a boy and his glove.

there are very few things in this world that i have a connection to. places, plenty. people, of course. but things, like material things, like cars, phones, mp3 players, computers, clothes none of that really matters. it all comes and goes, it changes, and i move on. there are truly only a few items that would deeply impact me if they were lost.

my glove. my rawlings PM120 righthanded baseball glove is probably number one. my parents bought it for me my sophomore year of high school when i was seriously considering playing baseball for the school. until then i had never really had a glove. well kind of. the one glove we had at the house became mine when my brother got a new one. the glove that i had played with as a kid, left in the sun for months so it got bleached white, and weathered. and i liked that glove. still do. it's one of the few things i will keep for as long as i can, even though i've retired it from use. but the glove that replaced it saw much action in it's first few years. every day at lunch while it was warm for a good two years, that glove came with me to school, with me to lunch and followed me to my classes after lunch. senior year it was with me in november when dan brown left the world. it had been there in august when david fisher was taken. on the field, with the glove on the hand, it was simple. i wrote on it in sharpie, in one of the brown parts "tribou 06" as i often saw players with embroidered gloves that said their names. it came with me freshman year, sophomore year, junior year, and even went with me to florida and back to flagstaff for the first part of senior year. and now it's here with me. 3 weeks from graduation. yesterday, i wrote, directly under the tribou 06, "tribou 10" it'll come back to NM with me, and hopefully be well used there. and hopefully, 4 years from now, i'll have another reason to write my name and the year on it.

"we don't see shadow
cause the shadow's all there is
and we climb
and we climb
but it's just so-- high and i'm so-- tired"
jack's mannequin, bloodshot.

i've been exhausted lately. i've been aggravated, irritated, frustrated, and simply spent. i've taken out my exhaustion and frustration on friends who truly didn't deserve it. it has a lot to do with the fact that in the next few weeks school ends. which means that all the final projects, all the big exams, all the goodbyes will take place.

only these goodbyes will be different. these ones will be like the ones of late december, early january. the goodbyes knowing that they could be for all intents and purposes, the final goodbye. i'll worry about that when it happens. i'm not exactly ready for it.

I think that those lines of bloodshot are just so perfect for me. i've tried so hard to finish strong, to not fade out. but it's hard. it's just so high, and i'm so tired. i'm just burnt out on it all. and as much as part of me wants to finish with pride, the rest of me just doesn't want to care. doesn't want to put in the effort. it'd be easy to just coast through. but it's a climb.

and i'm pretty sure, that much like the people i met in my 7 months in florida, the people i met in 4 years of arizona will be just as hard, if not harder to forget.