Tattoos, Ideas, and an Introduction

Every day people ask me why? Why a puzzle piece? Why is it empty? Isn't it done?
It's done. For now.
The puzzle piece connects to a lot of life decisions I've made in the past few months and the thoughts that have gone into them.
At the beginning of this year, I felt broken. I felt myself going to an awfully dark place, a place I'd been before. However this time, I told myself I wasn't going. I wasn't going to let myself become the sad, depressed, mopey fucker that I'd already spent too much of my life being. No, this time, I was fighting back. I was going to solve things for once in my life rather than just leaning on somebody else. This time, it was all about me.
I realized that emotionally I was still the same person I was in high school. At nearly 23, I was not emotionally different that I was at 15, 16, 17. Due to the relationships I'd been in and the company I'd kept, I hadn't had to grow or change. That was why I ended up always back in the same situation.
Late last year, I regained a friendship I'd very sorely missed. It was a friendship I'd regretted letting go of from the very second I'd agreed to say goodbye. Little did I know that this friendship would teach me more about myself than any relationship I'd ever had before. More about love, spirituality, emotions, humanity, pain, perseverance, and survival.
For me, love and spirituality are forever intertwined. I was raised Catholic and for the entirety of my childhood, I never questioned it. There was a big all powerful God, there was a martyr Christ child, twelve apostles, blah blah blah. It was just the way it was. Then around the age of about 11 or twelve, sixth grade age, I began doubting the whole thing. It just didn't make sense anymore. Maybe I lost "faith" or whatever the reason, I just started thinking the whole thing was bullshit. I was afraid to tell anyone because this is just the way things had always been. It would take me many more years to embrace my bullshit. I continued going through the motions of going to church, praying before meals, and everything just to avoid having religious interrogation conversations with my Catholic family.
Then my sister moved out. And eventually she admitted to my parents that she was no longer going to church. And she wasn't having a religious wedding. Suddenly, it felt ok inside myself that I had abandoned the old religion. I spent a brief time searching for a new one, but nothing clicked. I realized that as far as I'm concerned, organized religion is a bunch of empty gestures and words and sing-alongs that most people just did and had no idea why anymore. It all seems to hypocritical. It wasn't for me. And so I began drifting.
I've since termed myself a "spiritual drifter." I believe what I want because it makes sense to me not because anyone else tells me it should make sense. I believe there is a powerful creating something. I call it "god" for lack of a better term. I believe there is more than one "god" even. I believe there are at least four but no more than five. Don't ask me why, these numbers just make sense to me.
I believe in creation and evolution. There had to be something created first for it to evolve later. Straight creationism is a load of bullshit. But creation is also how my spirituality ties into love and romance.
I believe that every person is created complete, but before being placed on this planet, the god(s) take a piece of the individual. Thusly, every person comes into this world incomplete. The piece that has been removed from the individual is placed inside another person, a "soul mate" if you will. Life and love and such are all about these pieces, hopefully finding the person with your missing piece. The one person who makes you truly complete.
However, I also believe the god(s) like to fuck with people and just because someone has your missing piece does not necessitate that you have theirs. It's possible but not guaranteed.
So what does all of this have to do with my tattoo and why even mention my friend? It seems superfluous. Not so fast there kids.
On the very base level, yes I have a puzzle piece tattooed on my wrist and it represents that missing piece. That's the surface level, basic interpretation; it's also true. I wasn't terribly creative with the design.
On a deeper level, I only had the piece outlined because I wanted it to look empty. Because why? Let's say it all together now kids, I haven't gotten my missing piece yet. Hence why it may someday be added to, in the event that the missing piece of my spiritual/cosmic puzzle is completed.
Ready to get wacky now? Awesome, let's go.
I found my piece. I know where my missing piece lies and within whom. That's a pretty big statement; not something that should be thrown around lightly. That friend I mentioned? She has it.
How could that possibly be true? How can I know if someone has this hypothetical spiritual part of me? That's easy; I can feel it. And when I was doing my self discovering and thought and such, I realized just how long I'd felt it. This goes back years. Hold on tight, we're about to get just a little crazier.
