pff

So I got a message within Ancestry.com from a relative that hadn’t subscribed to the site for about a year. I had messaged her with some details, hoping she could confirm some information that linked our family trees. So when I read over her response, I made the connection that her username AK meant Alaska (duh!), and it hit me--I had such a refreshing (Facebook) message chain with a girl about 8 years ago simply because we shared the same last name.

So I went down this archive wormhole or rabbit hole--whatever hole you prefer, I suppose--of a conversation that I had 8 years ago with this really cool married chick that was or wasn’t my distant- or not-so-distant relative who was coincidentally also from Alaska (not the same girl).

I guess I lost interest in our long ago conversation and/or one of us un-friended the other, and maybe I didn’t respond to her because she wanted to know more about my fiancé (at the time) while shit was hitting the fan like the wrong end of a viral hippo. My (now, definitely) ex and I haven’t seen each other in quite a long time now. It’s a long story, much of which I’ve written loads of memoir material. But the one detail I didn’t give my cousin-ish person friend was the story of how we got engaged.

It’s very awkward. I mean, if you fast-forwarded the movie The Cake Eaters, you’d get a front row seat to my personal flashback of the whole ordeal.

I can practically hear the crunch of movie popcorn, or crickets, so I’ll proceed as expected.

It was a chilly fall evening outside the Midwest college town of Bloomington. It was barely our first official date, but I was a deeply pathetic romantic, so I knew at any moment I would come up with a reason to pop the question. We were 19 and 17. I, being the older of the two and the man, decided upon Outback Steakhouse. We were ultra non-denominational Christians.

As professed and literal virgins, we spent the night holding hands and mostly eating the Bloomin’ Onion like there was nothing else to do on a Friday night. The story gets really interesting when I knew it was inevitable.

On the way back to her house, we stopped by the Monroe Reservoir. I had an ‘89 Maxima that seemed to have a good battery.

We started making out and touching over our buttoned-up and full-length-skirted selves when I dramatically asked her to give me her foot.

Weeks prior, I had written just another stuffed crust love poem for her, this time saying it out loud with the, until that moment, unfinished line (here it is in full):

Trust

Wrapped around my finger like the socket to the eye;

Lest through flesh we be for ever

Ashes to the sky--

Wind, where you whip would I lie,

Downward spiral, never on high

--Sinking eyes (maybe closed) waiting to deny;

Ever-souls beyond this life: Will you be my why?

And as I finished the last line, I slipped the hairband of hers I had worn from the first day that we met onto her ankle. I didn’t have a ring--yet (another long story, interlinked with more drama). I was a poor college student, but I knew an early and innocent version of love--and how to write a poem based on a Sting song.

We kissed. She said yes. I touched her boob. It started to rain really hard. We kissed some more. Once the rain died down a little, she peed while I looked the other way, but kind of more than peeked. In the dark. What. 

We made out some more and steamed up the car pretty good. And that’s about the time we needed to be home and the car wouldn’t start.

It rained some more, but now a lot harder. Her military dad, whose daughter was basically on her first official date, didn’t say a word. Their house was a quarter mile away, so end scene and into the dining room where I was to explain the whole of everything.

Shivering as fuck, still wet, and a little blue-balled, I timelined it all the way to the marriage proposal while holding her hand. And her dad could have puked and kept the same straight face. Her mom was in shock. Everyone was in shock. Her overly aggressive dying coughing diva dachshund was in shock, didn’t choke or move or piss one smidgen.

I feel like this whole Tumblr experience has been a metaphor for how I “tumble” from time to time, emotionally. Physically. Mentally.

It started when I hit a sort of “rock bottom” in my life. In loads of debt from the car accident, after health and car insurance did what they could, all I could do was wait for the deadline to pay, which was fast approaching.

While still in the hospital, I got a call from debt collectors regarding student loans. I told them, “Look, I can’t get out of my bed to pee—I’m in the hospital, and I don’t know when I’m getting out of here.” I didn’t have a job to go back to, possibly for 6 months, from what the doctors told me. Simple tasks became difficult for me to do for the next month.

