Words by Warren

A year and a half ago, I was a super emo kid.

Part of my dramatic misadventure through heartbreak included visiting perusing the relationships aisle at barnes and noble, forced encounters with strangers on the street, and even getting drunk at home off my brother’s trifecta of shots  (one of which was a very nasty-tasting ginseng liquor).

One event still sticks out in my mind. It came up in a conversation with an old friend yesterday about things we try to do to move on. You know, sometimes you do out-of-the-ordinary things, in an attempt to symbolize or mark a transitional point in your life. For me, one of these silly markers was the time my brother and I wrote messages in a bottle and through it out to sea, off the rocks at Fort Totten.

We used an old bottle of rum that my brother had downed years ago, saving only one shot. In his drunk and pained eloquence, he had said, “I won’t finish it off the way she finished me off.” So I did it.

In the bottle, we wrote little notes.

His was something like:

After a quarter century of living, I have come to one truth.
That is love.
Always love,
like you’ve never loved before.

Mine was something like:

There are some people you have to know, but don’t want to.
And there are some people you want to know, but don’t have to.
Then there are those select few that you want and have to know
even if they hurt  you and are bad for you.
These are the people who change your life.

And we chucked that bitch out.