Little Lion @jamesvanliew - Tumblr Blog

“Do you know who I am?”

- “James”

“And who am I to you?”

- “everything”

“I’m not putting a positive end to this random entry. Death is not positive. There is no light at the end of the tunnel for those who are grieving. The only thing at the end of this painful tunnel is the ability to endure it.”

Processing

I am writing this out because I know not many people will see it, but it still feels like I’m venting, and that’s enough for me.

I’m going to take the time to process something I should’ve dealt with two days ago but didn’t. Pain comes in waves and it demands to be felt, so I’m going let it have its way so I can move on from it and return to my positive self.

It was my brother Jeremy’s birthday two days ago. This is always hard day for me and my family because he died in 2012. Usually, I give myself to time to process it (and by “process” I mean go on a long drive, listen to Bon Iver, cry my damn eyes out, clench my jaw and grind my teeth until they hurt) but this year I didn’t. This year, I decided to focus on other things and tried to take comfort in avoiding it. I tried to escape pain. It’s like I broke my arm and then tried to tell myself that if I don’t look, it won’t hurt.

People just don’t how bad that kind of pain hurts. It’s my damn brother. He’s supposed to be here with us to celebrate his damn birthday. It’s not fair.

The pain has been latent in the back of my head -- weighing everything down and causing me to not think straight. Today was especially difficult and I decided to finally process it. Kobe Bryant died today, which would seem unrelated, but for some reason my brain connected that with the death of my brother. Maybe because Jer and I used to spend a lot of time watching him play when I was growing up, or maybe it’s just because they're both dead, and I’m all too familiar with death. When I heard the news, it became harder for me to get my work done, I couldn’t understand why -- until I finally realized that it wasn’t just Kobe’s death I was mourning, it was also Jer’s.

I still can’t believe my big brother isn’t here. It’s been 7 and a half years and I still want to see him just as badly. But, he cold hard truth is that I can’t. He is gone. He is dead. He’s been dead for 7 and a half years. This is a painful truth that we will all have to face if we love anyone. “Every human relationship ends in pain.” - (I don’t remember who said that, but it’s the damn truth).

Although that is true, and it is painful, I take my comfort and my joy knowing that my brother is celebrating his birthday in the best place he possibly could. He is having the best time in the presence of God, and I would never take that a way from him.

These leaves two lessons:

1. deal with things as they come no matter how big or how small. You cannot go around it, you have to go through it.

2.Cherish every moment you have with those you love and end any conflicts you have with them. They are not going to be here with you forever, one day they will be gone, and they will be gone longer than they were ever here. That is a fact.

11 pm

Current thoughts - 1:56 AM

Where the hell is my balsamic vinegar? Would it be weird to make pancakes right now? Should I wake up my parents to see where the balsamic vinegar is? Is semi perpetual motion possible? Can it be achieved through magnets? I wish Mickie Dees was good for you. I wonder if I should get checked for ADD. how much longer til my pot pie is done heating up? What other designs should I do for the new project? Red wine vinegar is pretty good. If friction in the Air is what stops perpetual motion, then what about perpetual motion in space? I want everyone I know to have an AN decal. I can’t wait to go to India next year. I should google what language they speak. I’m so thankful for this cheese. I want to put up a big ass poster. I’m curious about how curious people from Temecula are. Walnuts are dank. My pot pie is done.

Thank You.

This is one of the most successful months we’ve had and I constantly tell people “It means the world to us,” whenever they show some sort of support for The Aslan Network, but I never really talk about why. I mean, some of the reasons are obvious, but I want to talk about some of the stuff we don’t really talk about. For one, it personally hurts a hell of a lot to work on this thing that my brother started and not have him here to see it. It’s growing to the point that Erick has random people come up to him and ask him about it. You don’t how bad I want to text Jer and tell him about stuff like that. Although it hurts, I can’t help but be amazed by the fact that this dude is still impacting people and he’s not even physically here. Also, we talk so much about progression that sometimes we understate the fact that we’re actually changing the outcomes of people’s lives on a different continent. I want you to understand that these kids might not even know how to read if it wasn’t for sponsorship like ours. But, that’s just the start. With every purchase, you’re enabling us to move forward onto even bigger ideas. It’s insane to see a small circle of people affect a way bigger circle of people, and then having those two circles merge. And this is just the start; this isn’t even the beginning of the things we plan to do. So I think I speak for all of us when I say that it truly does mean a hell of a lot. Thank you.

Love

It’s so easy to love the people that love you. It’s so easy to talk highly about people that talk highly about you.

It’s so easy to hate the people that hate you. It’s so easy to talk badly about people that talk badly of you.

The people that are really going to make a substantial difference in the world are the ones who are strong enough to love those that hate them.

Dream

Last night I had the craziest dream.

First of all, it took place in some sort of dystopian future, and the world was facing some crazy plague that was a global epidemic, and people weren’t supposed to go outside for long amounts of time because of the air quality.

Somehow, because of this plague, I found out that my brother Jeremy (who was supposed to have died in 2012) was working for an organization in Africa that was doing incredible work. For some reason joining this organization required for him to fake his death. So this obviously blew my unconscious mind.

So many different emotions came into play. First, I was so infuriated that he would put my family and I through that, but on the other hand I was so happy that my brother could possibly be back. Second, I was in such disbelief because I was the one that gave him CPR. I was the one who the paramedics gave the awful news to. How could my brother be alive?

Obviously, I decided to contact him and ask if I could see him. He said yes. So, I travelled to Africa to see him, and after a really hard time of trying to find him, I finally did. We saw each other, and we both immediately started crying (me more than him). We started talking about everything. Part of the conversation was exactly like how we used to talk—me being the super annoying little bother asking a ton of questions and talking super fast. The other part of the conversation was very different—like two people who were getting to know each other with a more serious tone.

He told me about how he was talking to this girl named Alexis, and that they really liked each other. I thought that was rad. That made me so happy. We continued talking, and then I got really excited because I remembered everything about The Aslan Network. I was overwhelmed with excitement as I was about to show him the Instagram post of us being incorporated and all the comments of support. Showing him that post became everything to me at that moment.

I think I got so excited that I woke myself up. I never got to tell him. That’s when things got really hard. I went from trying to accept the reality that he was actually alive, to now trying to accept the old reality that he wasn’t. That wasn’t cool at all.

This is one of the craziest, most vivid dreams I’ve ever had. It didn’t feel like a dream. What made me have this?

#gif

There's so many things you would do for the ones you love, so it's a special type of pain when you can't do anything for them.

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