Time it was and what a time it was it was,
A time of innocence a time of confidences.

Long ago it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you

-Simon and Garfunkel

Change. A truism that needs no repeating is that change is inevitable in our lives. I suppose the most difficult task is not inevitability of change, but rather accepting the outcome of change. Even for one whose education and experience is in the incessant change of technology, there are times when shouldering the weight of change can burden one heavily.

Thus the saga begins...

It was late December in 1996. The wind that blew was chilly and cold, yet I was held captive by the flicker of a screen. Meandering amidst the Net for a little over a year, I had become familiar with chatrooms. It had awed me that I was able to chat with those from such foreign lands such as Australia, Alabama, and Alberta. Back then, I was not fortunate enough to be in real-time chats, in that instead of streaming lines of text, I had to manual refresh the screen with the click of a mouse. It would be considered quite a chore now, but then it seemed natural. As a fresh 18 year old, I allowed the age limit of whom I chatted to be 16 and up- reasonably enough, considering that I did not think I could hold too many quality conversations with those under that bracket. For a brief moment in time, I met one girl from West Virginia who was 14 (claimed to be 15), but we held such a deep conversation that she caught my interest. The following day, I sent some virtual flowers to her. It was a considerate gesture I would do for my female chatters. Though she was a Freshmen in high school while I was a Freshmen in college, she had maturity beyond her years.

Time passed on as time does. With a plethora amount of emails traded, phone calls, and countless chats, we grew closer. She would always be there for me to give advice through various relationships. She picked me up during a moment when my heart was crushed by another.

Hearts are a funny thing. They do not adhere to much logic. Hearts do not care if the physical distance has a number totaling 740 miles. She and I fell in love during the summer before our respective Junior years. We would first meet in a small airport terminal in Morgantown, WV. I had a prom to attend. I found a coffee maker in my hotel room. Until that time, I had always abhorred the idea of drinking coffee, which is kinda crazy considering the gallons that I drink now. Coffee will forever be a reminder of that blissful, "Once Upon a time" encounter of ago.

It was the stuff of storybooks: two people sharing for so long, missing each other, and finally embracing for the first time. Not only was it the furthest away from home I had ever been, but it was also the first time I had ever flown. I would visit her several more times with most of them utilizing the interstate system with a journey of 12 hours. After a breakup and a revitalization of our relationship, I would find myself again in Fairmont, WV to attend her Senior prom as a 21 year old who was not a chaperone. I would watch her give a valedictorian speech at her graduation.

The Summer soon became the Fall and she was attending Ohio University. Our relationship was straining and I knew it. I had plans that I would go to an Ohio school, hopefully OU, to pursue graduate studies. Sure, I did not think much of the schools in Ohio, Ohio as a state, or how I would find a job to support myself in a town of 30,000 with 20,000 being college students, but I wanted to do whatever was possible for the two of us to get together. In retrospect, I think we were too serious. I began to feel the pressure of everything and that created a lot of stress in my school studies. During that Fall semester, I garnered two D's, two F's, and a B. Perhaps it was too late to change anything, but I visited her at school. Unfortunately, things soon deteriorated thereafter between us and we mutually broke up. It has been said that there's no such thing as a mutual breakup. I guess ours was about as close as possible to one. I suppose it was not quite 50/50. I think I had 51. It was just too arduous to maintain a long distance relationship when one knows that four years must pass by before anything can be done about it. I found myself in the foreign waters of being single again, dipping my toe and making a couple ripples.

Time passed as time does. I found an interesting time by myself, a time which would become a catalyst for change in my life. I flirted with the idea that I might miss a few more "guys' night out" with a little poetry writing at a coffee house. I wanted to think. I wanted to expand my thoughts upon the intangibles of life. I was no longer interested in forgetting for a few hours the troubles of the week through the downing of a drink which seemed to reign high during those Saturday nights of my last Fall semester of school. Though I did not recognize it at the time, God was working in my life. Consequently, last August, I found myself being involved with Venture and it spearheaded my efforts in drawing closer to God.