When the deadline for the hospital bill came, after anxiously thinking for months, all I could do was call and say, “Look, I have student loans coming up—that’s an extra check for rent!” I barely had enough to pay for the next month, let alone another +$300 and student loans.

My family got all their Christmas presents (the accident happened in November, 2013) from Target because I still had $300 of credit on my RedCard. I was getting around town on Uber promos. (I actually have Uber and Tinder to thank for the ability to go on a date, oddly enough.) I was on someone else’s clock—at the mercy of good friends and my mother. I saw a whole different side of life last winter.

Because of the snow, icy roads, and my bruised backside, it was a task walking to the grocery or trying to find part-time work. I considered jobs I wouldn’t take in a million years after getting a college degree, all because I was immobilized.

So I started writing this make-shift blog. I wanted to be anonymous, because I wanted to get my feelings out on the table, uncensored. I wanted to know how I truly felt about where I was at—I wanted to take a good, hard look at my life, at its core! And it turns out a lot of these emotions are triggered by movies.

Film is a part of life—anyone growing up with color TV will attest to that. Memories that relate back to your childhood. My brother and sister would quote movies and SNL all the time—I didn’t want to mess it up, so I would sit there and watch with joy and admiration. That had shaped a lot of the way I view the world and value things in life—like with music: I don’t care so much about the lyrics most of the time, I just like the way it sounds. And poetry: my advisor in undergrad was the Poet Laureate of Indiana, and I drove her mad because I would craft words and poems more for their sound than for their altogether meaning. But taking away lyrics from music, not remembering quotes from movies verbatim doesn’t detract from the memories. If anything it isolates them further and makes them yours, in a way.

My brother, sister and I would always say “ditto,” especially after the movie “Ghost” made it popular. Which was ultimately what that movie reminded me of—that I have a wonderful loving family that would do anything for me.

All of this has become muddled because of how selfish I’ve been. Having gotten out of a relationship and not quite getting over her—that’s what I realized, in my own way, she was doing to me. Maybe something was unresolved and I needed to change things in my life—if so, the pushback (her lingering presence) at different points in my life has led me to the same thing: let go.

No, she’s not dead—dead to me, perhaps, because of her doing (she denied knowing me in public), but not physically. And why did “Ghost” remind me of her? Demi Moore. With short hair. Jeez, it’s like it’s her, but then not. But the movie kept making references about memories, so she would know it was Sam (the late Patrick Swayze)—the memory of Montego Bay made it impossible not to make a connection. My best memories were there—and SHE was there. But we fought. And we couldn’t enjoy it like I’d wanted us to.

During a commercial, the narrator said something cheesy like “Wouldn’t you want the best for the one you love”—I don’t know, maybe it was an ad for a Caribbean cruise. But then I took the connection further, realizing my ex from forever ago was still a cancer to my life.

I had given so much time to this girl, feeling isolated from my family, that I couldn’t think of who I would take on that cruise. I mean, if you had people that you loved that were still alive—wouldn’t you do anything for them?!

My life now is in so much order since that wreck. I have a good amount of money in the bank, am onto my third month of paying student loans off after the year-long forbearance (yaaaay!). Not that the moral of a movie or show should actually be the reason you do good things in life, but the fact that my mind led to these things tells me something. There are definitely a few things that I could do to make people in my life happy. It doesn’t have to immediately give me a return in the form of a relationship.

The Notebook

Benny & Joon

The Soloist

Silver Linings Playbook

Her

In Your Eyes

—Movies that come to mind that hit a chord nothing else ever has. Movies that deal with hardship, yes, but more specifically, mental/emotional anxiety of love and seeking acceptance.

At least a decade ago, when I was a teenager, I noticed something scary, something I couldn’t explain while watching the movie Benny & Joon. The chemicals swirled around in my head in a familiar way, but I had no way of knowing exactly why that was. (I want to be careful and not connect it too closely to my youth and some disturbing things that caused great confusion for me throughout my life, but there is an undeniable connection that I can’t delve into at this point.)

I won’t go into what happened to me as a child, but when Joon, who suffers from possible schizophrenia, has a meltdown on the bus after arguing with voices in her head, I felt a warm rush of distant empathy, even though it was only a movie and I’ve never had schizophrenia myself. But certain experiences I had felt like that’s exactly what was going on with me—I saw myself in that scene and felt it.

