“So I was talking to this girl half the night…” Thomas said to me this morning as he was gathering his things.

“Oh yeah?” I replied.

“Yeah…She’s pretty much decided she’s already in love with me.”

This was, without a doubt, one of the most humorous things Thomas has said to me in the past year; though maybe not for the reason you may be thinking. For this to make any real sense, you have to rewind about a year and a half ago, back to Thanksgiving of 2006, around the time Thomas first arrived here in Virginia.

I remembered him talking to another girl at the time, though I can’t really recall her name now, and even though they hadn’t been talking for very long it seemed that she, like many others, had come to that same exact conclusion about him…I still wonder what happens to all these girls that fall in Love with Thomas…we may never know. But that’s exactly what happened, in probably the same exact words…

A year and a half ago.

Yet he’s still the same…Thomas never changes, and no matter how many times he may inform me of another girl who has “fallen in love with him”…

…it will never cease to amaze me.

Today Thomas got on a plane to go back home to Angleton. You see, tomorrow the lease is up on our apartment, the one we got together a year ago, and the reason he moved to Virginia in the first place. Yet through the entire time it took for me to drive him to the airport, check his bags in, and walk him to the gate, really the only thing I could think about was…what’s going to happen now?

Not just about what will happen with him, but also, what will happen to me?
What will happen to us?

I even tried to bring up the question in the car, knowing full well what the answer was going to be coming from him. It only served to remind me further that Thomas is still the same guy, more-or-less, that I have known my entire friendship with him. He’s still my best friend; still a person I can talk to about anything without fear of rejection; and he’s still a person that will never have any answers I am ever looking for…but this time he was right. So there’s no point in asking, no point in trying to explain what it is I’m feeling, because I already know the answer that I’ve heard many times before:

“I dunno.”

I knew it was the truth all along…I just wanted to be sure.
Because even though this modern day Casanova never seems to change who he really is, so much has seemed to change with me in just the past two years, that I’m never going to fully know what’s going to happen next.

This will sound cliché, but as I look back to where I was two years ago, I never would’ve imagined I’d be where I’ve ended up today. I don’t know what I imagined…but surely it wasn’t this…and I can’t help but think about all that’s happened.

The broken relationships.
The many friends I’ve made and lost.
The different churches I tried to be a part of…to no avail.
The roofs that sheltered me.
The shows and musicals I’ve been involved with.
The goals and plans I’ve made.
The various dreams, passions, and visions…

…My relationship with God.

I could go into…
so…
much…
detail…about everything.

and yet I would never come to the conclusion what all it was for.

Life.
That pretty much sums it up right there.

Life has brought me so far, and yet life has dragged me down more than I would have liked. Life has changed me, and my many perspectives on things. Life was a gift of God that I’ve chosen to cherish at times, and also chose to take for granted at times…maybe even doubted the purpose of sometimes …wanting to give it back. But God never takes the gift of life back…never does he say it was a waste for him…never does he give it to someone who can put it to better use.

No, because he loves us, and he gave us this gift for a reason. It’s my choice to use it like I want, or to even throw it away if I wanted to, but no matter how much I insist, he will never look for that gift receipt in order to bring me back to the customer service section at wal-mart. He’s just not that kind’ve guy.

So whenever I ask the question: What’s going to happen now?
I know the answer is going to be the same as it always has been.
I dunno.
Life.
Live.

So that’s what Thomas and I do. He flies off to Texas, moving on with things he left behind, probably never to return. As for me, it’s almost as if I’m picking up where I started, albeit a little more learned than before. Tonight, after I move most of the rest of my stuff into storage, I will probably walk around my empty apartment.

With no computer, no internet, no TV, no X-box…all I will have is myself. For a few hours it will just be me and my thoughts. There will probably be a little bit of nostalgia, a little bit of prayer, and a little bit of perspective. I supposed I planned on writing this after tonight, but in the end everything turns out the same. I won’t come up with any sort of revelation that can only be stumbled upon from such an experience. In fact, I’ll probably end up just getting bored with anticipation of going home to see the literal girl of my dreams, but I still have a month of that anticipation to build and grow.

For now, all I can conclude is that something is indeed coming to a close today. In my journey in life, I am now taking another step into the unknown, and hopefully going in as a better me overall. I am closing one chapter on my life, and here I will begin another. I have learned, and I have grown, and right now all I can do is reflect. Well…really it’s all I want to do. Tomorrow morning I will wake up, and I probably won’t feel any different, but in my experience I’ll know that I have been changed.

If one thing’s for sure, it’s that, just like airports, there will always be four constants in life:
Meetings
Partings
Reunions
and Starbucks: The equivalent of God’s Love.

and I’m quite ok with that.