The Iconoclast

Trepidaciously, I smile.
I shall live and dwell in these moments until they are gone.
I will do my best to hold on to them in the days after.
I can only hope this is the end of the tunnel and not a locomotive.

I laid on the aphitheater of the university crying for two hours.
Something inside me broke tonight.
It twisted the the point it could no longer take and snapped in two.
I spent hours sobbing into my own chest, wishing I were dead.
Wishing I could stop the waves and waves of emotions coming over me.

I spoke to my friend, Dayna.
I promised her I would make it home safely.
I did so.
I am so.
I hate being so.
I wish I were gone.
I wish I were no more.
This life is a burden. A travesty.
A tragedy.
A horror.

No reason nor rhyme.
No rhythm nor time.
No reason to exist.

Nothing to live for.
No reason not to die.
Nothing to live for.
No one who'd cry.

Lessons learned, lessons taught.

No reason to continue on.
No reason to fight this further.
No reason to fight, at all.

At some time I lost my dreams. Put them aside, shelved them, stuffed them into drawers and left them. I have lost my way back to that place I previously dwelt, where my heart swelled with love and hope. The breadcrumbs have been eaten by magpies and I am in the thick of the forest now with no navigable stars shining through the canopy.

On my recent cross-country expedition, several things were revealed to me by the rolling landscape of the country, by my own questioning, and by others.

I have been living for others so long that I have forgotten how to live for myself.
I have set aside my own desires for the plans of others.
I have sacrificed opportunities at the altar of fear.
I have lost a lot of the emotion that fueled me in younger days.
I had willingly donned blinders, restricting my vision.
I had forgotten myself.

I met many people during my trip and most seemed quite pleased to meet me. There was a time when I had never met a stranger. Now the faces of strangers are all that I see. This trip rekindled a spark of that somewhere inside. I've pulled out the bellows and have been nursing that spark, hoping to smolder it into the roaring fire it once was.

These will be lean times. Hard times. I have survived worse. The money it took to travel the country could have been used for other purposes, but the investment in myself seemed best in the long-term. I am reminded that these things will only make me stronger. A more considerate friend. A more thoughtful lover. A better worker.

I am the sum of all things I am and have been. Recently, when speaking to an old friend and former lover, she asked how I'd changed over the years. I responded, "I haven't changed, so much as grown." I think that's a fair assessment of how I have come to be the man I am today.

I am.
I am beginning to realize what I want.
I am learning that I do not have to settle for less.
I am reconciling who I have been with who I am now.
I am growing into a better man with each breath I draw.

The best I can hope for is that anyone who has crossed my path will look back upon my memory with fondness.
The best I can do is to leave everything and everyone who crosses my path better than when I met them.
The best I can do is to live.

My roadtrip was fun.
Not everything went according to plan, but I made the best of things considering.

I met my mother's new husband. He is a great guy and he is wonderful to my mother. I am extremely happy that she is in a better situation than she was the last time I saw her. She actually told me that my advice and what I had said to her on my last trip is mostly responsible for where she is now in her life.

I ended up not going to Seattle, instead hitting Portland a week early. Enjoyed myself. Met a lot of new and interesting people, and saw a lot of sights.

All told, I drove 5243.8 miles in two weeks, with most of the mileage being the first two and last two days.

I have photos, but I'll have to edit them and that'll have to wait. If you'll recall, I was moving before the roadtrip, so I'm still unpacking in the new house, which itself is an adventure.

I have partaken of various substances this evening.
I am feeling quite high and quite low at the moment.
To compensate, I am singing along, voice at it's loudest, to Say Anything.
I cannot wait to be out West.
I cannot wait to be out East.

I really, really want to hug K-mart right now.
I was telling someone tonight how she was one of most wonderful people, and women, I knew.
Oh, her and the puppies and the ponies.

I need more friends like that.

At the street party this evening I was surrounded by people I knew and have known.
It was nice.
I'm still hung up on her, though.
Think I may always be.
How do you really turn that off for the person that showed you how to love again?
Regardless, I do not doubt she and I have a friendship that will last our lifetimes.

I often lament the fact I do not have direction for myself.
I curse that I have not found my niche yet.
I cannot appreciate the freedom I have at this time.
I know I will look back on these moments fondly. Someday.
Someday.

