Ok, this post was inspired by a lack of sleep and an infinite desire for greatness.

To often people forget their dreams or brush them off as a childhood fantasy, an unrealistic expectation. To me, living a 9-5 for the next 40 years then retiring only to be sent to a retirement home where the local pizza courier visits frequently is unrealistic. I dont see myself being able to endure this, no matter what the circumstance.
Keep your goals, hold on to your ambitions no matter how crazy they may seem. For me, I have a very specific list of goals. Starting with,
A. write a novel.
-I have been working on one for the last 8-9 months and I have made great progress. And to be honest I have no idea if its any good, but thats besides the point. I am writing it because I want to write it, because writing it makes me happy, the end result is irrelevant.
B. Find Atlantis.
-Thats right, Homers mythological civilization. Totally my life goal to find that place, and I think I might have a hunch as to where that might be, but I’m not telling. Not at least until I have a few million dollars to invest in research equipment.
C. Devise a theory that explains the phenomenon of UFO’s using Einsteins theory of relativity.
-Ya, may sound a bit crazy, but I have spent at least 15 hours dedicated to this. WORM HOLES, WORM HOLES, WORM HOLES!!!
Now, these are just a few of my life goals and ambitions, their are plenty more. Maybe i’ll post them another time.
Lesson: Write down your goals, review them, take them seriously, even if they are as obscure as making a million dollars. BEGIN THE JOURNEY, start taking steps in the right direction, no one can do this for you. Stop making excuses, everyone has burdens, everyone has responsibilities, time to look beyond that scope and just DO SOMETHING.
I once heard that it doesn’t really matter what you do, as long as that is really what you want to be doing. So if you really, really want to be a garbage man, go out and be a garbage man, if you really want to be a bio-chemist, go to school, BE A BIO-CHEMIST. Stop saying you dont have the time, cause if you think about it, that is really the only thing you do have.
Life has many obstacles, what are you going to do about it?

Christmas is upon us ladies and gentleman, only about a month to go. Now more than ever it is important that we learn to stand our own ground, walk our own path, enjoy our time alone, well, if we are single at least. Those of you who have a spouse to share in this wonderfully depressing holiday season, GET OFF OUR WEBSITE! Haha… half kidding.
Anyways, while youtubing I stumbled across this vid, and boy oh boy, this is quite possibly one of the most depressing things I have seen, and lets just be honest, depressing things for some reason are just better than everything else when we’re a little blue.
So for the holiday’s my friends, I would suggest renting love actually, cozying on up with some close friends and cocoa and indulge in your bitterness. I know thats what i’ll be doing.
P.S. the part about the bird; BRUTAL!

**please read part 1 and 2 first.

The aftermath

Immediately following the relationship, I got a first hand look at what depression feels like. Luckily this only lasted about 2 weeks, not because I got better but because I endured the best relationship therapy possible, YMCA camp. Haha. I was invited by a friend to be a camp counselor due to their lack of male volunteers, me being in the emotional shape I was in, volunteered immediately. Honestly, I didn’t even know what that camp was, I just jumped at the opportunity to get out of the house for a week. Upon arrival, I was immediately bombarded by 10 extremely personable 11-13 year old boys who expected me to be their best friend. This caused me to lose track of my own personal issues and just focus on the kids, the camp, and nature. I had the time of my life, didn’t have one free moment to think about Megan and the intensely emotional pain I was in. The week went by and unfortunately I had to face reality, once again.
I came home only to be burdened by the same emotional obligations I had before I left; but this time things were different. I met a new set of friends, who liked and respected me, I had a new amount of confidence previously unseen in the Andrew world, and above all I was learning to be content with what had happened.

Although, I had started this journey of self realization, I still did not posses the knowledge to be happy on my own. I found it rather difficult to fill in the enormous amount of free time that I now had; I tried everything from learning the guitar, to writing a novel (which I am still not finished with, give me a break its only been a year). I took long drives out to the beach, and other various places, I even got lost on purpose sometimes just to kill time. All of these acts might seem extremely depressing but they taught me something. I needed to learn to be happy by myself, I needed to create my own level of excitement just for being alive, I needed to become a complete person by myself (no more of that, “shes my other half crap” which I personally despise. The truth is, you have to be a full person, before you can find a compatible mate).

