understanding through gray matter

a week at this time i was almost twelve hours in to a 24 hour marathon, for the second time in my life, for the second year in a row i embarked on a marathon of time to. try to raise money and awareness for veteran suicide prevention and awareness.. this year, i found myself willing to talk more openly about my experience that lead me to this moment. i was able and more willing to talk about that night in virginia in 2006 when we found my friend joe in his dorm after it was too late.. this year i was able to talk to more openly about how i felt responsible due to hesitating to get in to his room. this year i was able to be more open about how while i don’t think i’ll ever forgive myself, i know that the more i talk about it, the more i talk about the impact that night had on me, the more i’ll be able to move forward in my life with less regret. but please understand, not for point or in any form of keeping score, i will never be free of regret but its the hope that maybe less regret, less pain, less anger will help me be a better me.

it was just before 7am, roughly 23.5 hours in to the 24 hour marathon when i, along with the group who had showed up to see me make it to 7am stopped.. i wanted to take a moment to explain why we were there. i wanted to take the chance to thank each person. i wanted them to know this had nothing to do with running. this was not about a pr. this wasn’t for likes on the internet (we’ll get to that later) - i wanted each person there to know who exactly who they were showing up for. flaws and all.

tears in my eyes, i proceeded to tell them about that night of hesitation and how it’s haunted me. the loss i experienced that night was a first for me. not just in losing a friend but loss in general. as a kind my grandparents had passed before i was born. i had never experience loss. i used to consider myself lucky back then.. in the blink of an eye i had no idea that night would turn me in to someone who fears loss more than anything while at the same is someone who is terrified of letting anyone in. the moment anyone gives me a moment of their time, i fear taking too much of it. the moment someone romantically enters my life, i fear them changing their mind. but i know deep down, i am someone who is going to always check in with their friends. i am the friend who as soon as i see you, im gonna give you a hug. as time has gone on, as society has grown, this way of being, hasn’t always been appreciated. i’m not here to fight that or push back. its something i’ve had to come to terms with. its something i know is not up to me but at more core, its rooted in something deeper. i never got a last hug from joe before he left us. and i never want to have that again. i see each interaction as valuable and i see each one as potentially the last one.

the reverse of this however is a deep fear of loss or being left. i was 5 years old when my birth mother left my father and sisters and i for someone else. she had a whole family and yet found value elsewhere, so much so she left… i was too young to understand it then but as ive gotten older, its certainly surfaced to be a huge part of me. for basically my entire adult life, when it comes to romantic relationships i know now i have a very real “leave them before they leave you” mentallity. i hate it. im aware of it. i try to not be that way. i talked once about starting therapy as a result of wanting to understand love more. at that time, it was urged on by trying to write “better” or i supposed be a better writer at the time and i thought if i understand love, i could write about love with a more refined understanding. in the end, i ended up learning more about myself..

and one of those things i learned was the value i place on relationships in my life. from my point of view, i have an almost at times, detrimental desire for loyalty to others. you’re my friend but you don’t like someone else? guess what, i don’t like them now either. you don’t want me to associate with someone who burned you? deal. you own a brand and want to give me free items? great thanks, but i’m also gonna buy the things you don’t give me. sometimes, i don’t even need them. but i’m gonna buy them. i don’t want a discount. the price is the price. you’re a chef and you’re hosting a new menu? great, i’m there. at my core, i see no value in taking anything with me. not money, not items, no single material thing will go with me, so i’m going to enjoy it while i can. early in my photography career and to be honest, even on occassion still, i found it hard to charge friends for photography. i think i’ve always seen it as a purpose within me to provide that service and seeing as how it started when i was a kid with my best friends and documenting them landing a kickflip from time to time, i think i just carried that supportive bone with me rather than an adopting the make money one.

i love every opportunity that has come to me as a photographer, please don’t get me wrong but its that night in november that makes me feel like with each moment, there’s a chance to hold on to a memory. a sort of “once was” in digital form. when we celebrated joe’s life, his squadron asked me to put together a slide show and a song.. we chose “winter’ by bayside. a song they as a band had written about the loss of a friend of theirs. to this day friends and fellow creatives will say to me.. “you always pick the write music with your work” - that.. comes from understanding the importance that moment played in joe’s celebration of life. his family told us how much they enjoyed seeing the photos with that song. it all goes back to that moment. yes sometimes now its drake with a silly fit check but.. its connected. it all goes back to that night in virginia.