For now I sit and work and wait.
I shall see what I see.
I will record these moments.
I will share my life.
I will live.

All but the largest of my belongings are moved.
There's something looming that may put off my trip.

Spent the evening at a street party, talking to many old friend and one old flame (whom I do still carry a torch for).
Oh, this life. I do not understand it.

I find myself now wishing I could crawl out of my skin.
I am not comfortable in it.
I know what I would prefer.
I know what I want.
I know what it is that I cannot have.

I wish I could make myself understand that, though.

He spoke honest words to me.
I saw them for what they are.
Observations on who I was, who I am, who I will be.
I heard the sounds of a friend's voice.
I saw what he sees.

There are complications to the simplest task.
Nothing is easy.
There are no quick answers.

I am full of guilt and fear and pain.
I am full of life and love.
I have brown eyes, so I'm full of something.

What is it I want?
What is it I really want?
Who is it I am chasing?
Who is it I will become?

So many answers now.
I do not know the questions to ask.
I am an essayist with a standardized form.
I am all of the above.
I am none of the above.

Chuck Palahniuk wrote, "Someday I'd be dead without a scar and there would be a really nice condo and a car. Really, really nice until the dust settled or the next owner. Nothing is static."

Getting laid off didn't frighten me. Being unemployed doesn't frighten me. It wasn't a death penalty, it was a commuted life sentence. It was freedom. The cross-country drive I am about to undertake is something a number of people don't understand. They question my reasons for it, ask why I don't take a plane.

It's the journey. The act of doing something. There's also the time I will have to myself. There are a lot of questions I need to ask myself. There are a lot of pieces of me that still lie broken upon the floor. I need time, without interruption, to look at these pieces, to dust them off and file them down and to fit them back into myself.

I will never be complete. There will always be more to experience and more to see. There is also one more person to talk to and one more laugh to share. There is love without end that must be shared. There are smiles to cause and sorrows to comfort.

I came to a realization today while observing a few people engaging in corporate shenanigans -- I live my life with the only goal being that I enrich the lives of others. Certainly, I have some private goals, as all mammals do, but at the end of my run I hope that those I am surrounded myself with are better off for having known me.

That idea is wrapped up in my reasoning for the trip as well. I need to be stronger for others. Physician, heal thyself. I strive to improve my understanding of myself so that I might better help others.

First day of unemployment was hectic as hell.

Last night I realized my license had expired so my first order of business today was to renew it. However, the courthouse was closed for... wait for it... Jefferson Davis'* birthday. That's what I get for living in the South, I suppose. That plan failing, I went to my father's house to borrow a truck so that I could start moving some of my things into our new house. The truck was full of things and my father didn't want me to unload of dump it today, so that was a 45 minute drive and a bit of gas wasted. Stopped by the automotive shop to schedule an oil-change and alignment inspection before my roadtrip and got in Wednesday morning. Called my dad to see if he'd meet me there since I'll have to leave my car there for the morning and he hemmed and hawed and said he'd "see if he could work something out". I told him I'd just take care of it and hung up.

Being frustrated with people being uncooperative (there's an episode with my mother that also occurred this morning that I am not going into but which added a good amount of frustration to my day) I made two spur of the moment decisions: to go donate blood and to get a haircut.

The first decision was inspired by seeing a LifeSouth** mobile donation center parked at shopping center while I was driving back to my house. I made a U-turn and pulled into the parking lot and 20 minutes later I had a cheesy t-shirt and was a pint of blood lighter. Following that I went to pick up some boxes to pack my things in and drove by a hair salon and decided to get rid of the mop of hair I was sporting. The stylist was adorable and very good. Ended up having about 5 inches cut off and having the remainder chopped with a razor.

As it stands, my roadtrip is being pushed back 2-3 days. I'd intially wanted to leave on Friday, but due to the uncooperative nature of other people I'm stuck taking care of things that were supposed to have been done two to three weeks ago. Now the pressure falls to me to get them done, all while trying to pack up all of my belongings and securely store them in our new home before I leave.

*President of the Confederate States of America. His birthday is not, so far as I know, a federal holiday.
**LifeSouth is a regional blood donation service that collects and provides to, and only to, the three local hospitals. This means all blood donations to them go to help people in the community, as opposed to the Red Cross, which dispurses the blood nationwide.