At first I dated around a lot, but it always turned out the same way, me finding little things that absolutely annoyed the hell out of me about whoever I was with (excessively small face, weird laugh, small hands, large hands, super skinny fingers, large feet, weird nose, peach fuzz, odd hairline, large pores, boney knee’s, bad clothes and so on). This went on for a few months, I then started reading numerous texts on the subject of self realization, and that got me thinking that maybe dating was the worst thing I could do. So I stopped dating, I spent the next 8 months or so single as a nun, this time in my life was at times difficult, but in the long wrong extremely necessary. I didn’t date one person; in fact, I tried not to form any interest in anybody, not even friends. I wanted to completely rely on myself, and that is what I did. I went out to movies, by myself, dinner, by myself, shopping, BY MYSELF, you get the point.

All this time, I was still not fully content with the break up. In fact when people asked why we parted ways, I would say something along the lines of, “I just felt like we reached a halt in our relationship, you know like we learned all we could from each other.” This was just my excuse, I was saying this to try and cover up the truth, my heart was broken.

Which brings me to my next point, was it a bad thing that my heart was broken? Absolutely not, if I were to say it was a bad thing, that would be like saying I am not happy with myself now. You see these life experiences create who we are. I wouldn’t be the same person if I didn’t go through what I did. I wouldn’t be as confident, I wouldn’t be so awesome, and I wouldn’t be writing this blog. So overall, it was an extremely fantastic thing to happen to me; and I am more than thankful that Megan did that to me. I am however worried about her current well being, I don’t think I mentioned this in the story but she ended up starting a new relationship with some guy she met about a month after me and her broke up. That ended rather quickly due to his online poker addiction, and then she waited about another month and started dating Trace. Lol. Or the sequel as I choose to refer to him. She never took the time to let the break up/relationship really sink in, never took the time to learn from everything that happened. Or maybe she did, who knows, she might be an extremely fast learner; but I doubt it. Anyways I hope the best for her, I mean I did dedicate 3 years of my life to her.

Ok so this concludes the Andrew Fahmy relationship/break up story, I can not reiterate the fact that I have never told this story to anyone enough, seriously. I have found it very therapeutic to write all of this out too, it’s like I finally let it out of my gut. Also, I feel like its necessary to restablish the fact that I was extremely and disgustingly niave at the time of the relationship, I have learned a great deal from it, and that’s another reason why I am glad it happened.

Okay last little point, the story is written to emphasize the bad things that happened throughout 3 years of dating. Me and Megan had a tremendous amount of fun, and some of my most cherished memories I share with her. I learned a great deal about myself through that relationship, and I grew tremendously. Sometimes through the story I know it seems like she is awful, but I simply did not have enough room to write about all the good times. So just use your imagination, we had some of the most romantic adventures together, I even learned of my tremendous cooking ability through that relationship. So in the end, like I said earlier, I think that it was an extremely beneficial experience for me to have at such a young age, and I credit my well being entirely to that portion of my life (I know that’s a bit hard to understand, but who knows maybe some of you will go through the same thing someday, or already have for that matter). You can comment about this blog posting in our forum, feel free to, I don’t care what kind of comment it is, even if its criticism (http://www.ideabombs.com/index.php?action=forum =comment here) Haha. Unless its from Megan herself, then I would probably delete it. (Hahaha, so maybe I am still a little bitter, haha). Alright thanks for reading, my next blog will probably be, the how I met Brian story . so check back soon.

READ PART 1 FIRST!!!

The calm before the storm:
Upon arriving back home I quickly began to notice many signs, although I was still to young and dumb to understand their significance. Megan was beginning to become reserved, she wouldn’t talk to me as much, and when she would it would be a different kind of speech, most closely resembling a child trying to explain to his parents where he had been all night. She was always shaky, her appetite was completely diminished, and she was losing weight rapidly. At one point she was down to 98 pounds, that’s when her mother began to become concerned, and bought her some weight gainer shakes. I definitely knew that something was going on, I just had no idea what to expect. I remember one instance in particular when we were just returning from dinner with her parents, and as we were walking into the house I stopped her.

