I know. I know. None of you want to hear about my high school drama which is why im including junior high too.

This really isn’t a story about drama though. This is our story. The story of me and my best friend.

It all started in the seventh grade. We had three classes together, math, choir, and athletics. We didnt have that instant connection like a lot of best friend duos do. In fact, we hated each other at first. Both of us had attitude problems, and so we instantly hated each othr.

In athletics, i did not like to run, and ofcourse she was great at it. She would randomly start yelling at me and rolling her eyes. She didnt even know me, yet she hated me.

It wasn’t until about have way through the year before we stated to get along. Our choir teaher was a twirling sponsor, and she had been teaching kaein for about amonth when i decided to take up the hobby. For those of you who don’t know, twirling is a non physical sport where you have batons and twirl and toss them in a musical rythem. It sounds really easy, but in all truthfullness, it is probably one of the hardest things ive ever learned in my life. It takes a lot of elegance and persission. I wanted to succeed, so i asked her for help.

She tauhgt me almost everything that I know about twirling, and while doing so we became best friends. We made our routines together, and even skipped classes to twirl together.

When eighth grade year began. We had both made it on the twirling line together. We were unseperable, and nothing was able to come between us.

It stayed that way until our freshman year. We had hoped to be in some of the same classes or maybe at least have study hall together, but no. We didnt have a single class together or lunch, or study hall. It sucked, and i suddenly seemed like we were seperable after all. We would spend as much time as we could in the morning before school and after, but it wasnt enough. I eventually even changed my schedule to match hers for a few of our classes. Luckily we got choir together. I thought it would be so fun because we were together again in a class we both love.

However, it wasnt as i planned. My cousin happened to be in our class also. He was a junior, and to her, he was the cutest guy ever. The two of them had history, so it really sucked because i was always being pushed aside. I thought i would get better, but it didnt.

I decided i was done trying. I know i shouldnt have given up, but i was tired of putting in effort and not getting any back.

Maybe it was for the best though because if i hadnt quit choir i never would have meet Houston. He was the drum major in the marching band. I had seen him before, but we never really talked. When i joined the band i stayed after school all the time, and just my luck, he did too. I was having a little trouble learning my notes, so he offered to stay with me and help.

We had planned out an entire schedule, but we didnt get that far into it. We mainly just talked the entire time. He was so nice, and when he asked for my number, my heart almost melted. We became very close after that night. He walked me to all of my classes and carried my books for me. I couldn't help but smile everytime i saw him.

Sometimes, i would even catch him starring at me during band practice. He was such a distraction but i didnt care becasue i was falling in love.

I even introduced him to my parentswhich is something i thouhgt i would never do. Houston and my dad got along extremely well. It honestly kindof annoying. Houston was the perfect guy for me. He was cute, sweet, and really funny, but most of all what i loved about him, was that he loved me for who i am.

I didnt feel like i needed my best friend anymore because now i had him, and he was my best friend.

Ive been speaking in past tense becasue now im twenty-two years old, and im happily married to the love of my life. Hunter Green. My life with him has been absoltuely wonderful, and i couldn't have asked for such a wonderful best friend.

Some people carry a secret forever. Some carry it as long as it suits them. I carried Tony Martinez’s secret for twenty-five years before he decided to unburden me. I met Tony in the most unlikely of places. The shallow woods of Sawyer County, Wisconsin in the 1970’s were a well traveled destination. But the deep woods were obscure and not easily traversed. It was place reserved for Rangers and wildlife and even the Rangers didn’t go DEEP in. Even now, in most of the acreage, there are no roads to drive and no trails to hike. You don’t go in those woods for recreation, you go in to disappear.

I met Tony because we had one thing in common. We both wanted to disappear.

I grew up in the town of Hayward, the seat of Sawyer County. I lived with my mom and Stepdad and neither one of them paid much attention to me.

Until I found the key to my stepdads safe. I had nothing against my Stepdad, but I felt no guilt in grabbing a $100 bill and having a great time with my friends in Duluth for a weekend. It’s when I took off with the whole $10,000 that I got his attention. I didn’t think twice about taking it and he didn’t think twice about calling the cops. It probably won’t surprise you if I said I was certain I could outsmart the entire Sawyer County sheriffs department. I took off to the vast expanse of Wisconsin woodlands to wait it out. Scared and totally unprepared, I ran into Tony after my first horrible night in that wilderness. I wandered into a small clearing hidden deep in the woods. I took my backpack off and lay down in the clearing exhausted, scratched and marred from my trek through the trees and brush. As silent as the insects that crawled in soil around me, he came out of his hiding spot and stood over me. I almost pissed myself when opened my eyes to see him towering over me.

An hour of interrogation and intimidation followed. I finally convinced him that I was who I said I was and he invited me to stay in his “camp” with him.

Tony was an ex-cop. He wouldn’t tell me what department he’d worked for. I found out years later it was the New Orleans Police Dept.. It was pretty corrupt in those days and he crossed the wrong people, effectively exposing himself to both the department and the crime syndicate. He was as good as dead if he was sentenced to any prison. He was as good as dead if he stayed and the criminals found him. So he fled. He went way north, ditched his car on the streets of Chicago and hitchhiked into the northern woods of Wisconsin where he’d been for 10 years. 10 years! I’d been there overnight and I was ready to cry and crawl back home. He’d learned, out of necessity and pure will, what he’d needed to know about living out there. He kept warm without a fire. He hunted without a gun. Fashioned clothes from animals and built makeshift shelters. The only things he really missed were Hershey bars and comic books. This large, muscle bound, ex-cop, who’d lived on the edge of death for many years, missed Hershey bars and comic books!

