Only the good die young.

Death is never easy. It's never been something I'm comfortable with, either. But during the holidays, when you're 2,100 miles from home, it's even harder. On Christmas Eve, I lost my uncle. He had been fighting Multiple Sclerosis for about 23 years, but that doesn't mean it's any easier to accept the sudden passing of a loved one. While my mama and sisters make the trek to Seattle to put him to rest, all I can do is the one thing I'm semi-okay at...write about it. I would say that Rick was lucky to have such wonderful hospital staff, nurses, friends, and family, but truthfully, I think that everyone that knew Rick was lucky to have him. He was a brother, a son, a father, a grandpa, an uncle, and a godfather. But he was more than all that. He was my hero. 

I've never met a man stronger than him, or who dealt with such extreme circumstances in such a positive light. MS is a terrible disease but he was always the happiest person I knew. He fought for over 20 years with a fierce passion and vivacious laughter that could fill a room. He never complained. He never showed pain. We complain about our daily inconveniences all the time, and I can't help but be disgusted with myself as to why. Despite him being bound to a wheelchair in an assisted living center for over two decades, he never let anyone know of his suffering and lived with it for over 20 years whilst keeping his dignity and a smile on his face. Always a selfless man, he would put others first, and as someone who loved a good laugh, his jokes and pranks were one to be reckoned with (I may have inherited it from him...). How does someone who has had everything stripped from him-- family, friends, vision, movement, everything-- have such inner positivity and strength? I think we can all learn a little something from Rick. He fought for so long and never gave up. He had a lot of close calls, but like a resilient cat, he had way more than nine lives. I think his energy radiated through not only his life, but the lives of everyone around him, and it's that positivity and will to live that kept him around for so long. We can all hope to adopt such charisma and hopefulness. We are all just busy creatures hoping to get by in life. But it's in moments like losing someone you so deeply love that we realize our lives are just built out of this chaos and hope. This desire to be loved and understood-- that's all he ever wanted. To be loved and to make people laugh; and that he did. I am proud to say he was my uncle, and going into this new year, I think it's a wonderful time to take on some of the amazing traits he held, to make this world a bit better. 

Although I got to speak to him over the phone a few weeks ago, I am heartbroken that I can't be there to say a final goodbye tomorrow. We have lost a one of a kind human being and someone like him can never be replaced, but I hope we can send him away with words of love. He wouldn't want us to mourn, but to laugh and play and speak of things that inspire us. And I think we can all agree that if we learned anything from Rick, he is what inspires us. ❤️

Let's play a love game.

               (just some advice). 

So here's the thing about the "game"...it's stupid. But even by not playing, we are playing. So what, then? We feel pathetic and weak for giving into it, and we feel worse when we back off and quit it because really, we aren't quitting the game, we are quitting the most addictive drug of all...love. 

It's always nice to know you can feel again after getting crushed. Either you get crushed or you're the one crushing. That's the purpose of the game. But when we finally stop looking, we see things so much clearer. You see, certain things capture your eye but we need to only pursue those that capture the heart, because at the end of the day, when the game is over, the pawn and the king go into the same box. We can only be responsible for our own hearts. Don't offer yours up for the taking in this game. Only a fool would give out such a vital organ so freely. 

So back to my experience with this so-called game (Aren't games supposed to be fun, by the way?)...

Dealing with your tomfoolery compromises my integrity. And I almost let that happen, willingly, because secretly I liked the fear and rush of it. Because I think that all anyone really wants to be is loved. Even those that are guarded (the biggest game players of all!!). Love is really just a simple little wish to not be forgotten, and I suppose I would've rather been your mistake than nothing at all. People take advantage of you when you care too much, and it becomes all talk. So I keep chasing you, because I like to believe in the best in people, so I think you'll change and this is just fun & games. I'm an active participant in this love game. I live inside of it. But then I realize, I'm not the only player, and you are constantly changing the rules. So, in thinking about it, I've decided...Why do you get to be the game maker? Who tagged you and made you "it"?

You see, you're great at playing. But you may have just been outsmarted...I know. So the only thing changing now is who is winning. I'll play along. Watch me. But remember, I don't lose games. (It's pretty well known in the Silver household. My family refuses to play them with me anymore). You've got to learn to under-promise and over-deliver. Go ahead and do what you want now, because let's be truthful...I'm not what you want. I'm a convenient challenge. A game. 