“Look Megan, I know something’s up, I don’t know what it is, but I would really like you to tell me. You haven’t been the same since the wedding. I’d really like to talk about this and just move on. We cant get past this if you keep it bottled up inside.” I say in a tone of acceptance and understanding.
“Andrew, there’s nothing.” She brushes me off. I remember this particular instance because there was one thing that really stood out to me during this conversation. She would not look into my eyes. She basically just stared at the ground the entire time, I didn’t understand it at the time, but it makes a lot of sense to me now.
This period of time before I found out everything that was going on and after the wedding, is to me best described as the calm before the storm. It took about 1 month before I was able to accept that Megan had possibly done the worst thing yet, and was still not able to tell me about it. So one weekend when she decided to come home, I sat her down in her room and told her that I knew that she had done something; her immediate reaction was, “how?”

Someone was being naughty:
I almost laughed at how bad of a liar she was, I then proceeded to interrogate her for at least 2 hours until finally her story was so far fetched from the truth, she had to admit it. She at first told me she only kissed the guy on the overnight rafting trip; that was enough to crush my fragile little heart. For the next 2 days she managed to disclose the entire story in small parts every few hours (I think she did this because she knew that if she had just come out with the entire thing from the beginning I probably would have just exploded). Before long her story had evolved from a small kiss at the camping trip, to she has been seeing him a few times a week since they got back and she had slept with him on numerous occasions. Oh and not to mention, she had been doing drugs all summer, and her sudden weight loss was due to her cocaine usage. The drug she had been abusing throughout the summer was a type of cough medicine known as coricidin, which contains the active ingredient Dextromethorphan, which creates some sort of hallucinogenic effect when taken in excess. It also has dyer consequences on the brain, much more harmful then pot or booze.
I was crushed, I did not even know what to do. Megan had been my prime source of emotional support, I needed her now more than ever. I tried to be strong, I really did, I went home; but my inner being was crushed, I felt like I had just been hit by a car. I sat in my room and couldn’t do anything but wait for her to call. I hated her and needed her at the same time.
I ended up telling her that she meant the world to me and I would rather stay at her side, maybe not as a couple, but stay to help her through school (which she was practically failing out of) and help her toss this drug problem of hers. It had finally gone too far, I said, and if I left now it would discredit our relationship thus far. The first few weeks of this were devastatingly difficult, I would see her, suspect something and learn of its truth, or I would remember a certain detail of a time I suspected something in the past, ask her about it and find out I was right. It just really hurt to know my wildest fears were completely accurate. I have referenced this point in my life to certain people before and said it was the worst period of my life. I have only told about 1-2 people a summarized version of this story, but every once in a while I’ll say something like ‘ya the worst time in my life was definitely sept-dec 2007,’ its usually in a joking manner and I never explain it.
For those few months, I managed to destroy my sleeping schedule, completely shatter my eating habits and worst of all lose the shred of self esteem I had left. I would lay in bed until 5 am sleepless and exhausted, I would watch the same music videos that shattered my heart many times prior and just say to myself, “wow I know how that guy felt when he wrote that.” There are still songs today that I try not to listen because they remind me to much of that period. It’s not even the song that bothers me, it’s the feeling I get. I almost relive the stress every time I hear certain songs.

The reCONciliation:
In the time we spent together following the disclosure, she admitted to me that she felt extremely bad about the events that had taken place, and is grateful that I do not hate her. She also told me, that she had come up with the conclusion that she loved me but was not in love with me. I told her that was fine, that was not my problem at the moment. I was only concerned with helping her through her current state. I spent most days with her, and at the time she lived in LA and I lived in orange county. I hated to go there, It just always seemed to be dark and gloomy there. I tried to spend as much time as possible with her, because honestly I felt that if I wasn’t with her she would be out doing drugs or doing guys for that matter (sadly enough, I was totally right).
About a month into the break we had initiated, a lot had happened. She stopped doing all of the drugs, her friends decided she was out of control and would no longer speak with her. She had told Josh (who lived in his brothers house, and used a walk in closet as a room>wasn’t sure if I added that in, if so I just want to reiterate that point) she would no longer see him, but also managed to start dating some guy from her school. Up until that point I still felt we were together, just on a break. When I found out she was dating some guy, I didn’t even know what to do, I was so pissed but confused at the same time. She only dated him for about a week, when she started to fall for yours truly again; And me being the fool I was gladly took her back with great promises of puppy dogs and train sets (which turned out to be more like pit bulls and oil rigs).
One night stands out in my memory, the night that we got back together officially. We were sitting in her apt. living room, when she had a sudden epiphany, a realization of the magnitude of severity her actions had on everyone around her. She looked at me and began to weep, with her sad eyes, shaky demeanor, soft skin, looked up at me, straight into my eyes, and for the first time in over a month, I felt she was really looking at me-not just looking through me, she said,