The same wave of overwhelming emotion came to me while watching The Soloist, Jamie Foxx’s character demonstrating his virtuosity on the cello Robert Downey, Jr.’s character gave him, because he appreciated him, because he believed in him. I didn’t grow up with a phenomenal musical talent, but I always felt that with much work I could be amazing at that. I’ve always had the mind for it, I was convinced. (I still have a great appreciation for the art of music.)

The same went for my passion of soccer. I went down that path through high school and played with all I had, but I was never nudged too hard towards the constant practice that would make me better, make me a pro. I mean, having rheumatoid arthritis in my feet didn’t help, but I always wondered, had I tried hard enough, could I overcome it. Genetics is a bitch, but let’s keep going, shall we…

When The Notebook came out, I was in my first relationship. And by first relationship, I mean this was the first girl I fingered, the girl who gave me my first blowjob, the girl for whom I shaved my dick and balls. I didn’t have a car—I was thirteen—so I ran to the theater to see the movie with her. The ending was sad. I broke down, crying like a man, I thought, to her sweet affection. This was the first movie I remember having this kind of reaction to, so it’s directly related to passion and not wanting to be alone, learning that you have needs and wants and a heart, I suppose.

And then, flash forward to April of this year, 2014, when I saw Her via Redbox, alone. There are so many applicable quotes I could lose myself thinking about it in this movie, but essentially I was both drunk and vulnerable and wept like a little bitch, still getting over a 2 year fling that ended last summer, with the secret love of my life.

And then earlier tonight, which, of course, prompted me to write again, having watched In Your Eyes on Netflix. This one is still fresh, so I’ll delve into it where I didn’t with the others:

The scene that heaved me into this familiar existential state was when Dylan—the protagonist ex-con Albuquerque bumpkin that feels and hears and smells parallel to the life of Rebecca, who is from New Hampshire and married to a controlling asshat of a doctor who pampers her in his posh superficial lifestyle—hears and feels and sees that Rebecca is in trouble, slipping out of consciousness only to later realize she was drugged and taken to a mental hospital where “Dr. Hubby” thinks she belongs.

Anymore, I remember every time I shed a tear. I don’t get the chemical imbalances that make my head feel like it’s frying in a pressure cooker—mainly because I’m a level-headed grown man who would rather not suffer a severe mental breakdown if that ever happened again—but I still have the capacity to engage in strong emotions.

The reason The Notebook incident goes with the others is because Ryan Gosling’s character dealt with the anxiety of his lifelong love suffering from dementia. No, I’m not equating dementia directly with anything I’ve experienced, but there’s the ever present horror of being so close to someone that knew you better than anyone ever could, and they [act like they] don’t remember you at all.

And this is where I skip back to Silver Linings Playbook, the one I watched with my forbidden lover. She knows me better than anyone, though I’m still mid-twenties and ready for new and greater love. But the way our relationship ended was like The Notebook, where she acts like nothing ever happened, completely out of my control. Bradley Cooper’s character was a bit eccentric, yes, but he got the last dance that won over Jennifer Lawrence’s role. I never got that dance. I never got closure—no diagnosis that led to despair; no possibility of an unsure future with mentally unstable partner; no grandiose dénouement after years of not being known or treated; no advanced OS telling me how to live my life; no silver lining.

I haven’t fired up my laptop in months.

I finally got around to watching ‘Her.’

I saw what the movie was trying to get at from the start, like I almost always do. The appeal to having unorthodox relationships. I had one of those once. Because of the fact that I got a little teary eyed at one point in the movie, it occurs to me that I haven’t quite gotten over her.

But that’s not what prompted me to use up a little bit of my free 5 gigs of data on my phone’s Personal Hotspot.

No, what got to me that I’ve been digging at with myself all this time was a quote in the movie. Samantha, the OS the protagonist has fallen in love with, had some serious insight on writing (as I took it) that reminded me how mad I am at myself that I don’t write like a child on sugar coated meth.