Breaking news: Checkmate. You lose. And may the odds be ever in your favor. ❤️

Got a gypsy soul to blame...

...and you were born for leaving.

I've been traveling a lot lately. Which always makes me want to move to these new places and discover every hidden corner of them. The wanderlust is becoming a serious problem. I've always been fascinated by being in an airplane, looking out below at all the tiny squares. All those lines and roads...they are leading people home. Where is home, though, when you're constantly running?

Our problem, as people with feelings and dreams, is that we spend all our time looking for open doors, and the second we get in, we race toward the exit. Everyone thinks that they're different, and don't self-sabotage, but in the end, we're all the same. We all do that. I've been told before that I'm a gypsy...moving constantly; running away. But what's wrong with wanting to constantly feel danger or adrenaline or have new experiences or meet new people? Just because we wander, doesn't mean we run. Maybe there just hasn't yet been a good enough reason to want to stay. Don't let that make you feel bad though. It's oddly charming to know that we are all psychos when it comes to love and life. 

It's safer to constantly keep going...to have no solid ties to anything or anyone. It isn't necessarily putting up walls, it's self-preservation, people! As Ayn Rand said, "the question isn't who is going to let me, it's who is going to stop me?" So what will it be that will finally make us all stop running? 

Life's unpredictability is what makes for a more valuable, exciting life. But then you remember-- you didn't move here to be comfortable and calm and collected and perfect all the time. You've already been there, done that. You came here to feel excitement. To grow. To make magic. To make mistakes. To step outside yourself. You came here to be a part of the messiness and wonder of this place...and to add your own mess to it. The truth is, you are your own home, little gypsy. Keep coming home to yourself. You are the only one you've been waiting for. The only one in your way of staying or leaving. You're not searching for anything more. You can love every aspect of your life but still embrace the uncertainty of it, and yearn for what's missing. ❤️

Home is where the heart is.

As most of you know, I moved here and left my home in California on a whim. No plan in mind. No deep "trying to find myself". I just put some cities in a hat and picked one. But in doing that, I've learned more about myself and the world than I ever could have imagined. Whatever I left for, I've found it. People keep asking me when I'm coming back "home". But you know the main thing I've noticed? Home is where the heart is. As cliche as that sounds, I've really started to believe that. 

We leave home and we move on and we make new homes for ourselves. I've discovered that home can be a person. Or a scent. Even a skyline. One of the things that drew me to Nashville is our skyline. It has everything you could want. And every time you go back to one of your homes and see these skylines, you get that butterfly feeling in your stomach; a feeling of love and nostalgia and excitement. You've made it. You're home. Zora Neale Hurston said it like this: “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” But a recent thoughtcatalog article put it a bit differently: skylines harbor all our hopes. That has really stuck with me. Home is where your heart lies. Where your dreams soar. And where your hopes blossom. I, for one, plan on having multiple other "homes" as my life continues. So if you feel homeless...or you haven't found it yet...keep looking. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you've found it. You'll know when you're home. Look for places and people and things that keep you grounded while lifting you up; look for things you can take, while letting go of what takes from you.  Don't look back, but go forward with your memories. You don't have to return to anything, but know that it's always there with open arms to welcome you back. It's this fleeting sense of wanderlust that lets you give your life meaning. And that, my friends, is the meaning of life. ❤

Digital Love.

This past weekend, I read an article from New York Magazine called, All My Exes Live in Texts. It talked about how our generation is so linked electronically, that millennials never really "break up". It's always been a problem for me in general, that out of sight doesn't necessarily mean out of mind; but having constant access to people from your past by way of social media, cell phones, digital pictures, etc. means that these characters from your supposed closed past, become a part of your permanent present whether or not you want them to. The past can spring up really anywhere, whether its a song on pandora, or an auto-fill-in of their name, or a picture on Instagram, or a tweet or a...the list goes on and on and on. It's exhausting, really. There's no avoiding someone who was ever a part of your life, and even if you can physically, they live on forever in the digital world. 

