For Tristan
This piece isn’t what I would consider a personal adventure. Rather, this is more about something I always thought- no, am always thinking about- doing but haven’t actually done it because of some fears I have about organizing something of that magnitude. So today, I’m taking the first step toward building it.
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Yesterday, at the time I am writing this, one of my closest family members made the choice to end his pain.
That line is the most painful thing I’ve ever had to write up to this point in my life. Even as I am writing this now, I can barely see the screen. You, the reader, wont have the understanding on how long it’s even taken me to get this far. That blinking vertical line as I type strangely has become my friend.
Before I speak about this project, I would like to tell you a part of his story.
Tristan became my cousin when I was coming up on a year old, I couldn’t fathom what love was yet being a small child. When I could say I “knew” him I was maybe 4 or 5, and according to our parents we had a mutual dislike of one another in that petty playful child kind of way. Personally, I don’t recall this ever being a thing, but that is how the story goes. I currently can’t remember the year his family moved away to Missouri, however I remember always looking forward to the summer to see him. He was, and still is, one of my favorite people to see. The amount of silly things we would do with each other during his one week visit was the dream every kid has with one of their best friends. One of our favorite things to do every year was take our Little Tikes yellow push car and ride it down the hill I lived on. We called it the “Baby Game”. We’re not sure why that’s the name, but it stuck.
This isn’t a photo of the one we had, but one just like it. Because we were bigger kids year to year, we didn’t sit in the seat after a while. Instead we began to sit on that red handle while propping our feet under the steering wheel. It was not a safe use of this toy by any means, especially because we didn’t wear helmets. Let me tell you that we could push ourselves down that hill riding this thing all day long and have just as much fun doing it at the end as we started. To put it simply it was the highlight of both of our summer every year.
When we finally became too big to ride this comically small toy car, we transitioned into what I would’ve called “Bigger Kid” activities. He wanted to be a volleyball player, and he LOVED it. From an outsider’s perspective, it kind of looked like his second religion aside from being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. His level of dedication to his sport was rivaled by a few in the community of Volleyball. This small collection of players are the kind that seek out professional play. Tristan had that goal, and when I spoke to him last it seemed he still held that belief that he could make it. I know without any uncertainty he would have made it!
I’m going to rewind a bit and tell you about the other things he loved. Shortly after living in Missouri, he moved to a small city West of LA, called Agoura Hills. There, he still pursued the competitive environment of Volleyball with his Middle and High School Teams. But when it came to the summers, we strived to play a game of Paintball. We both loved paintball. The first time we ever played was with a US Air Force Bootcamp group. To put it simply, they were terrifying, myself being 12 and Tristan 11 at the time. We also had my brother Tyler with us, who was 10. I’ve had to source my brother on this story of him because they ran together on this game.
“We were playing ‘Attack and Defend’, and Tristan and I… I don’t remember if we were attacking or defending [the fort], but we both went into this tiny bunker to set up. It was only about three by three feet in size, but for the two of us it was fine. It even had a little wood piece we could use as a door to cover ourselves completely. Almost immediately after we got into this small fort, one of the enemy guys started shooting at this small door with his automatic. We held that door tightly, because it was our only protection from this barrage. It felt like forever, but we held that until [Uncle] Dan shot that guy.”
That excitement bug I think, is what really got him going. Since that time when we were able, we played together. We may not have been on the same team some of those times, but we loved to play and was something we did regularly the last few years. This shot above is one I got of him in his “tactical element”, as he would say, where he slowly would peek around a line of cover to shoot an enemy player.
To put it mildly, I am going to miss him as my wingman.
Between Tristan, Myself and my Brother Tyler, we all love playing video games. So much so that we all built our own computer systems. We would talk about upgrades, battle strategies, new game releases, you name it! Even in our younger years, on the weekends we would play the Original Call of Duty because it brought us closer together despite being a few States apart in distance. I think what made that a mainstay for us was the ability to stay in touch with everything.
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Like everyone else, we have our demons to fight too. I am more open about this than I used to be; I am a Suicide survivor. It’s because I am that I want to build a community centered around the idea of what a community should be. When I learned about this tragedy yesterday, I couldn’t help but wonder what I could’ve done differently to prevent this because I take mental health seriously. I believe that thinking this way isn’t healthy in the beginning stages of grief, because opening old wounds ends up hurting us more than we realize. At the same time, it is a necessary step in the way of recovery. We use this way of thinking as a learning tool. This learning tool, while unfortunate in its origin, helps us grow as community and even greater as individuals. It helps us realize our shortcomings in a way that shows us the solutions of a better future. However, it can become unhealthy if we rely on it too much often becoming a beginning symptom of that same illness. Personally, at this very moment I am struggling with this.
Disillusionment of one’s purpose, in my opinion, is the sole reason most who are struggling mentally end up doing the deed. It is my personal belief that if we can prevent just this disillusionment, by combating it with what a loving community should be.
This is what I want my project to do.
This project will aim to reinforce the values of life itself within a community environment. Family, Service, Goals, and Purpose.
Beginning with Family, the idea would be to dismantle the cultural belief that “Friends aren’t actually Family.” That fallacy is wholly wrong, and is one that I think our culture would benefit from if we changed to the following mindset. “Friends become family.” This is an essential part of the Code of Ethics I want to incorporate. It is my belief that any friend may become family when that individual is integrated into your life in such a way that you would not be able to imagine daily life without them. This would include doing activities together, like a game night or a trip to the movies every Friday, but most especially a phone call in the evening to chat about the day.
Then, if something wasn’t quite ideal about one’s situation comes Service. The idea behind a “Family” mentality is to identify when something isn’t quite right. So it would be the obligation of the others to identify if something isn’t ideal for another and aid them with small acts of service. From something as small as sharing sugar to something as large as loaning a car. It isn’t limited to that range, but everything provided by these small acts of service is meant to achieve…
Goals. Goals are hard to make sometimes, I will admit this. But there are thousands of goals we make a day without us realizing we are. The first of which is waking up in the morning, followed by the next goal: eat breakfast. Then the next: brush your teeth, open the front door, take a deep breath of fresh air, and so on. But when we are talking about life goals, the aim of my project would change the idea of “small goals to make a bigger goal” to “small goals for a Purpose“. In this project, I want to tackle what community goals to help reinforce a purpose of those within it.
A Purpose is the reason why we do things. Why do we do things? Ask yourself every day. For me, my purpose is to spread happiness and joy for myself and those around me, in any capacity that I can. That is my purpose. That is MY Purpose. It isn’t my place to determine anyone’s purposes in life. But what I can do, is guide them to it even if I don’t know the way yet. And I am going to start, with this project.
I am going to need all the help I can get to start this in motion. If you’re interested in helping start this community oriented project, please reach out to me at 813-485-5015.