Celeste

So here we are again. Late night blog posts with Geoff. Okay maybe it's not super late, it's only 12:19 a.m. on Sunday, April 26th, 2020 at the start of writing, but late enough where the day has slowed down, everything is winding down for the night before I rest and prepare for the next day.

I think it was, what, a week and a half ago or so that I was asking what I should do about the letter I have and the crush post I saved from Sophia, given the emotional and feelies nature of it. And the decision on that was to just keep it out of sight as best as possible and just deal with it whenever I am healed from everything, regardless if the pain I am healing from was because of what I did or not.

The question of tonight is similar to that post, and I've been meaning to write this one out for a bit but as you can see, I am only getting to it now.

Aside from the letter, I have 2 other items gifted to me by Sophia. 1 is a copy of The Westing Game because she apparently had 2 extra copies with the original intent of giving it to some other friends but never got the chance to, so she decided to give me one and with it the letter was inside (where I still keep the letter because I don't know what else to do with it). The other item is a stuffed animal that she got for me for Christmas.

Here is a selfie I took with said stuffed animal on January 30th, 2020, and this was sent to Sophia in an attempt to cheer her up when she was feeling as if a lot of her close friendships were falling apart. This was sent all before the downfall of everything: of my character, of my maturity, of relationships because of my actions, etc.

I've named the puppy Celeste because in trying to just compliment Sophia more (when I had initially received Celeste) I was saying how I was blessed to have Sophia in my life, hence the name Celeste since it ties back into the word "celestial".

So now the question that remains is: what do I do with Celeste? I know I definitely don't want to throw her out, because if I'm being honest and a little vulnerable, I have my attachment to stuffed animals just because I'm really a kid at heart who somehow made it to 20 going on 21 (in 3 months exactly). Then to add to it all, just the ideas of Celeste being a gift from the first girl I had come to love.

I guess I could do similar to the letter and store Celeste away with some of my other stuffed animals from my childhood and then decide if that's where she will stay or if she will come back out in the future. But even then, will I not just think of everything I had experienced with Sophia when I do take Celeste back out?

Or do I just leave Celeste on my bed and just have her sort of be a reminder of everything. A reminder of who I was before I compromised everything. A reminder of what it means to love another. A reminder of all the good things in life. A reminder that I can be so much more than what I am now; that I can return to heights I once was at and even surpass it all if I try hard enough. That even in my lowly state as I perceive myself to be in, I don't have to stay here. To fight on towards a better day, and a better Geoff. That I don't have to keep beating myself up for things. That while yes a lot of things that happened this year are my fault. Yes, I failed out of college and there's no one to blame but me and my procrastination and laziness. Yes, I dissolved the best friend group I had ever created and had. Yes, I put strains on best friendships I had developed over time and now things are uneasy and difficult to walk along with.

And while all of that is true, I don't have to keep blaming myself everyday for it. I don't have to internally hate myself for it anymore. I can dislike the fact that I even let any of these things happen, but I can simultaneously use this all as an experience to learn from. That emotions can and will cloud my judgment and affect the following actions. That the next time I get into a situation of stress, of disbelief, of bad news, etc., I should step back and not say anything and then explain my spacing out when I calm down. Because it is a lot easier to ask for forgiveness for disappearing and reappearing when a response is appropriate, rather than to try to ask for forgiveness for damage that is sometimes too much to repair.

So yes, I don't know what I want to do nor do I know what I will do with Celeste, but all I know is that I have a choice to make that comes out of this all: I can choose to linger here in my lows and in my valleys. Or I can choose to rise up and once again be better and be more. To even improve myself further than ever. To learn from my mistakes and to not keep holding on to the pain that plagues me. Because I think that at this point the pain I experience is partly because I hold on to it. I can heal better and faster if I just let go of it and just use it as a teaching point; as a life lesson.

There are two pathways, and in my eyes only one of them is the right path to choose. The other will lead me into more time of pain, more time of sadness, more time of guilt. Is that the pathway I want to travel? Or do I want to see what more I can be; what more I can do? So while there is a fork in the road, there is only one choice, and all signs and directions point in that right way, so what's it going to be?

Side note, this blog finishes authoring at 12:41 a.m. on Sunday, April 26th, 2020.