Not only is it easy to have constant access to these people at your fingertips at any hour of the day (aka 3 am on a Wednesday night. Oops!); but it has made chivalry and courtship fall by the wayside. It has become easy to create whole relationships without ever even physically meeting someone! Our generation has made it easier to open digital screens, if you will, rather than holding open actual doors for someone. You can send a pretty passive aggressive message to someone via your subtweets or a simple "like" of something on one of these social apps. I'm not bashing them, because clearly, I use them just as frequently as your next overly informed girl (although I did delete my Facebook and it. feels. great.), but when are we going to stop making excuses for people? Call me old-fashioned, but we have to start blaming ourselves, not the social media world, for our lack of chivalry, respect, and communication when it comes to relationships. We rarely stand up for ourselves in terms of demanding what we deserve, and more often than not, we are too passive aggressive with our needs when it comes to other humans. We subtweet, post song lyrics, "favorite" something someone says, etc. These moments of intentional digital  connection have become how we manifest our emotions. We have not killed courtship and chivalry, we have just given it one too many facelifts, and it doesn't look the same anymore. It has become the Amanda Bynes of dating. Yuck. 

Because of all this, "goodbyes" aren't ever real anymore. Although sometimes, I wish they could be. (How awesome would it be if we could all "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" ourselves?!). How can you ever really say hello again to anything else when you can never say goodbye to the past? Riddle me that. ❤

Wonderwalls.

It is human to feel. In these feelings, we tell ourselves the stories that make sense to us. There's no fault in that. The fault lies where we think that other people are totally in on those stories. What we don't realize, is that the stories are only our own, and to make others a part of them, they have to want to be. Most of the time, we get upset when these tales don't play out, but in order for them to fail, they had to be real anyway, and quite often, they aren't as real as we think they were. But we continue to create these images of what we want and when there are blank patches, and others have no intention of clarifying or filling in those blanks for us, we fill them in with the little wisps of hopeful smoke we can grab onto. In doing so, we dismiss our own feelings, to accept the feelings of others. When did we inherit that quality? I'm all for compromise and love, but when you deny your own feelings in the process, we begin to lose ourselves. 

A good friend once told me, when you love hard, you hurt hard. That's something that's always stuck with me. You take the risk of pain when you set out to give anyone or anything as much love as you can. And would you do it again? Of course. Because those brilliant shining moments before the darkness are always, always, always worth it. You may continue to put up walls, but its human to feel things-- good or bad. We must remember that lying next to someone is completely different than wanting to keep them warm, and becoming the awareness behind that realization is a hell of a lot more important than becoming a vault of those emotions. Your lack of emotion just makes me resent your disregard and selfishness even more. Revenge is not in my plans, because the way you act will only hurt you in the end. And that's all the revenge I need...your self-inflicted emotional failure. So, my friend, keep building your walls higher. 

We all have walls. They are necessary. But hiding behind them is cowardly. Whenever I see a wall now, I will laugh. I know what needs to be done. Say nothing more than thank you. Because silence, as it turns out, is the most powerful wall breaker...it screams. So thank you, if nothing else, for providing me with that wall of silence. Whatever you were, you were not good enough to hold onto, and so I will let go and realize that life gets easier when we accept the apology we will never get. In doing this, I now know that I will no longer keep welcome mats and sparkles where my spine should be. ❤

Almosts.

So I began documenting each of my days this year as a New Years resolution. In this hyper-electronic world, we can't document enough. From apps, to tweets, to pictures, to status updates, we have to not only inform the world of the mundane details of our lives, but be able to look back and see where we have come from, where we are, and where we are going. History always repeats itself. I created this so that I could record every interaction. Everything that means anything-- because sometimes, it's easy to lose track of what's really happened, and what I've imagined. But we have to see that right this moment, we are creating our next moments. This is what's real. We are only the sum of all these moments and we may as well have it documented to guide us through this carousel of life. 

Which leads me to this...this blog that I've created. What does it mean? Sometimes forever and almost always...it's the premise that things are transient. And the ideas of "forever" and "always" take away from your ability to live in the now...something I've always struggled with. But at a certain point, we have to do as The Gambler says, and know when to hold or fold 'em. Why waste your time on things or people that wont ever care enough to do the same for you? There are no safe investments in life. But we invest anyway, because heartbreak, like most things, is transient; but regret is eternal. And even when things aren't about a love, if it means anything to you, its still a matter of the heart. What is forever? What is always? Neither of them can be true for everything, always. So we have to learn to laugh at the planning process of life and accept that our forevers and always' don't always mean just that. Things, people, relationships, jobs, dreams...all of them can be forever...sometimes. And almost always, it's that tiny glimmer of hope found in that word "sometimes", that keeps us hanging on. We make our lives out of that chaotic hope. 

Remember--there are a lot of good almosts out there. But almost isn't good enough. ❤