“You are the only one who didn’t give up on me, you were the only one who stayed with me, and I feel like you are the only person in the world who would endure all of the stuff I did to you and still love me.”
From then on, we were together and happy again, although that version of happiness was different, it was more of a mask of unhappiness. And for at least 2 months, I had schizophrenic type visions in my head, right before I was going to sleep. I would envision Megan, MY MEGAN, kissing and touching other guys. It would make me sick, I would have to turn on the TV, and concentrate on whatever was on to avoid these images.

Moving on:
It took us a while but we finally got through that dark segment of our relationship. I spent the days with her working on her overdue homework and the nights rekindling our relationship. She decided that she needed to get out of the negative environment that is LA (I really dislike that county). We went around and checked some schools she was looking at before she chose Otis. We ended up looking an art university in Laguna beach, which was just incredible. I loved it, it was scenic, peaceful, the staff was very helpful and nice, it just seemed like the right choice. The best part was they were willing to accept Megan immediately into the school. She would start spring semester which was only about 2 months away.
Spring semester as far as I can remember went great. She promised she was finally ready to stop doing all of those drugs and focus on school and what not. She was living at home; things were back to normal, for the most part. We loved each other, and cooked dinner almost 3 times a week; we went out and really enjoyed this period of time. Then closer to summer, things started getting rough again. I started to feel like she was lying again, she was becoming just as shady as she had been previously, and I got petrified.

WTF???
So to my dismay, I had to become content with the fact that something was going on all over again. So one night, I got in my car with her, and just drove. I told her I was just going to keep driving until she told me what was going on. Turns out, she had been regularly smoking pot all over again. That’s right, our relationship had taken a full circle. No no no, im not finished yet, ladies and gents, she not only was smoking pot, but she had been smoking pot with this guy by the name of Trace. Rather large fellow, Caucasian, long hair, goofy clothes (probably held up this goofy look to divert the attention from his low self-esteem). I knew this guy had a thing for Megan, as soon as she told me that every time they smoke pot, he tries to make out with her, and should I add, successfully tries to make out with her. Oh and not to mention the other stuff they did together while under the influence (ok im not getting into detail, cause honestly I don’t know, I never even cared to find out).
Of course we went through our usual, break ceremony/get back together, because she has made mistakes but they were just stupid, and didn’t mean anything. Honestly, though our relationship ended there, it lasted another few months but it was pretty much over.
We dragged it on as long as we could but finally officially broke up in July of 2008.
This post is pretty long, so I’m going to keep the aftermath portion as a separate post, I’ll post it in a day or 2. Now if you have read this entire thing, I expect you to come back to read the aftermath, I will discuss the ways I learned to deal with all of the emotional pain I had to endure, and how I learned to live with it, accept it, and finally become happy with it.

Disclaimer:
Ok, so let me start off by saying a few things. First, and most importantly, I am not telling this story to get anyone’s pity, in fact I don’t want it. Secondly, I have never told this story in its completion before, not to my friends, not to my family, not to anyone, so consider yourselves privileged. Again, if you are going to read this, please read it in its entirety, that way you are at least seeing my progression and how I dealt with the break-up.

A history of sadness:
Through out my high school career, I suffered from low self-esteem. I didn’t really date because I didn’t think any girls liked me. I didn’t think that I was attractive enough to attract the attention of any of the girls I was interested in. In fact, up until about 11th grade I often caught myself dreaming of the day I was to get a real girlfriend. One that I can hold on a rainy day, that I can treat like a queen (hahahaha sorry had to add that in), one that I could take out to my favorite restaurants and lastly one that I could fall in love with. I despised womanizers and hated people who didn’t respect women.

