Reflections of the Way Things Used to Be

I used to keep a blog (before anyone knew what a blog was) on early social networking sight Livejournal. It's been over 5 years since I put anything on it, but it's fascinating to look back at who I used to be. I quit writing in Livejournal about the time my life began a massive make-over, so it's quite fascinating to look back at the me-that-used-to-be (be careful, he had a lot of issues back then).

Here's an entry i wrote soon after my roommate and close friend Harold Rosas (the Gopher Boy) passed away...

I feel very much as if my apartment should be haunted, or something of the such. I mean, it's not. in fact it's a lot of quiet, and a lot bigger than it used to be, or so it seems.

There's still a fair bit of stuff to go through, most of it to be thrown away or moved or something or other. Some stuff to be dumped off at Half Price Books or rasputins. I dunno. I know what i have to do, more or less, and i even know where i probably should, but actually getting to it is somewhat more troublesome it seems.

The last time i saw Harold, he was getting out of his car. i road [sic] past him on my bike, heading home to my apartment. I was in a hurry to go meet up with everyone to see [The Simpsons Movie], but I left the door open to our apartment so he wouldn't have to shuffle his load of carry-ons to open the door. I was putting up my bike and stuff, and i kept waiting for him, and he wasn't coming. After a few minutes and finishing up my stuff, i was going back to my room to change so i closed the door. I looked out the front window to see if he was coming, but i noticed that his car was gone, he had actually been packing up to leave for wherever rather than coming home.

If i was a writer--which i guess i am--and I was writing this scene for a novel, I would have used it as foreshadowing, leaving the door open for him to come home, and him leaving instead.

Hmmm.

I guess you could say i'm handling everything ok. i mean, i don't know how you're supposed to handle things like this so i'm not exacctly sure i'm qualified to say if i'm handling it well or not. *shrug* Mostly i just think i have a lot more room than i used to.

This is one of the most surreal scenes of my entire life, so much so that I find it hard to believe it really happened like that. But it did. I left the door open, and waited, but he never came home. And that line that I finished the post with, "Mostly I just think I have a lot more room than I used to." I believe that may be one of the best, most real, lines I've ever put down on paper. It seems so simple, so blase, but it was so much how I felt at that moment. Metaphors like that aren't supposed to happen in real life.