high schools wedding, she was getting married to the man of her dreams, her own computer geek. I still smile on the day, and outside of the close to 2 hour catholic wedding which I wasn’t used to anymore (yes, if you all must know I was catholic at one time…but that is another tale in itself), I truely enjoyed myself. I saw so many people there that day that I hadn’t seen in so long, it was disconcerting to say the least, no-0ne was quite sure how to approach me or even if it really was me or some phantom or ghoul wearing my changed face. A few of my old friends and I hadn’t left on the best of terms either, making it more than strange with me standing there in my best greys. And of all the wierd, crazy, even morbid things they asked me was, “So how are you doing and what have you been up to?” Thinking still, that was such a loaded question, unintentionally loaded, and in no way out to hurt me, but it made me pause to think. What is it these last 8 years since highschool have I done? I hadn’t realized it had been so long since then, since I have hung out with my friends. I’ve done so much in the last 8 years, how do I explain what it is that I have experienced in so few words in less than an hour or two? But in that moment I blurted out “not too much,” because even if I explained it all in detail they wouldn’t believe half of what I told them. Summing up a life to someone who was once a friend and now a stranger in 3 little words. They all knew I was lying, they had heard rumors, mostly from the bride about how my life had been up to then, but the last 3 years has been a mystery even to her. The one thing that I had kept up from back then was that I lived up to the meaning of my name, a watchful spirit. I was the ever present ghost that always showed up when least expected, but I was always welcomed but never noticed when gone. Still the trusted confidant, the listener, the one with the answers to lifes hardest problems; but different. I was asked if I was alright by a few, no-one sure how to handle me. All I could do was smile because what right did I have to shatter that day’s celebration of love?

I look upon the scarred leather cover of my journal and think, what right did I have in all of this? I still occasionally run to people that I have never met and know me for my past actions. Fame or infamy, once I would have thought that each was a great thing, but have learned since they are just a path on which we travel. I found a brief statement near the end of my journal reminding me not to forget what lies at the end of the rainbow…what treasure awaits me. The legend goes that when you follow a rainbow until it ends, then at the end of that rainbow you will find a leprachaun who will give you his treasure, a pot of gold. But that is too literal of an explaination of the legend, too narrowminded of a statement. I believe that the legend is a metaphor about life itself…about how to live that life to the fullest. The path to the end of the rainbow has its ups and downs, challenges and successes, and there is a treasure at the end of the rainbow,life, for everyone. But that treasure is rarely gold, nor silver, or even diamonds; it is something far more precious than what it can buy for you…but that treasure is never the same for everyone. We could stumble across tens, if not hundreds, of treasures every day, but we wouldn’t recognize them because they are not meant for us. No, the path to the end of the rainbow is the journey in life we take, our experiences that help us recongnize what treasure lies at the end of the rainbow. Looking to my journal, I realize that my journey has been a long and twisted one, but it is far from over. Looking back to all the pain and suffering, the good times and the bad, that I have gone through in the last decade, I would not change a single page of it no matter how hard it has been nor twisted the path. I may now be jaded, changed from the youth I once was, idealistic and a good scout, only now I have grown to realize the prices that come with such acts and am willing to pay those prices. Someday I hope to discover what is at the end of my rainbow…