The introDuKtion:
So 11th grade comes around, I am still suffering from mild self esteem issues, but am more confident then ever, due to my 10th grade wrestling career. Anyways, in about the first week of school, my good friend, at the time, Johnny finds himself a girlfriend. Little did I know at that point, that when a close friend finds a girlfriend, in high school at least, it basically means you have instant report with all of her friends. For me that meant that I got introduced to the, well lets say villain of this story. Ok so I was thinking about using a pseudo name for her, but I decided not to, haha, her name is Megan. So I met Megan, at first I was not really into her, due to her poor fashion sense which consisted mostly of 80’s band shirts and torn jeans. In her defense this was her transition from being semi goth to normalcy.

First date:
Our friends Johnny, and his new girlfriend decided that it would be a good idea to go on a date, but also invite their close friends (oh how I love high school). We went to the local movie theater and watched some lame claymation movie, I don’t even remember what it was called, I think most movies that don’t involve real people are gay (don’t worry shrek fans, It wasn’t shrek 2). This date was on a Friday, I even remember the exact date, sept 23 2005. Anyways, I sat next to Megan and we chatted up a storm throughout the movie (that’s right, we were the obnoxious teenagers sitting in the movie theater, talking and laughing through out the showing). So sitting in the theater, next to this promising young lady, I couldn’t help but notice that her right breast was accidentally being partly exposed, due to her excessively loose tank top. I pointed it out to her, not before I got a good view of course, she giggled in embarrassment and covered up. After the movie, we all moved on to the arcade, where me and Megan played a round of air hockey. After I annihilated her, she gave me a good job hug which lasted a lot more than the casual 2 second hug, it was more like a 8 second hug. This was an immediate sign of her interest. A few moments later, the conversation in the group moved on to horror flicks, the exorcism of Emily Rose, to be more specific. I expressed my interest and so did Megan, the rest of the group, not so excited. Me and Megan decided that we would see this movie together the following Sunday, September 25, 2005. We went, we hooked up, went a little further, didn’t watch much of the movie, but if I remember correctly it wasn’t very good.

The relationshit (aw that’s mean, it was actually very nice at times and I enjoyed it a lot):
So several weeks went by, when me and Megan finally decided to go steady, now I am not one for setting rules, but within the first few weeks of my relationship to Megan I told her one specific rule; if you are going to cheat on me, do us both a favor and just let me know, so we can break up and not deal with all the drama (oh how naïve I was to think this was a legitimate possibility).We dated and dated, and before long our friends were separated, before I knew it, we were in a full blown out relationship, I was seeing her everyday, and I was loving it.

Our first argument:
Well actually, the one I am going to describe is really our second argument; the first one had to do with her zebra print pants (hahahahahaha, to think we almost stopped dating after that one). Moving on, the first real argument that I can recall came about 6 months into our relationship. Before I explain it, I should state, I have never been a fan of pot, growing up I lost a lot of close friends to it, so I hated the stuff (now days however, I could care less if people smoke pot, your life, your decision). So here’s what happened, she told me that she was going to her friend Courtney’s house, who I knew, to watch movies and hang out. To my surprise it turned out that ‘watching movies and hang out’ was really code for smoke pot and sit around. I was not to happy about the pot smoking, but what really bothered me was the lying. I hated the fact that she lied to me, TO ME, I was not the kind of person who stayed in relationships after being lied to. So I did what any self respecting high school student would do and I broke up with her over the phone, while standing in front of my friends, waving my arms around in anger. The next morning was the first morning in about 5 months that I hadn’t done the thing that I usually did when I woke up, call Megan. I got up, I showered, I sat around, I even cut my hair, anything to keep myself busy. At around 2pm, I got a text from Megan, it read “hey.” I responded, and that spawned into us hanging out at starbucks to talk about what happened as friends. We met, I got my usual green tea latte, and before I knew it, she was winning me over, all over again. Her sad pale face, her fragile skin, her somewhat shaky demeanor and watering eyes. It was just to much for me to fight off. We ended up getting back together. Now if you have ever seen a well directed movie and noticed that the director fills you in on the entire premise of the movie within the first ten minutes, this was that occasion but for my life.

