#datebynumbers

From everythingisgay.com -->

"He’s gone now. I gave him a second chance and he still chose to ignore me in the long run. He promised he wasn’t “that guy”. I know it makes room for someone better, but I don’t think he’s out there. My faith is gone. Please, big sister from the Internet, tell me something to make it better."

-Question submitted by Anonymous

datebynumbers Says:

I want to tell you real quick about my bike. I get on that bike when I’m sick and dizzy and lost in my head, I get on that bike and the world changes.  It’s all ascents and descents, dusty turns and tailwinds, howling into the ether like the only thing that matters is not falling off because it is the only thing that matters. And I feel like I’m going to explode into a million shredded pieces of metal and carbon and bones and blood, but I sit back, crouch down and breathe deep into the calm and ride the wind like diving into the sea. In those hours, I am invincible. I am untouchable. I am cut and lean and hard and fast. I’m not heartbroken or fearful of being lonely.  I am not alone at all.  When I am on that bike, I am everything I wanted to be when I was little, choosing tackle over touch, choosing battle over tattle. And with my hair pinned back, dressed in kitten heels and a soft pink dress, you can still see the bike grease on my hands and the scars all over my legs from sloppy dismounts and nasty falls. I wear my scars like a topographic map of my life. This is not a highway, this is a story of lush valleys and ice-picked mountain passes. The highs and lows of hospital beds and sail bags, and I don’t want to look tidy and pretty and clean. I don’t want to look like someone would be lucky to have me, I want to look like someone would be lucky to survive me. I don’t ride the wind; I am the wind and I am carving my topography with brushstrokes both delicate and bold.

So when I think about falling in love, I also think about all the things that happened because I wasn’t in love, because there was no one to ask me to stay. I think about blasting down a mountain pass on a bike the same weight as my cat. I think about how I moved to the Virgin Islands and raised $100,000 for kids before becoming a stowaway. I picked ‘shrooms and danced at a rave ‘til my shoes disappeared over the edge of the speedboat we took home. I made out with German journalists, Irish kiteboarders, ship captains and pool boys. I ran the southern perimeter of Manhattan at midnight. I rode on the back of a motorcycle through the streets of Florence as the sun came up, singing loud enough to hear it over the muffler, both hands in the air.  I got a cat, got an apartment, got a dye job, got a nose ring, got a tattoo, got a tattoo addiction, got a promotion, got a plane ticket, got a tan, got a blog, got a life. And it’s not that I couldn’t have done these things if I was in love, but it would have been different. It would have been safer. And regardless of whomever I’m with for whatever amount of time, I’ll be with myself the whole time and I want to be good to her.  I want her to have a heart like an ocean: endlessly vast, full of wonder, and navigable only by the brave.  I want her to wake up in the biggest, empty bed and stretch like a cat, taking all the space just because she can. I want her to have control of her happiness. I want her happiness to be her own… to be my own.

And you'll see that the URL has changed from datebynumbers to keltonwrites. GET IT?

It's time for a new chapter.

Ask box is still open. Life is still full of possibilities. 

Well, I’m sick. But it was worth it because, when I consider where I may have picked up a virus in the last 7 days, the following options arise:

1) In a crowded airplane, on my way back from a national conference where I presented professionally in front of my peers for the first time.

2) In the crowded lobby of our office, where I hosted and organized a special networking event for my students on Wednesday

3) In a crowded nightclub, where I brought together sixty people and somehow managed to corral them into a group photo along the way

Have you ever given your best friend advice about a crush who's just not that into her? Or maybe a class she's struggling with? Have you told her she should probably quit track if she hates it so much? We give advice all the time to our friends, classmates, even our parents—but the one person we never seem to counsel?

It’s okay to forgive those who hurt you with their poor choices. It’s okay to keep loving them. In fact, you should. We are all human and we are all weak sometimes. It’s okay to favor the positive memories and continue to hold that person in high regard.

But as you get older, you realize that even though you can love and forgive someone until your heart turns into a puddle, you cannot escape the consequences of their actions. You cannot undo the way something makes you feel. Someone you loved betrayed your trust, and that is important. It is unrealistic to expect you can brush off your emotions the way you brush yourself off after a fall. It doesn’t work that way.

You may think it’s easier to forgive and forget, because when you punish the person you love you often are punishing yourself. Maybe facing consequences means temporarily/permanently losing a best friend or a boyfriend; maybe it means divorce; maybe it means a lonely gap will form in your life. No one wants to be kicked when they’re already down, because that absolutely sucks.

Facing the music is a hard thing to do, but it may be exactly what you need. It is not easy to earn a strong sense of self-respect, but those who manage it are the most free and fierce of us all.