The boy is standing before the frame of a door, trembling in fear, trembling in excitement. He is certain he will emerge a man - or whatever he's been told little boys eventually become. Unfeeling, uncaring, strong and rough and elegant, the splitting image of his father. Growing up is a process. We are searching for this single grand realization, that reveals not in entirety but is gentle and gradual. We attempt to trace its trajectory, attaching meaning to experience to make some sense of it all. We are molded by history, products of nurture and nature, both intertwined and inseparable. The way of grace - kind, loving, compassionate, and the way of beauty - raw, innate and selfish. The search for a catalyst proves futile, I no longer remember the experiences that have led me here. All I have is a hazy sense of the here and now. A candle that flickers against the darkening night sky, all to easy to miss, all to easy to lose track of. The only thing I understand is the present. Feeling grown up but not quite in the middle of my summer of love. Love - which has always scared me. It is the world's greatest theory, conceptualized by civilizations of man, each time differently, subject to a thousand years of trial and error, no closer to a definitive answer now than we have ever been. What I couldn't feel I kept locked away. What I felt I never received I convinced myself against needing at all. But everything slowly begins to wash away, the boy is sitting on the shore as the waves come in, gently pulling at his feet. Sadness and anger give way to love. Sadness and anger which I believed I had so much of, fades into the sea to be washed up upon some other shore. What I remember and perhaps will never forget, was what she said.
You know he loved you very much.
And there was nothing else I wanted to believe more that that.
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