(no subject)
I'm not going to lie and pretend like meeting this man didn't mean the world to me.
I'm not going to pretend that I wasn't completely floored when I realised he was everything I'd expected him to be and so much more.
He isn't unique. But that doesn't mean he isn't special. He is profoundly so, and has been a direct influence on a lot of my life.
I wish I had the words to give this man the credit he deserves, for teaching me things that no one had ever cared to explain, put in terms I understood, or for being the ear I so desperately needed.
When I was younger, I struggled with a lot of things that were going on inside my head. If you can believe it, he was the person I turned to. Not my mother, not my father, not my sister, not my best friend. Instead, a man who is over 10 years my senior who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. No one can understand why I care so much about him, but it's because he cared about me. He wasn't qualified to help me. Or to even understand what I was going through. But many times, he responded, because he is a good man. I can't tell you the relief I felt when I confessed my sins to him on those nights I'd spent drunk and crying and seeking someone to listen, that would actually listen. I feel guilty for putting him in that position.
But he was my God. He was, and is, everything I aspire to be, look for in my friends and relationships and is my guiding light.
But he is unlike God. He has his flaws. I've seen things I don't like over the years. He admits himself that he is a monster.
But aren't we all? The truth is, he is trying to fix these things. He is trying to be a better person, each and every day.
He is who has shown me I can muster the drive and the strength to come from a grain of sand in a shitbox, to a pearl in a clam.
"There goes my hero, he's ordinary."