My Red Heart

Inspired by My Life Story

January 8th, 2017 – January 9th, 2017

Every attempt would end in failure. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but if I stick with it I know that one day I will get her back. It was hard being rejected the first time. The reality of how hard it was going to be of trying to peruse her hit me. It sucked, but I had to be persistent. I remember it was around 5:00pm I had just finished the poorly made but cute book title. My instinct was to just send it to her, but she wouldn't read it. I had to find out some way of her having a reason to read it. If others read it, she would too. So at 7:33pm, I posted it on Twitter, Instagram, and other book sharing websites. I even had some of my friends from different states and countries spread the word. I didn't know what to expect, having so much of myself out there for everybody to read. Who in the right mind would do that, artists? At first it felt like an adrenaline rush, but it eventually died down as I stepped away from all technology to go for a run. I liked running. It was something that allowed me to escape this world, to clear my mind and to get inspired by the random obstacles that I would face along the way. So I put on my running gear along with my favorite pair of running shoes that when running makes you feel like you're running on fluffy clouds. Running in theses shoes to me is dangerous, because once you start there's no way of stopping. Let's just say you may end up in different cities with these shoes on, and you won't even be aware of it. It was 8:11pm, and I made my way downstairs. I looked out at the amazing view of the city, and took off. What's crazy was I had so many feelings before leaving, but as soon as I took my first stride, I felt free. I guess that's why I love being out. A couple hours had gone by and I arrived home at around 12:47am. My legs were so weak but once you start running consistently, the pain doesn't feel so bad. I had prepared myself an ice bath and sunk in. I looked dead. I didn't do anything, I just sat there. I didn't feel the ice pierce my skin as it normal does when I take ice baths. I was dead in every way. Every now and then I would take glances at my phone. I would just look at it, not even turning it on. I didn't want to turn it on. I didn't feel a need to, but I knew eventually I would give in. Eventually, I got out of the ice bath, took a regular shower and made my way back to my room. I then placed my phone on my bed and sat on my desk chair and just stared at it. I don't know why I did that, but shortly after I turned it on. Before I could unlock it, my phone just froze. I thought it was very strange because my phone doesn't normally do that, but after restarting it, I then knew the reason why it froze. My phone had blown up with missed calls, texts, tweets, likes, comments, DM's, PM's, favorites, everything. I couldn't scroll through anything without my phone freezing. I knew that what I had created was the cause of this. I didn't know how to react, what was I supposed to do? Ignore it? I couldn't, people were trying to reach me because they read it and they loved it. They wanted to talk to me about it, whether it's on the phone or hanging out. The majority of people that tried to contact me I didn't even know. And I know a fair amount of people. What struck me the most was the amount of love and attention that it got in such a short amount of time. I didn't really realize that what I had created moved people. They would send me paragraphs, literally paragraphs upon paragraphs of what they thought about it and how it changed them. I would try my best to read some of the comments but there were too many. I think a favorite of mine would probably be the very first one that I got. It said,

"Yo Brandon I just read your book and holy shit dude. It was honestly moving. I vibe with everything you said about life and making the most of it and hiking and all that stuff. Honestly though the book was great I was intrigued and hooked from the start. Your bit about time and being afraid of not having the time to do everything you want in life was so true to me dude you have no idea. I hope you get her back dude I'm rooting for you. Keep doing you and taking life one day at a time."

That line. That one line, The "I hope you get her back" line. Reading that gave me hope, it even put a smile on my face. I noticed that almost every person that tried to talk to me or ended up talking to me from here on out ended the conversation with "You're going to get her back." It was never "I hope you get her back." It was "You're going to get her back!" I felt like at this rate I was going to get her back, without a doubt, just had to wait. I couldn't sleep that night, I was so excited with the thought of one day getting her back. And I knew that I did it. This book did that for me, or at least it was going to do that. The next day I somehow woke up for school, drove there, and immediately after sitting down in my first period class, I heard people talking about it. It had spread like wild fire. Everywhere I went people would talk about it. It was weird, as much as I liked the attention because I'm an actor I loved that. With this, I kind of didn't want it. But the thing was that the attention wasn't bad at all. It was people coming up to me telling me how much they loved the book and how they want me to make another one and how they would like to help me on this mission of getting her back. It was all friendly loving attention, and yet even that I didn't want. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I didn't want anything to do with the book after it was released. Over the course of 3 days over a 1,000 people had read the book, whether it was on a social media website or a link that was copy and pasted and sent to people in the world. I would later have to reset my iPhone because the freezes got more intense, with all of this happening I couldn't escape. What I had created is now stuck with me from here on out. Don't get me wrong, I was happy with everything, just the attention. I didn't want to be reminded of her I didn't want random people to come up to me asking if they can help or have a solution to getting her back, acting like they know what to do. I didn't want that, it wasn't something I had thought about before releasing it. Now I just had to deal with it, oh well. Each day went by and I would wonder if she had read it or not. I didn't know how she was going to react to it. I hoped it would be a good one, but I didn't know. You can never be too sure about things like this. All I knew was that so many people were rooting for me. That's it. That's all I had. Time and hope. Which is something that I despise, but time worked quite well for me this time around. That Friday night I got a text that would change my very existence. Everything that I ever worked for, led up to this text.