in the song they sing “these nights in bars, don’t mean a thing with empty hearts.” and to this day, not a single moment goes by where i don’t walk in to a bar, anywhere around the world without thinking of joe. he took me to my first bar for my first legal drink at the age of 21. we spent the night at keagans in newport news drinking goldschläger and irish car bombs.. two weeks later we lost joe. i never went back to keagans after that. i hold on to a lot of this. i hold on to every memory. i care deeply about every single interaction. i think i care so much about photography beyond a means of providing for myself to this idea of making sure a moment isn’t missed. i have this regret from that time in my life of not having any physical photos of joe and i. they all got lost when we lost myspace. i think about that now when i’m out with friends. i think about someone losing a friend and wanting to hold on to them with a photo and the idea they don’t have one.. i want that to never happen. to never be the case.

during the 24 hour marathon, i was having a conversation with someone about that night in virginia and its impact.. it took me years, damn near almost two decades to recognize some of the deeper things but we talked about some of the immediate things. for example, things like never going back to keagans.. and how i can never watch the opening scene in “v for vendetta” because the very first line is “remember, remember the 5th of november.” - my intention in sharing this was my hope of passing on a feeling of how important their company was for me. the fact that we would have this memory to share. this night, these hours of walking around the national mall together for a larger purpose. i would appreciate and value every single of my time spent with these friends and even strangers who showed up to show support. from the girlfriends of my boys who showed up to lucca who helped me make videos not only this year but last year as well to help share this was happening, to the people who made the trip to dc from elsewhere just to be there for us. friends like alex who made a weekend out of it with his wife to support me. to mal who took a train down to run with me for barely two hours only to get back on the train back to nyc right after. the same thing marcus and shawn did last year. andy who flew in from kentcuky last year before we had even meet irl.. to again showing up this year.. every single person, mattered. in so many ways, those moments mattered so much more to me than any digital one.. moments that made space for us as a group to have a conversation about a dark time in our life and the people who helped us along the way.. we had a real dialouge, in person.. and a majority if not all of it won’t ever see the light of day on the internet.. which brings me to my last thing…

earlier in this piece, i talked about the idea of “likes on the internet” and it mentioned so because on more than one occassion during the night, people asked me some form of the same question, “why didn’t you talk much about this years marathon like you did last year?” and the answer is really quite simple.. as life has gone on around me, one thing has become incredibly clear.. and that’s so much of the world of running “content” if you will feels so heavily “for the bit” its as if we went from using the ability to story tell in running for this beautiful means of bringing the sport to more people to now in this space of everything needs to be a series. a “xyz” part series about an injury recovery journey. i found myself feeling like there was this jadedness in me where if someone in the content space of running got injured, they were almost excited for it. like they had this moment of “well, now i have more content” and look, i know thats not always the case.. the cases and maybe even the scenarios im thinking about are unique to my world but it is a world thats left me dissapointed.. and thinking about that drove me to the idea of just not talking about it all.

i had this thought of “what if i just did the hardest thing i can do physically with no mention of until a few days before?” “what if i even with a lack of training, i just sent it?” “what if i didn’t think? what if i just did?” no hesitation.. no more second thinking… no scheming.. just doing. what if i let that night in virginia be a night that lead to less thinking more doing. taking that night, one of the worst nights in my life and turned in to a day of celebration, forgiveness for myself.. a space and a moment that was less about “content” - and look, i understand the irony of saying that while.. lolo, producing a now belated piece of content about it.. but i think if you’re here, you understand the difference.. or at least i hope. and even then, i think i’ll always find a way to keep the “content” in some form visible but not in your face about it.. hense proably why i tend to post these things in the evening for the night owls.. i wanna know that i held myself to the purpose of starting this blog but in the same way.. make sure i’m not doing it for the most views and likes.. you understand now?

as i sit here today, a couple weeks removed from my second go at a 24 hour marathon for joe and other vets in hope of raising money for heart & armor - i find myself thinking about the next few years of my life, my career.. specifically, the mistakes i’ve made, the people i’ve hurt.. wronged or even hell, left with a bad impression without intention or desire. those things will probably always keep me up at night but all i can do now is to try and live the life i think joe would be proud of me for living. i’m not much a man for prayer these days but i do believe there’s a reason we feel the way we do in our hearts about things and i do believe there’s something larger at work for all of us and deep down i believe i’ll see joe again.. and when that moment comes, i wanna make sure i have a life worth sharing. i wanna make sure i choose to live a life worth of a thumbs up from joe. but in order to do so, i have to live a life i’m proud of first.

thanks for reading. x.

carl.