A Nice Place to Visit

If my life was being presented as a film, I often think of the times where whoever was presenting it would pause the film, circle me with a dry erase marker and say, “See class? That’s exactly what she should NOT have done!”

We’ve all had these moments. The moments that as the words are coming out of your mouth, as your body is taking action, your brain is saying “Stop! Just stop it!” But you don’t listen. You can’t listen. Something else takes over. And I’m not talking about those I-carried-a-watermelon moments, where you are simply embarrassed, or just made a insignificant bad choice. I’m talking about those moments that change you forever. The actions that change the course of your life. The words you said that you could never take back. The words that change a relationship between you and a friend, lover, or family member. The words you want to suck up, swallow, drop in the toilet and flush away. But you can’t. The ones you replay in your mind over and over thinking “Why didn’t I just…?”, “If I had only…”

Yet, why can’t we control it when it’s happening? I guess the answer is because we are human. If we never acted on impulse, if we thought everything through and followed all the rules, would we really be living? If such events didn’t occur, the world would be pretty uncanny. Like “Brave New World” uncanny. And we all know how utopias turn out. Someone always needs to be human. Someone’s human tendencies have to break the “peace”. So then, do we not really want peace? I mean world peace, sure. But I’m talking no-challenge-everything-goes-your-way peace.

I’ll never forget the episode of The Twilight Zone (A Nice Place to Visit), where a man, Mr. Valentine, dies and he thinks he has gone to Heaven, because he gets everything he’s ever wanted. He is surrounded by beautiful women, he wins every game he plays at the casino, etc. Things all just come to him, anything he wants. After a month, he tells his “guardian angel” that he wants to go to “the other place” because he’s so bored and unhappy that he is going crazy.

"If I stay one more day, I'm going to go nuts! I don't belong in Heaven, see? I want to go to the other place!". The angel responds, "Heaven, Mr. Valentine? Whatever gave you the idea that you were in Heaven? This IS the other place!!" Hell is having no challenge, no fights, no struggles, no emotion.

So, I think about those over emotional moments in my life that were filled with struggle. Yes, I could have made choices that could have changed everything. But then I say, if I had everything I wanted, like Mr. Valentine, what reason would I have to get out of bed? How long can we agonize over those moments we so desperately wish we could change? How many ways can you play out the scenarios in your head before you go crazy? And would we really be happy if we could change those moments, or would we act on impulse in another aspect of our lives and equally live with regret? We know in our heads that we can’t have perfection, that we wouldn’t even want perfection, yet we all torture ourselves, wondering. Or maybe that’s just me. Because for me, chalking it up to fate is never good enough.

So my question is, how do we find balance? Can we struggle within peace? Find peace within struggle? Or can we only have struggle, because without it, there’s simply nothing to live for.

FRIEND or FROVE?

So you have friends, no? At least you think you do. How do we define a friend NOW-A-DAYS?(BTW that is my LEAST favorite saying in the world. WTF is now-a-days?) We all have "friends" we do certain things with. Someone you shop with, someone you go to concerts with, someone you drink with, etc. But how do you truly count your "friends"? Certainly not by the 647 friends you have on facebook, or the 289 friends in your phone contacts.

I've never had a lot of friends, and I've always been very fast to cut people out of my life who do something that, to me, makes them not a good friend. But maybe I have it all wrong. My boyfriend has TONS of "friends." He'll say, "I'm going out with my really good friend Bobby." I'm like, "WHO, who the hell is Bobby? We've been together almost a year, and I don't know this person who is your 'really good friend'? " His response is, "Babe, you need to get some friends".

I think to myself, maybe I don't want "friends". I don't want a million people I could use to hang out with. They aren't people you can open up to, or people who you can truly rely on. They are just "fun friends". Slightly more than an acquaintance. Perhaps the word "friend" is the issue. It's too comprehensive. It doesn't allow us to differentiate between facebook friends, fun friends, and true friends. So I've decided, I'm creating a word for a TRUE friend. A GREAT friend. A friend that loves you. A friend you love. A FROVE. And I'll tell you how you know if you have a true frove: when they do shit for you that they really don't want to do. I hate when people say, "I know who my friends are because they'd be there for me in a serious time of need." Yeah, well, wake up. If you were dying, if your mother was dying, if you were contemplating suicide, declaring bankruptcy, even your acquaintances would be there for you. Everyone feels bad for "someone in need" and everyone feels either good for helping, or guilty if they don't help "someone in need". Really, it's the times when you are moving, when you need someone to read a boring article you wrote, when you need a ride in the middle of the night, when you want to complain about the way you broke your nail for an hour, etc., THOSE are the times that you can really tell who is your frove. When it would be so easy to make an excuse, or not answer their phone, a frove comes through. No one WANTS to help someone move, no one WANTS to listen to your boring ass article, drive 30 min away at 3 AM to pick your ass up, or hear you complain about something so fricken futile. But your frove, your frove will do it. They do it because they love you and they do it because you'd do it for them.

So what would you rather have, 1,000 acquaintances?

100 friends?

Or 1
frove.