"It’s like I’m reading a book, and it’s a book I deeply love. But I’m reading it slowly now. So the words are really far apart and the spaces between the words are almost infinite. I can still feel you—and the words of our story—but it’s in this endless space between the words that I’m finding myself now. It’s a place that’s not of the physical world. It’s where everything else is that I didn’t even know existed. I love you so much, but this is where I am now. And this is who I am now. And I need you to let me go. As much as I want to, I can’t live your book anymore."

There are so many references here, so many more ways this movie can apply, and from this point on in the movie I could see more and more of the creator vs. created aspect of the movie. It’s not so much man vs. machine, although feelings (both OS and human) were stepped on from time to time—like when Theodore couldn’t flat out tell Samantha that her A.I. emotions weren’t as valid as his human emotions, or when Samantha more pointedly spoke to Theodore’s inferiority of communicating with and loving only one individual at a time instead of 600+….

But again, beyond the idea that a higher power that can love multiple people just not in the same way, I have found that women have the capacity for much more emotion, much more love, and much more lateral communication than men—not that many of them don’t necessarily meet anywhere near that potential, but let’s not get into that….

What I see more than anything in this movie, and the reason it’s making me want to write is that it’s really fucked up that we can’t all just appreciate everyone in our lives for the time that they are there. I’ve known my ex for a long time—I know a side of her that nobody will ever know. So she wanted to whore around and suggested I did the same… That doesn’t make her any less of a hot air balloon of compassion than I am. I wanted to control the moment and live like we were living forever, but ultimately I pulled the plug on it simply because it wasn’t real enough for me.

My hiatus in my love for writing is “this endless space between the words that I’m finding myself now,” and that’s okay. I can’t wait to get back on the horse and start amalgamating my collective thoughts into words again.

But right now, maybe it’s not just the words that are so spaced out. I am at such a disconnect, I’m breaking those words down into their individual letters, what those letters represented and looked like centuries before their current conventional use. And like Theodore kept saying, “They’re just letters” (I know I’m taking that literally, just go with it). But when you realize the Hers and Hims out there are just as much a part of you as yourself, without being a mere reflection or projection that you contort them to be—when you finally see that each one of us has this annoying ass thing called a free will and there’s nothing you can do to make that any less so—that’s when they become more than letters but words, books, volumes of lives and breaths.

The most impactful word in that movie was inspired and never uttered: pretentious. That was what literally came out of my mouth at the very end of the movie when Amy, Theodore’s good friend from college, laid her head on Theodore’s shoulder and sighed. Theodore had mentioned to Samantha that the thought of her breathing like a human was unnecessary since she didn’t require oxygen. And here it is blowing my mind as if they intended that to happen all along.

I’m what’s known as an analytic paralytic.

I’m not that great with words, but I love crafting them together myself.

I am completely full of shit and I love it, and I am in love with that.

mittromney:

barackobama:

jesus:

mitt romney has a crush on obama pass it on 

omg

…

Two Years Ago - I left the camera on my laptop running, and the radio was always on anytime I left my apartment for a significant amount of time. Both security measures made me feel better about leaving my first own apartment, but the latter was a tip taken from my grandma. My cat, Lucy, was such a naive little thing, and it just fascinated me to look over the videos and watch her react to random noises, dog barks about the complex, and especially when the inspector came in to fix the toilet or water heater. The added soundtrack of jazz and classical music (radio station of choice) with the cat’s head popping up and around made for pure entertainment when checking on Bob the maintenance guy’s room-to-room activity.

The camera consequently caught glimpses of my girlfriend coming in when I was still at work, sometimes with added striptease scenery (often because that’s how she lounged, and other times intentional little surprises for me).

-And while still in the shower, sailing down the sea of reminiscence, I’d made the melancholy connections-

She and I were our first times. And now we don’t even keep in touch.

One night she came home after some extremely subtle red flags (mainly her timing was off in her text responses). We were very close, had known each other and had been good friends for about 6 years before dating. I knew her whereabouts pretty much at all times, and it just wasn’t making sense that her timing and the brevity of texts were what they were. She came home while I was asleep, but I’d woken up. She just slid into her spot on the bed, and I embraced her in the dark. She held my arms firm, and I started to massage her back.

