“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.”- Ram Dass

He enters a room with zero apprehension. The world is his fucking oyster, and he knows it. His demeanor would never give off that he has built himself on stories of far away places. He speaks of the most beautiful women in the world and makes you feel just little enough. He is, the I love you man.

I was a freshman in college when my professor asked my business lecture if we believed charisma is learned, or given at birth. All I could think of, was the I love you man and how effortlessly convincing he was. He made you feel special like you were a, once in a lifetime girl. He laughed and charmed his way into my life, and before I knew it, I was hooked.

The I love you man built himself up in order to hide his downfalls. The shrouded mystery and constant change hid his inability to form true ties to anything and anyone. As long as he kept moving, changing, innovating; he could grasp on to a few tales for the years to come.

I raised my hand that afternoon and gave a grey account of the I love you man. He was charming, charismatic because he had to be. He had learned to burrow his way into the live’s of others. He could use his deeply developed character to wrap around your ribcage in a matter of days, hours, minutes, just as quickly as he could snap your bones and suck the air from within your lungs. Actresses, models, writers, visionaries all littered his long list of loves. I often wondered how I had gotten trapped in the mix of it all…

Desperate, that’s how the I love you man will leave you. Pretty photos and the stories of the far away places and dreams will eat away at your soul. Your dreams will become small in the heat of it all, and when you watch the next pretty little girl step up to bat, you’ll feel tragically struck out.

Wiping the dirt from my fingernails was the easiest part, leveling the playing field was the hardest. Walking away from the shining light you once knew so well is hard, but having the blinding glare deter you and convince you that your path is wrong, is the biggest mistake you can ever make when the opponent is the I love you man.