Will Slusher.net

Ha! Fooled ya, thought I was going to go with another Carbon Leaf lyric didn’t ya! Showed you…

Actually, I very nearly went with “Breathe in the night, Let it know just who you are…”, since it is more apropos to my topic today, but the Paul Simon lyric’s just been stuck in my head since I walked in to work this morning…

Anyway, list night, after going to the weekly FYP Tech meeting, I was driving home… but the closer I got to my apartment, the more I realized I really didn’t want to go there just yet…

So, when I got to my turn, I just kept going… and going… and going…

I ended up out on the Blue Ridge Parkway, heading towards my thinking spot… The overlook I always head to when I need to just get away and clear my head for a while…

…it’s also the overlook where, about three years ago, I spent a wonderful birthday evening with a group of friends… but ended up spending most of the night cuddling for warmth with an amazing woman… lost in blue eyes like none I’d ever seen, and a smile that never lost it’s ability to melt my heart… talking about the stars…

Driving up, I worried that being there again would be too hard on me… I worried that the memory of that night, and a thousand others, would just make the pain and frustration of loosing that all the the stronger…

…but, that wasn’t the case at all…

After parking, I shut off my car, walked around to the side, and, leaning up against the fender, looked out over the valley… The lights in the town below were twinkling and shimmering off into the distance… the tail lights of a tiny car popped up on the road below, and I followed them until they were lost again behind trees and hills… Looking up, the man-made lights below were outshined by sky above, bejewled with more stars that I could ever count… stars free to shine bright and clear, away from the harsh pink glow of the city… Towards the horizon, off above the town, a thunderstorm was rising and the distant clouds errupted and glowed with flashes of lightning…

… and standing there, looking out at this scene… listening to the gentle rustle of the wind through the trees, breathing in the cool night air, as expected, all the memories of all the wonderful times Kris and I spent together came flooding back… So vivid, so rich in detail it was almost like reliving them again…

… and that’s when it happened… that’s when I smiled… for the first time in weeks… I smiled a real, deep down, honest to goodness, smile…

… and in that moment, I realized something… I realized that letting go of things with Kris… that accepting that some things just aren’t meant to be… that starting to move on with my life… none of those things mean that I have to let go of all the wonderful, happy memories Kris and I shared… The past three years with Kris, in addition to all the amazing experiences and adventures, have given me a sense of strength, a sense of pride that I’ve never really known before…

… I realized in that moment that letting go of the love we once knew could never take from me the memory of the love we shared, or the gifts that love had instilled in me… I guess you could call it a sort of catharsis (which has to be spoken like Kevin Spacey inpersonating Al Pacino)… I honestly felt as if a huge weight had been dropped from my shoulders…

…and so I stood there, leaning against my car, looking out at the world for a bit longer… soaking in the scenes and enjoying feeling at ease and at peace for the first time in a long time…

… until my inane fear of crazed, inbred, parkway axe murders (and bears) got the better of me and I decided to head on home…

I think I may be the emotional equivilent of a Weeble ™.

Sometimes I wobble… sometimes I get knocked so far over that my face hits the dirt… but somehow, I don’t fall down… somehow I eventually end up back upright…

I think, right now though, I’m still in the wobbling phase… yeah… definitely still wobbling…

Anyway, not a lot new to report from here… I did some tinkering with my car over the weekend… I very nearly screwed the car’s electrical system by twisting the head off the screw where all the car’s electrical stuff grounds… but I managed to move that to a different screw… no harm, no foul… The end result was a dedicated battery and ground wire running through the firewall to the interior of the car…. Now I just have to figure out a good way to house the new fuse panel and power supplies I have, and I’ll finally be able to move my car computer off the stereo’s power supply…

Sadly, I also discovered that my snazzy new computer case doesn’t fit under the passenger seat… soooooo, I’m looking into other options… I may try to build it in to the back of the driver seat… there seems to be a lot of empty space there… We’ll see though…

And that’s about it… the whole running idea is going fairly well too… I ran a little over 4 miles this past weekend… I’m shooting for 5-6 this weekend… Should be interesting…

Ah well, and that’s about it… This weekend I’ll be traveling up to NoVa for my friend Dante’s birthday… should be a good time… and a much needed escape…

Ok, that’s it.. really… :)