It was pretty clear to him that I wasn’t going to make it out there, based on the look of tortured confusion on my face, the defeated slump of my shoulders and obvious fear in my every movement. He talked me into going back and turning myself in, which I did. But, he also made me promise not to tell of my encounter with him. I promised to keep this secret forever, but I also wanted to help him. He said he didn’t need my help. I asked him to let me bring him Hershey bars and comic books. He said he never wanted to see me back in those woods again. I told him I would leave them in an old firewood box on the side of county road HH on the outskirts of Hayward. It was an old milling road that no one traveled anymore. He agreed. Our arrangement was every twenty days, I would leave him the chocolate, whatever comic he liked and a letter from me telling him about what was going on in the world. He agreed.

For fifteen years I dropped candy, comics and a letter in that wooden box. It was always gone when I came with a new batch and there was always a return letter on the extra blank paper I included in the envelope. Tony wrote about his days and nights in the wilderness and what he remembered about life outside the woods. He never wrote about the specifics of his former life as a cop, only that he regretted his failure to uphold the law and his duty to protect and serve. He felt like he had served a sentence and I agreed. I’m certain it was a harder life than he, I or anyone could have imagined living out there with no comfort or human contact of any kind. Many nights I contemplated telling someone about him, but I never did. I’ve never spoken of it until I wrote this piece.

One day Tony simply decided he’d had enough. He came out of the woods, walked to the nearest town (which was a little unincorporated called Taylor) and called the sheriff. After coming and picking him up, taking him down to Madison and contacting the NOPD from there, they released him. They had no criminal record of a Tony Martinez. They didn’t even have a record of him being on the police force. He was free to go. Go he did. He move to St. Louis and worked as a die cutter for a few years. The problem was, just because the law had forgotten, didn’t mean everyone else had. The very dangerous people Tony had crossed in his former life didn’t forget and they figured out not only that he’d rejoined civilization, but where he was. Luckily, Tony knew that they knew and stayed a step ahead.

Once again, he headed north. One step ahead was however, just that, one step. They pursued him northward, determined to finally settle the score.

The cops found Tony’s car on the side of a road on Highway 61 on the edge of Superior National Forest in Ontario, Canada.

I have no clue what happened; if they caught up to him, or he simply found a spot that looked good and just walked into the woods. There’s no romantic or poetic ending to this story, no trail of Hershey bar wrappers letting me know that he made it. My instincts tell me he did, but that could be wishful thinking. I do know that it feels good to finally be able to tell this story. I have wanted to for a long time, but I felt like it would have been a betrayal to Tony. I’m only telling it now because I’m certain he won’t be back.

The moon is perfectly round. It is segmented during its cycle so we may only see certain parts of it but always the segments are divisions of an object which is perfectly spherical. This perfection represents our true nature, our divine nature. It is located in our deepest consciousness, in the submerged mass of the iceberg.

The sky moon is virtually indestructible. Its light is constantly radiant although it is not always available to human eyes. But the moon in the sky is merely a representation of what is within each of us – our true, cool nature--calm, unconditional, silent and still. External disturbances need not deter its loving, accepting consistency just as meteors and solar storms cannot destroy it.

Now and Here, remind yourself of your inner moons. Embody this glowing beacon for the benefit of people around you, exactly so that others will be inspired to contact their own moons.

A friend talked honestly about his negative emotions and his arrogance. His grandmother had become seriously ill and so he spent as much time as possible with her. He found her suffering and the sadness of her impending death too much to bear at times. Then in a flash of now-and-here, he remembered the positive light of his inner moon and with it the realization that his negative feelings about her pain and hopelessness were not at all connected to the reality of the situation. Those negative feelings of intolerance were entirely attributable to his selective ego. So, he smiled outwardly instead of wincing inwardly, able at last to display his sincere feelings.

That day, his grandmother told him how she was able to benefit from his clear strength, and that it, in turn, gave her strength and dissolved the fear that pain and the unknown can engender.

We underestimate how knowing we are about each other. His grandmother could sense his negative energy. It actually accentuated her fear and pain. Once he had allowed his lunar radiance to shine through, she was bathed in it. His moon lit her own inner moon.

These subtle energies are concealed from us if we are always loitering outside our divine nature, regarding the sky moon as an external object, a commodity we can captivate in a photo or picture. When turned outward, we compulsively filter reality to our own liking and the levels of our tolerance. Inside, it is simply a question of ignition; our moon can light up countless others through our very presence in the human world.

Innate love, like language and culture, is embedded via the influence of those around us and our environment. Spiritual feelings or energy have for so long revolved around duty and custom that most people first have to learn how to peel away the layers so they can contact their inner moons. Then they have to understand and accept that they have a strong power to influence those around them. The heavy conditioning of modesty and humility in social life often covers individual potential from view.

My mother must continue to go often to climb the temple steps and catch a glimpse of the rising of her radiant moon. She will attend until her last breath, repeatedly mistaking determination and devotion to the masters and other beings for her own inner radiance. It takes time to establish pure love in oneself when the seeds were not planted as a child. She must plant them methodically by hand, and wait for their unpredictable germination.

Will you glimpse your inner moon in a now-and-here moment today and watch the effect it has on all beings around you?

I wore bruises to my wedding.

No dress.

I wore my blood as chains around my wrists.

I wore a pregnant belly and dark circles beneath my eyes.

I wore my hopelessness like a scarlet letter.

I wore my white flag of surrender.

I wore ink on paper as a prison cell.

Or at least that’s how it felt.

All I know is that there was never any dress.

#EndTheSilence