Throughout these time periods, I pursued stable, romantic relations with others, but nothing seemed to materialize. After some introspective journeys deep into my soul, I realized I was looking for the woman who I had left that bleak time of ago, the girl who I had traversed thousands of miles to share a simple smile. In others who I had pursued, I found various attributes that had reminded me of her. Consequently, when the situation between myself and another fell apart, it was not an independent event for me, yet rather I was reminded of the time of yesteryear with Lisa. Heartache would seem to accumulate with each failure.

Recently, I had been finding ideas entering the forefront of my thoughts during the dead hours of the night. I found myself holding an inexplicable desire for Lisa- inexplicable that the contact between she and I was down to sparse emailing, so there was no reason behind this renewed interest. I had not talked to her on the phone in sixteen months in comparison to the typical costly phone bills I used to gladly receive each month. She has been dating a guy for a year who is local, so it was not like I stood a chance in reviving what she and I once held so tightly. Logically, there was not a reason why I had been holding this desire, yet, it continued to vex me.

Last week, I found myself up every night, finding the dawn as the time to find slumber. During many of these moments, I would climb into my truck and cut through the night as I was immersed within my own thoughts. I was searching. I had to find an answer.

After closing the Mug with Carter on Friday night, I decided to not seek sleep, but rather wait for the morning so that I could pursue a time of going to yard sales with my mom and then afterward to help Ted move. Quite weary, I found myself at Ted's at 10AM. Things were not set for moving yet, and it was decided that I would grab a quick nap and then head back over. I never did head back. Five hours later, I was awoken for dinner and as I clumsily ate, my parents began a conversation about my dad assisting me in finding a job, setting up interviews and whatnot. The conversation took a very nasty turn which we were both very apologetic afterward (it was the first time anyone ever told me to go "there" and I think my dad was more shaken up after saying it than I was). I was emotionally drained after the conversation and immediately went up to the Mug that Saturday night. I ordered 4 oz's of Espresso with a caramel flavoring. As I sat and reviewed what had transpired, a thought came up to me in which I had been toying with some time. I had to find an answer.

At 8PM, I was roaring down the interstate. I stopped by my house to pick up a couple extra Ugly Mug shirts. I figured one would do well as a gift. I also picked up my MP3 cd player for the long travel before me. I was embarking on an old, familiar route: a journey of 740 miles.

The ambience of the night would allow me moments to think upon life. After driving through Jackson, Tn, I encountered nearly continuous, heavy fog until I got out of Kentucky into West Virginia. During some of the thicker moments, I could only see roughly ten feet in front of my truck which did raise my awareness considering the perceived danger.

The drive through West Virginia proved to be that of a postcard. Pockets of fog resided upon the sides of the full-foliaged hills along with the valleys below. As I glided upon the curves of the interstate, my mind drifted back to that very same weekend, but 3 years ago, when she and I first saw one another face-to-face.

Twelve hours after my departure from Memphis, I had reached Fairmont at 9 AM local time, Sunday morning. At the time, I thought she would be out of school for a summer break, so I decided that I would ask to go to church with both she and her dad. Considering she had not seen me in over a year and a half, I knew what I was wearing was a little shoddy, so I stopped by the local Wal-Mart and made a full outfit that looked great and I ventured a new experience of changing clothes in a McDonald's bathroom. I gave a call to her house and discovered from her dad that her school terms are not the same as they are most everywhere else and she was still in Ohio. My spirit plummeted.

I found myself weary from driving. For a moment, I considered grabbing a room at one of the hotels that I knew so well. But as I drove through the town, recognizing the buildings and landmarks that were a part of my fondest dreams, they felt dead to me without her. It was an odd feeling. Without her, I knew the buildings were there, but they lacked depth. They felt two-dimensional. I knew what I had to do. I had to go to Ohio.