Month by Month:
After that initial break-up and reconciliation, I managed to find out that she was a pathological lair. She lied about everything, to her mom, to me, to her friends, EVERYONE. Every month there was a new drug related issue that we needed to work out, EVERY SINGLE MONTH. Now by now a lot of you are saying, why complain? You were the idiot to stay in the relationship. Well my answer to that is, you are right, I was a fool and I learned my lesson, but not before it got much, much worse. Every month I noticed a progression of the severity of the lies. It was a constant wave of dissatisfaction that constantly engulfed my emotional well being. Her actions could almost be patterned, she would go get stoned with an ex boyfriend/guy who likes her/oh and my favorite – a guy who hates me – I would find out about it – we would have a serious argument about whether or not our relationship was worth it – she would apologize more sincerely than I had ever thought possible (crying, begging, promising, etc.) – we then would decide to stay together and get through this thing together – I would wait about a month, and it would happen all over again.

Otis University and the 2007 older brother’s wedding debacle:

Megan was a year and a half older than I was which meant she was going to college a year before I was. This was a difficult time because she was choosing between 2 schools, Otis University of art and design in LA, and some other art school located right outside of Berkeley in northern California. At the time we both lived about 15 minutes from each other in Orange County. Now even though she liked the northern California school much better, she decided to go to Otis in order to be close enough to come home on the weekends (that’s right, she chose to stay close for me). The first few months of this was ok but before long, I started to find out more and more, and we fell right back into the same month to month loop we were in through high school. The next few months are a little blurry, not because nothing significant happened, because I know a lot did, but because the events that took place in early September of 2007 were so much more dramatic they tend to overshadow everything else.

Megan’s older brother Chris, was set to be married early September of 2007, I believe it was a Sunday. Her brother decided that he would like to partake in a bachelor party, but instead of the usual strip club deal, he would do something a bit more mature and take his groomsmen (which included his little sister Megan) to the American river for an overnight camping trip/white water rafting experience. It was a 2 night ordeal, I did not participate on this trip because I was not a groomsmen, although their was one exception to the groomsmen rule, a guy by the name of Josh. Josh was the brother of Ryan, which was one of Chris’ best friends and also the provider of an RV which was being used to transport them from orange county to Berkeley where the wedding would be held. Josh had to be invited because they were using his and Ryan’s fathers RV. The first day of the rafting trip went well; Megan even called me every time they took a break. The following 2 days, I did not receive any phone calls, her explanation for this, is that she lost reception after the first day. That was fine, but little did I know that this wasn’t all truthful. The second night, the guys decided to drink as much as they possibly could, which I usually support full fledged, but to my dismay, Megan had a bit of a problem knowing when to stop once she started to drink. Anyways, I don’t know all the details to this story, since obviously I wasn’t there, but what I do know is that about 10 beers and 4 shots after they started drinking Megan was bunked up next to josh in the middle of the wilderness probably about 100 feet away from everyone else performing fellacio on her new found 32 year old friend.

I drove up with her parents, since she had left 5 days prior to the wedding. Upon my arrival, I expected a sailor’s welcome only to get a slight awkward head nod followed by a somewhat embarrassed hug. We met the guys and Megan at Chris’ old roommates new house in the heart of Berkeley. Upon walking in, I was excited to meet everyone (yea I know, that’s when I used to enjoy meeting new people) but I noticed that they all had an overall reserved demeanor. I would later on come to realize that this reservation was due to their knowledge of Megan’s carnal impurity. At that time, I was still not fully in tune with my ability to sense peoples emotions, so I scurried along like nothing was the matter, and pretended I didn’t notice all of their small hints at discomfort. After about the first day, I think everything went smoothly, even with Josh, we all got along great. I chatted up a storm; I even took part in a drunken night of craziness right before the wedding.

TO BE CONTINUED……
For the sake of how long this is(which I wasn’t expecting at all), I’m going to stop here, and post the rest in a day or two. Trust me, this is only the beginning to the most devastating stuff. Also to come is the transformation, how I went from the fool in this story to the guy standing here today.