Where do we go from here?

Let's rewind about a month and a half, to the middle of August. Geoff was housesitting for the guy his mom works with and I spent a bit of time over there. Anyway, one night I worked late and was planning on going over there so I gave Andy a ride home from work, and when he got out of the car I gave him a copy of the CD that I made for him a couple weeks before that. Which I don't think he ever listened to, and that's fine. It's 90% not serious anyway, makes it seem like I have much stronger "I want you" feelings than I ever have had for him; it's just a really good mix. Whatever. Fast forward about 2-3 weeks, and I was giving him a ride home another night and we were talking about life. And he was talking about not being sure about going back to school, or doing the restaurant management thing, etc. As a side note, I had been made previously aware that Andy is reasonably religous. So as he's talking to me about all of this, I was thinking about my Life Soundtrack that I had just made, and was thinking that he could really relate to the last song on it - Mat Kearney's "Where Do We Go From Here?". When Andy got out of the car, I gave him a copy of my Life Soundtrack and told him to listen to that song because I thought that it was something he could relate to. He didn't listen to it. I asked him a week or so later if he had, and he said no. I wasn't surprised, but I still thought it was something he would be able to dig on. When I put that song on my L.S., I chose it for a couple of reasons. I've been thinking about God, and religion, and faith-based belief in something, and that song was kind of my way of agreeing with Kearney's conversation with God, but from my perspective First, I'm saying that I don't really have much of a relationship with God, and by me saying "Where we gonna go from here?" I'm saying, "What am I supposed to do now?" Do I try out the religion thing or keep doing what I'm doing? Second, I meant it in terms of just me. It's my song to me. Where do I go from here? Religion aside, what am I doing here, and where do I need to go to keep...going. Did I mean it towards Andy when I put it on there? I don't feel like I did. Could it be taken that way if I didn't explain things entirely? Yes. If I put that song on my L.S. to mean anything about how I felt about him, it was not at all literal, and whatever I felt was nothing strength-wise compared to what the song would imply if you were to take it that way. Anyway, today he texts me and asks what track number he was supposed to listen to. I text him back a couple of hours later that it's the last one on my Life Soundtrack, and he immediately calls me and asks if it's "Amy Appropriate". Yes, I say. Why do you ask? I know exactly why he asked, but seriously...so I tell him to let me know what he thinks of it after he listens to it. Fast forward to 9:15pm and Andy calls me and I ask what he thought of it, and this is how the conversations pretty much goes from there:
"What did you think of the song?"
"It was good, but uhh...I think we need to make sure we're on the same page."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I think you like me, and I just think we need to make sure we're both thinking the same thing and that neither of us has the wrong idea here. I'm in a relationship with a girl that I'm in love with."
"Uh huh; I'm aware of that."
"I was listening to some of the lyrics of that song, and I just thought that needed to be said."

So I go on to explain that song being on my L.S. had nothing to do with him. And then I explained why I gave him the CD to listen to in the first place, because I felt like apparently he didn't remember the context of me giving him that particular CD. "All right" he says. I think he believed me. Hopefully. Then I told him that I definitely think he's a great person but that I know he's in a relationship. And that he's one of the few people I can see myself still talking to when I'm not here anymore. At some point shortly after this the conversation turned into when we work next.

How incredibly uncomfortable. Get weird about the other CD that I made you. Yes, that one was only 7-10% serious, but every single song on there could have been taken as "I want you a lot." Why are you taking a song that I suggested as a personal preference and turning it into something it's not? Why didn't you have this conversation with me 6 weeks ago when I needed the shove away from you? I've been doing well creeping away from wanting you, and I'm enjoying being your friend. But now I'm doing it at my own pace because you never did anything to steer me away before. You're not supposed to make my heart hurt; we're past that now, I thought. You said I wasn't that type of girl. I'm not here to try and steal you from your girlfriend. I don't want what you want. I might not be in Grand Rapids in a year; I'm not trying to ruin your relationship for something that I have very little desire for. I want you to be my friend now. I feel like if I wanted to be "like every other restaurant girl", which you said I wasn't, then I could have tried harder and made that happen for me awhile ago; I thought I'd made it pretty clear that's not what I was going for. What part(s) of that song did you think I meant for you? That fucking last verse, I'll bet. I've waited and I'll wait some more/Won't see me knocking on another door/But all this is crazy and amazing/There's only one half of us that I'm saving/So I'm praying just to let it go/Watch from a distance just to see you glow/Seven hundred places seven hundred faces more. I don't wait for people. I especially don't wait for people when I'm the one who's leaving. I wish I could feel that strongly for someone, but I'm glad it's not you becaue that would be bad for both of us.

It's going to be weird now.

9/11 makes my stomach hurt...

