Carry On

This song, is currently my favorite and brings tears to my eyes almost every time...and then I found this video. It compiled some great stuff along with an incredible song and I was cry-ying. Please please watch this and then I'll tell you why it means so much to me...



I have a "boy of fall" and behind his massive line-backer exterior is a man I never knew I needed, a man I admire more every day. I never truly understood the heart of a game, or the heart of a man until I met him. I'll admit at first, he scared the crap out of me, in every way. He was huge, physically; 6 foot 3 with a presence that turns heads. He was everything I wasn't and apparently, everything I needed.

I've never met a stronger man, except for my Daddy, and they both have something (among the hundreds of things) in common that makes me admire them so much. They've both lost their Dads. For my Dad it came later in life, but for my Ryan it was very very young. And with that loss, they gained two things, the unavoidable ache and the inhuman ability to carry on.

I'm flabbergasted at Ryan's ability to carry on. At his work-ethic, his heart, his passion, and the way he faces the world with his head high. He doesn't hang his head, ask why, and wait for the world to pick him up; every day, he carries on. And some days, he carries me. Some days when the world is too big for me to carry, he shoulders it for me, holds me up and promises that I'll make it, that we'll make it.

Ryan and I have been given a unique challenge as a couple, one that would tear most apart. But it has only brought us closer. It was a shocking change in our lives and it happened in the infantile stages of our relationship. It was one of those twists that knocks the air clean out of you. For the first time in my life, I saw someone struggle for me. Someone who loved me for me, unconditionally and chose to rise above the hand we'd been dealt. Someone who took my pain away, willingly and suffered as I suffered. This is the unique gift that he and my Dad share as they've lost their fathers.

They carry the world, and all it's problems with them. They feel responsible, unnecessarily so, to save everyone from everything. They feel the primal urge to provide, multiply a hundred-fold, and they listen to it. They triumph, and they silently struggle.

Ryan is not the kind of man that would ever tell you he's upset, his way of dealing is set in stone. He deals by ignoring himself and putting every ounce of heart and sweat and blood into his work, and his play. I never understood this until I met him. I never understood how a lifetime of pain and heartache could all be left on the field. I didn't understand what smashing guys brains in had anything to do with life, until I realized it had everything to do with life.

It's not the smashing of the heads that does it, it's the transfer of the pain to the physical, the transfer of hurt to passion. It's about turning the good to the bad, the sad to the happy and learning from the past to live in the moment.

This is what he's taught me.