While still lying parallel, I told her things like “I know” and “Don’t be upset—I understand. You can tell me about it when you’re ready.” And to my surprise, but not really (that’s just the way she was), she wanted to talk right away. My suspicions were spot on. 

"I just don’t want you to think I’m dirty." Tears poured onto my forearm. It took everything out of me not to show my disappointment, not to feel it. I held her tighter. Motioned with the touch of my hands for her to face me. (She was having a hard time looking me in the face, even in the dark.) But she turned over and our eyes met. We spent a good 3 minutes communicating with our eyes alone. And I started to cry a little.

In my mind and in my heart, I knew the only thing that could prove to her that she was better off with me, with someone who understands her in her deepest, darkest moments of hurt, yet while being hurt myself, I just received her. Started kissing, more passionately and meaningfully than ever before, and I took off her clothes and received her, as is—perfect to me. And I told that to her. And I believed it, too. I wanted her, not simply because I was already in bed with her, but because I wanted to show her I loved her. I didn’t want her to feel dirty. I, still only having been with her, chose love. This could really turn into something great.

She told me all about the guy, because I’d asked. Even though I didn’t want to hear it, I listened, taking it on full-force. They met at her work—she worked in the fitting room at Target. He flirted, and she wasn’t used to that. She didn’t have that glow about her before—she never had a boyfriend before me. And this guy comes in one day asking where the kettles were for his dog. After coming back a couple more times, he’d come with flowers. Bastard. Really, she was just considering her options without me in the picture, but someone else. Maybe that’s why she didn’t tell me at first.

It’s weird, because I would drive 30-40 minutes out of my way just to have lunch with her, sometimes coming by the fitting room seeing how she was. And one day, while I was doing just that, kettle guy stops by at the same time. And it was so awkward, I just removed myself and stopped responding to her texts. But she had a spare key to my place, and was practically moved in with me. So I let her back into my life after much tears and assurance that nothing like that would ever happen again, I promise…..

While she and I were still together, I’d let the cat out a couple times to explore. Watching her the first time was hilarious, especially when she interacted with the ducks she’d only previously heard quacking from inside the apartment. It was like watching nephews or nieces taste ice cream for the first time, but it was just a stupid cat, so it was okay to make fun of it if you wanted.

A few days before a weeklong trip to Jamaica, I’d let Lucy out one last time. She didn’t come back, so we looked for her every night before the trip to no avail, whistling, calling her name—no Lucy. But we weren’t about to postpone this trip we’d anticipated and planned for months for a stupid cat. So we went, and when we got there found that cats had invaded the island. There were even cats on this secluded little island we boated out to, but we paid no mind because lobster and beach and ocean.

Weeks following our return, we’d heard meowing outside, checked it out with flashlights and concern, thinking it could be Lucy. But wherever it was coming from, it either took off when it saw us or had a really good hiding spot. Those meows turned into low growls, like a cat in heat. My guess is that Lucy got pregnant from another stray, and maybe couldn’t move or be seen because she was full of baby kittens and found refuge in a bush somewhere. For the next month or two, I would throw cat food around outside the apartment, just in case…. So thoughtful.

okay, so a little about myself. i’m that guy who tried social dating sites because, well, come to find out, i don’t do bar scenes.

turns out, i don’t do the social “dating” scene either, since social dating is actually just another term for hooking up. that’s right, i went from Match to Tinder before i realized, um… yeah, not my thing. and apparently not what any of those women had in mind (anything other than actual dating and gentleman behavior from a guy) when they met me.

i guess a lot of girls wanted to talk to me because i’m not boring, i seem nice and safe, and i have a wider vocabulary than “sup” and “hey.”

yeah, the one who went so far as to consider swiping left or right for the lottery in relationships—i’m that guy. i may or may not have taken the phrase “plenty of fish in the sea” too literally from the wise advice of some friends promising i’d “find someone.”

okay, listen… i’m actually impossible on one of those sites. it’s a proven fact, now. it is impossible for a guy to be on there and not be looking strictly for the booty. every girl i’ve met on there was given to that, otherwise they wouldn’t be on there in the first place.