I've been watching/listening/reading things about September 11. Last night I was up until 7am watching Fox News because they were replaying what had been the live news reports in 2001, and I was watching it, trying to remember things. I was listening to a 9/11 version of the song "Heaven" by DJ Sammy (Sara was talking about it at work today), and I actually had 3 tears fall from my eyes. This little girl is talking to her dad, who died in the attacks a year earlier. She's telling him about how she started kindergarten, and learned how to swim, and she can open her eyes underwater; she asks him if he can see her. Then she says she can swing on her own, but she likes it better when he pushes her. And she says she tries not to cry even though her mom says its okay because she knows her dad doesn't like her to be sad. But that not crying makes her stomach hurt. And that she misses him tickling her belly, and that missing him made her stomach hurt, too. At the end she says she's going to bed, and that she sleeps with the light on in case he comes home to kiss her goodnight, and that's when the tears fell. How horrible for that child to have to grow up and not be able to understand that her dad isn't coming home. And that he might be one of the 1000+ people who's remains haven't even been identified yet, so there's not even any closure. That was something I hadn't thought about until tonight - over ONE THOUSAND bodies haven't been recovered. There are piles of human remains sitting in the NYC medical examiners office, waiting until advanced enough DNA identification tools come along and they can figure out who is who. At least as recently as March of this year, they found more bone fragments in vacant skyscrapers near Ground Zero while cleaning crews and construction workers were getting ready to tear it down or something. That blows my mind. I can't believe how quickly I brushed it off. I was looking at another website that had something of a timeline for the WTC and all the business, and I guess I remember it now but hadn't really thought about it - the site burned for 99 days. 99 days there were fires burning in the unimaginable heaps of debris from the falling towers. Which is another thing I can't get my head around - how big must that have been? And how far did debris, dust, etc. go in diameter around the city? I imagine there was at least dust that went tens of miles. I can't conceptualize it. I can't imagine having been anywhere near there. I've been sitting in this ridiculous world of my own for the last 5 years, and for some reason never thought about the fact that you couldn't just have been in the next building over and lived. People were literally running for their lives, away from those buildings. And I wonder, in the video clips they show of people running down the street as huge, stories-high clouds of debris come rushing between buildings towards them, did any of those people on the TV end up dying from that? Were they killed by a random hard object flying through the air that just happened to hit them? How many people were crushed by support beams as they collapsed onto the street? On one of the video clips they showed last night, of the live coverage in the morning of the attacks, you could see bodies jumping out the window of the building. It made my stomach sick when I realized what I was seeing. Those people literally knew they were going to die, and actually jumped out of a window 100 stories in the air because they would rather have died from impact, or pressure, or who knows what...then die in a fire, or when the building collapsed. I can not begin to imagine how that would feel, to have to think that, to have to make that decision. Nearly 3,000 people died that day, many of them within two hours. After the final death toll, one website said the youngest victim was 2 years old; the oldest 85. The average age of a child who lost a parent in the attacks was 9. "Tuesday's Children". They don't even have closure. There was no funeral with a body. Maybe they were one of the lucky -2,000 families who had some sort of remains they were able to lay to rest, but otherwise they will never be able to tell themselves that their parent is actually gone. They must always have a nagging in the back of their mind that they might come back. One girl on a video clip was saying she can't really remember what her dad looked like. Another girl says she remembers his voice because her mom left it on his voicemail, and sometimes she listens to it and it says "I'll get back to you" and she gets sad because she knows he won't really be getting back to her. One boy was saying that it's only been in the last couple of years that he's not angry at everyone he sees. It makes my stomach hurt.

Where is a benevolent God in this?

Friday's MySpace stuff...

(Gotta let it) Burn...

I don't understand why
See it's burning me to hold onto this
I know this is something I gotta do
But that don't mean I want to
What I'm trying to say is that I-love-you I just
I feel like this is coming to an end
And its better for me to
Let it go now than hold on and hurt you
I gotta let it burn ...

It's gonna burn for me to say this
But it's comin from my heart
It's been a long time comin'
But we done been fell apart
Really wanna work this out
But I don't think you're gonna change
I do but you don't
Think it's best we go our separate ways
Tell me why I should stay in this relationship
When I'm hurting baby, I ain't happy baby
Plus there's so many other things I gotta deal with
I think that you should let it burn

When the feeling ain't the same and your body don't want to
But you know gotta let it go cuz the party ain't jumpin' like it used to
Even though this might bruise you
Let it burn
Let it burn
Gotta let it burn
Deep down you know it's best for yourself but you
Hate the thought of her being with someone else
But you know that it's over
We know it is through
Let it burn
Let it burn
Gotta let it burn

Sendin' pages I ain't supposed to
Got somebody here but I want you
Cause the feelin ain't the same find myself
Callin' her your name
Ladies tell me do you understand?
Now all my fellas do you feel my pain?
It's the way I feel
I know I made a mistake
Now it's too late
I know she ain't comin back
What I gotta do now
To get my shorty back
Ooo ooo ooo ooooh
Man I don't know what I'm gonna do
Without my boo-oo
You've been gone for too long
It's been fifty-'leven days, um-teen hours
Imma be burnin' till you return (let it burn)

When the feeling ain't the same and your body don't want to
But you know gotta let it go cuz the party ain't jumpin' like it used to
Even though this might bruise you
Let it burn
Let it burn
Gotta let it burn
Deep down you know it's best for yourself but you
Hate the thought of her being with someone else
But you know that it's over
We know it is through
Let it burn
Let it burn
Gotta let it burn

I'm twisted cuz one side of me is tellin' me
that I need to move on
On the other side I wanna break down and cry (ooooh)
I'm twisted cuz one side of me is tellin' me
that I need to move on
On the other side I wanna break down and cry (yeah)
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh oooh
Ooh ooh oooh (can ya feel me burnin'?)
Ooh ooh ooh oooh ooh oooh
So many days, so many hours
I'm still burnin' till you return

When the feeling ain't the same and your body don't want to
But you know gotta let it go cuz the party ain't jumpin' like it used to
Even though this might bruise you
Let it burn
Let it burn
Gotta let it burn
Deep down you know it's best for yourself but you
Hate the thought of her being with someone else
But you know that it's over
We know it is through
Let it burn
Let it burn
Gotta let it burn