— Up to this very day I write this letter, I still don’t know what to say to you exactly. This letter would never be sufficient no matter what angle I look into. I’m so used to horsing around with you that the mere hint of seriousness has me concocting craziness at the tip of my tongue. I’ll keep it concise here so bear with me.
Love is hard. Love is scary. But most of all, love is painful. (Trust me, I know this too.) Because whether you experience a relationship that ends up shattering your heart to a million pieces, or if you’re lucky enough to find someone with whom your love lasts a lifetime, there will always be hurt occurring in some way. It's not love if it doesn't hurt, right? It's not love if you purposely hurt the person like a reckless bastard, selfishly wrecking everything in its path for your own heart's consumption of happiness in this lifetime. Your heart will always be at risk, and the only way to protect it is to block yourself off from love all together—which is, ultimately, the biggest loss you could ever cause yourself.
So don't block everyone. Don't hinder yourself from having another shot at the happiness you deserve. Like in basketball, you'll miss 100% of the shots you don't take. You have a choice. We all do. Either you allow yourself to become a prisoner of love, to make your decisions based around what option is the least likely to cause you any harm or pain and to view love as a danger rather than a gift. Or you accept it for everything that it is—in its entirety as a painful and comforting package that it is—which means looking the pain (or the risk of pain) in the face and being willing to experience it in some form—if you think there’s a chance that you’ll also experience happiness in a way that you never have before. You’re tougher than you ought to be.
There’s no win-win here. There never is. Either your heart is safe but completely deprived of experiencing great love, or your heart is in more danger than it’s ever been while simultaneously experiencing a feeling so special that it’s practically impossible to put into words. It’s up to you. Just remember that safety is not the same thing as happiness.
Emoboy Do Kyungsoo here, giving you a 21 gun salute and a full-on admission that I love you. That I couldn't have survived all those dark days without you. And that I'll be walking on my own for this journey, but if you ever need me, I'd try to go out of my way and retrace my steps to get back to you, to hold your hand and basketballs so we could take a less rocky path together in the days to come. Even when I go hermit in a different cave, one farther than the others, we will always be under the same sky. I will never be too far away from you because I know we're close in terms of our hearts.
This tea-drinking, risk-taking, laughter-loving crazy 93numbboi™ Keppy will always be ready to talk you down and will be three steps ahead of you, three steps behind you, Betsy. Forever and always aiming to secure your safety, your health, and most especially, your happiness. Six degrees of separation won’t be a hindrance to this man on a wire, the very same man who has a rusty halo and who can’t be moved. I’ll walk away with a smile, because I know that you’ll take these words to heart. In time, all that pain on your hands. It will be long gone and moved on and we’ll be back to our good ol’ days.
You’re not JUST Mark.
You’re THE Mark.
A powerful article giving context to his depth as a person one word at a time.
Take that rage, put it on a page.
Take the page to the stage.
Blow the roof off the place.