Initially, I had no way of contacting Lisa of my impending arrival for I did not have her college number and I had no connection to the Net. I woke up Jeremy with a call to his cell and he graciously sent an email to her for me. I drove for a couple hours and found myself in Athens, OH. I was not sure if Jeremy's email had gotten through to her account, so as a precaution, I had my sister send an email stating that I had arrived. The school is integrated with the downtown and I found myself on the main thoroughfare when I received a call from her. It was the first time I heard her voice in ages and it felt good to hear her despite her sarcastic remarks. She told me that she already planned to have lunch with someone and I merrily told her to have lunch and that she and I could get together later and have coffee.

So, I walked around the downtown to kill time. I waited. I ordered a latte with double espresso from a local coffeehouse, but it was like a watered-down latte with no kick. I waited. I took a stroll about the campus. I waited. I went back to the coffeehouse because of its prime location in the "downtown" area for it was the best vantage point of seeing everyone who passed. The town felt like one big high school with the activity I observed. I felt old, especially with the beard I have.

I grew increasingly impatient and frustrated. I decided to hunt down a computer terminal on campus to see if I could pull up her dorm's phone number. The library's systems should really be locked down better. I gave the number a call, but could only get hold of her roommate. I waited.

The day grew later and the streets began to feel quieter from the day's bustle. I had a sickening feeling that she was not going to call me back. I waited.

Six hours had passed from the time of my conversation with her earlier that day. I figured it was time for me to head back if I wasn't going to get a hotel room because I knew I would need roughly 11 hours for the drive back home. I pulled a Christian mix cd from my pocket that I had intended to give to her but it was broken in three pieces. I left a disheartened message on her answering machine and drove a loop around the town just in case I might catch a glimpse of her. If I were to see her face, all those negative emotions would have been washed away that instant.

I had found the answer that I was searching for.

Initially, the drive back was emotionally rough as one can well imagine. I began to forgive her in my heart because I thought that perhaps she had to study for Finals and although the reasoning wasn't particularly good, I could respect it (later I would learn that she was playing catch and dueling with Star Wars light sabers with her boyfriend).

As the Sun waned, Carter gave me a call and invited me to throw a frisbee. The call picked up my spirits up and broke me out of feeling as if I was out in the middle of Nowhere, Ohio. As the day turned into night, my driving endurance began to fade. I did well driving through Cincinnati and Louisville, but beginning in southern Kentucky, the sleep deprivation began to get the best of me and I began to have hallucinations which continued until I got home. Overall, I had hundreds of them, which included a violin flipping a road sign up and down, a lighted Frankenstein head with the cape that whirled around, road signs with words that would flip upside down and change completely, "rendering" of the upcoming horizon from left-to-right, and countless shadow beasts that would jump in front of my truck. At one point, I hallucinated that a man was running next to my rear bumper. Though I knew they didn't exist, my mind would create them with the normal objects in the environment. It grew weirder as the hours passed. Around Jackson, Tn, I struggled with keeping my consciousness. On a couple of occasions, I was awakened by the sound of the grated asphalt on sides that help prevent others from driving off the side of the road. One point, I remember my voice saying "the field goal is up and good" and then INTENTIONALLY driving on the side of the road near some road barrels. At another point, I found myself fish-tailing at 60mph in the grass median of the interstate. I regained consciousness, slowed down, and then merged back onto I-40. Five minutes later I would drive by a set of police cruisers next to a vehicle that wasn't as lucky as myself because the car was planted in a barricade. By the grace of God (a cliché that really should be "mercy" instead), I got home around 3AM Monday morning and my dad was waiting up for me. We were glad to see one another again and apologized for the earlier "sensitivities" between us. I finally found rest.

Overall, it was an emotional draining journey, but if I were faced to do it again, I would. I had to find the answers. Though as devoted as I am and how it is hard for me to let go, such a journey brings closure to the volumes that I had with Lisa. It is truly a new era.

Hang on to your hopes, my friend
That's an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend That you can build them again
Look around, the grass is high
The fields are ripe, it's the springtime of my life

-Simon and Garfunkel