I know where my piece goes. I noticed that when I talked to this friend, a small area in my abdomen, right below the left side of my chest, below my heart experienced a sensation that had never happened before or since or when talking to anyone else. I'm still not sure how to describe this sensation, but if glowing was a physical thing that could be felt instead of a visual property, that would probably come close. As best as I can figure out, it's the empty space I was brought into this world with recognizing its companion piece.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this feeling wasn't new. It wasn't something that just manifested when my friend was reintroduced to my life; it has always been there. I've known this friend through two relationships of my own and some very dark periods as well. The first relationship I thought would last forever; first love does that to people. Yet the glowing feeling was not there with the girl I was involved with, only when I talked to my friend. Likewise the dark period aftermath of the end of that relationship; more often than not, that friend was the only one who could bring me out of the darkness. She made me glow.
Then there was a dark period masquerading as a relationship. This is where I lost my friend. And that's when I became aware of my incompleteness. There was no more glowing, only a dull aching. That space was trying to tell me I'd made a mistake. However, I did not yet know how to listen.
Now that friend has all but vanished. We tried romance, and really thought it could work and it did for a while. Then reality struck and that was the end of that. I hurt. I was devastated. I felt myself going into the dark abyss again. The dull ache was now a searing pain that could not be quelled.
This is not a sad story though. That pain is still there but it is that pain that has driven me to seek answers from within myself. I can with full confidence say that I know more about myself right now than at any point previously in my life. I have begun the process of evolving from that high school self, a process that is long overdue. I shudder to think that I may be becoming that ugliest of words, an adult, but perhaps I am.
I've begun to take myself apart, piece by piece. It is no longer good enough for me to tell myself that I believe something; I now demand to know why I believe. This is something I learned to do from my friend. I thank her for that.
This also goes beyond the ideas of love and spirituality described above. I have taken a closer look at silly insignificant things like why do I say I hate Led Zeppelin (I don't. I've rediscovered that I quite like Zeppelin. I just hate "Stairyway to Heaven.") Why have I spent so much time freaking out when friends and companions experiment with drugs, alcohol, etc.? It's really a knee jerk reaction that I developed when I was still "straight edge" but I realized that it didn't make sense even to myself to feel that way. It was a fear of the unknown. So now, I try knowing. I used to not drink alcohol probably because I'd always been told it was bad. Now I enjoy a nice drink, though I continue to drink like a teenage girl because that's just my taste. Ditto smoking cigarettes; I'd always just assumed it was bad for it, and it is. But when one is stressed out, nothing can touch that nicotine fix for a quick calm down. I like the taste of menthols and I hold the smoke in my mouth. I still don't do "drugs" but I wouldn't rule out my ever trying them. However, it is something I hold in a different regard and would really only like to try under certain circumstances with certain persons and I'll know when the time is right.
My relationships are also different now. Romantically, I'd grown accustomed to high school relationships, which at their core are petty and childish crushes. I have no desire for such romance anymore. For the first time in my life, I feel alright not being in a relationship, for a few reasons. One, I feel like I know where I'm supposed to be (read pieces) and that's just not a reality right now. I feel like any other relationship would be settling for less and few things bother me as much as settling. It just cheapens and mocks the idea of romance. Secondly, I'm likely graduating college in a few short months which suggests that my life will most likely change quite a bit in the near future. I think it would be unfair to drag someone along through that, especially someone in a relatively new relationship. Thirdly, I've spent too long running from one relationship to another just out of fear of being alone. This has lead to poor decision making, and broken relationships that were doomed from the start. I'd like to actually fix myself for once without having to try to fix a "me" and and "us" at the same time and getting nowhere. I owe it to myself and to anyone I'd be in a relationship with. Nobody wants to clean up a mess somebody else made.
The fear of being alone is largely gone. Am I still lonely? Of course. Incredibly lonely. Do I miss doing all those wonderful little things that couples get to do? I most certainly do. I'm learning to accept that these things, while wonderful, are only going to be truly wonderful when they're with the right someone. I write a lot, I spend a lot of time talking with friends, I play guitar more than I have in years, and I watch a lot of DVDs. Loneliness is awful but I'm learning to cope.
In order to signal this change within myself to the outside world, I've started using a pen name of sorts, Steve Danger Apfel. Yes, I'm aware of how silly it sounds. It is intentionally so. I've been told for as long as I can remember that I'm a really great guy but I never believed it. I never felt like it. I felt like if people really knew me, they'd never say that. Now I see that it has been the people who really knew me that have been saying it all along. I'm starting to let go of my lifelong self resentment, though self deprication will never leave. If one can't be the butt of one's own jokes, they have no right to tell jokes at all.
So, it is my pleasure to introduce to you, Steve Danger Apfel. He's a little bit wiser, a little bit more thought out, a little bit more together than he used to be. He has a tattoo, he has some ideas, and I hope you'll learn to love him.