The big question

At this point I assume that most people reading this know me personally, but for those who just stumbled onto me I owe you an explanation as to why I, A native Yank, am going to Ireland in this, my 24th year of life.  I guess there could be a fair few reason as to why I'm sitting in an airport terminal right now.  Many of them are personal, many are dissatisfactions with life, both mine and the general condition of it on earth.  But I'd prefer not to dwell on negatives at this point, as there is enough unhappiness and malaise in the world as it is, rather, there is one bright and shining reason I'm leaving my homeland today. 

In the June of 2008 I was on a bus bound for Shannon Airport, I'd been staying in Galway for six months at that point studying in my final semester of college.  On that bus withe me were Three people, my brother, who had come to see me and tour Europe in a whirlwind manner.  Christy, my best friend who had chosen to come to Ireland with me over a similar school-sponsored venture in Rome which had been in the works since freshman year.  And Regina, the Irish girl I'd unexpectedly fallen in love with.  Reg and I sat hand in hand sharing a set of earphones and wishing we were anywhere but on a bus that would take me back to America.  Our love was not easy to come by and not easy to live with, a complicated situation as I'm sure you can imagine.  Just the night before, or perhaps it was in the morning, she had said to me, in Gaelic, that she thought she was falling in love with me.  I don't speak Irish but I understood nonetheless.

On that bus it was difficult to say much of anything, with the future so uncertain, with our very existence seemingly coming to a close, what can you say that doesn't seem like empty small talk?  What can you do besides hold on to each other and try to block out the rest of the world?  "You know I love you, right?"  I said, for the first time openly saying it, making what could have easily been a once in a lifetime tryst into something substantial.  Reg looked up at me with her beautiful blue eyes and shot me coldly, "Al, don't just say that because you'll never have to back it up."  Hurt as I was I rebounded.  "I said it because I thought I'd proved it already."

Thus, I've come back to Ireland to keep a promise, one that I've kept up for three years on now, the promise that love is real, it is powerful, and it is not something that should be allowed to wither and disappear from this world.  Whatever happens in my life I'd like to go knowing that I never gave up on love, never ignored it, and never treated it as merely a word and a cliche'.  I'm going to Ireland to love wholly and without hesitation, whatever else follows I know it will be pure because it was done in, and for Love.