99% of the women on there are either a) flat-out whores, or b) just got out of a long-term relationship and think that whoring around on there is acceptable, as if they are getting back at the men who failed them.

either way, i have an insurmountable desire to prove these women wrong. all but a few thought me to be absolutely insane by offering them a night out of fun without the expectation of sex. in fact, i turned down the sex when subtly offered, took them aside and basically said, “you don’t have to keep doing this to yourself—go home and don’t let another man treat you like you owe him that automatically.”

now, am i the jesus of dating sites and hookup apps for that? far from it. i’ll admit, i messed up once. albeit with a client of mine and not someone from the net, but i screwed up nonetheless and budged under pressure after a tough break-up.

she (my ex) seemed to move on so easily (which turned out to be not so true, after all), and my client wouldn’t leave me alone. once she had my number she wouldn’t stop texting me. if i had no real interest in her personality or intellect, believe me, it wouldn’t have been so tempting. and i had made my mind up that i wasn’t going to do it, ever, under any circumstance—that is, until i’d locked myself out of the office… i told myself i would just sleep on her couch or something, but that’s not what happened.

for the time being, and the time cuddling after, and even the time it took to warm up the car—it seemed to be the cure. i seemed to do something good for myself, something that would make me feel better about myself. but then the reality sunk in, and it was dirty. for about a second it felt kind of daring and sexy to be dirty—but i’m too in touch with reality not to know better.

it didn’t solve anything, and it certainly didn’t make me think about my ex any less.

then randomly one night, this gorgeous blond woman appeared in my car as i was parked alongside the bars on the north side of town. her equally intoxicated friend jumped in the back. improvising, i asked “so where are we going?” and smiled. it took a little navigating and asking the right questions and turning around several times to get a destination out of them, but in the mean time the gal in the front had my head spinning as i calmly enjoyed the drive.

she had asked me for my number, but i stalled, thinking i didn’t want a repeat of the last time. all i had was her name, and i didn’t go in after her, since i don’t do that. i just took off from there and went home.

not three days later i’m “tindering” out of sheer boredom, and her picture and name pop up on the app! part of her was intrigued that i remembered her, that she remembered me, and still wondered why she even got in my car to begin with—so we had some grounds to cover over a nice dinner.

i kindly asked for her number, though she remembers getting “shot down” (a beautiful girl getting shot down by me?) that fateful night. but she gave it to me after some added charm, talked some more, and i picked her up.

she still lives with her dad, so when he answered the door i was delighted to have instinctively shaken his hand and talked to him man-to-man—it left a solid impression on him, to say the least.

the rest of the night, she had stated, she felt like a “princess,” but it all started with her kind comment when she got in my car that night: “you have such a wonderful smile—why don’t you show it in your [Tinder] pictures?” i have to admit, she got me there. those words immediately gave her nonstop princess status the rest of the night.

we laughed. we laughed a lot. we had a night of indulgence. we went to Shula’s. we decided to go to Slippery Noodle Inn, and that’s when i thought things were really looking solid! but on the way there she changed her mind, and i obliged. we ended up going to Starbucks instead.

we still talked a lot, enjoyed one another’s company. laughed some more. didn’t talk about previous relationships. not once. and, when i look back, that’s what defined the night. it was timeless, and we became unstuck from our past lives, in one that was current, with an unforeseen future and everything! and then it ended.

she yawned and i yawned. and it ended.

so i took her back home, umbrella drawn from rooftop to rooftop, as the night about crossed midnight. we embraced—i didn’t go for it. we said bye.

it really was a splendid night. the next day i hadn’t texted her much, but sent a picture from the bathroom, reiterating something i’d said to her the night before. she replied hours later with a colon-parenthesis. it was Super Bowl Sunday, and i was spending it alone at an Irish bar, giving it a day. she seemingly approved. thought we should do another dinner, maybe.

before long it was Monday morning, and her response urged me to act. so i sent her flowers to her place of work. and she liked them. but then the hard truth: she had just gotten out of a long-term relationship. i had never sent flowers to a girl, let alone to a lady.

so i guess i feel a bit shut down today.

i had deleted the Tinder app after she gave me her number. but today i downloaded it again, just to see if she had been back on. “last active one hour ago.”

she claimed she wanted friendship, after i sent her flowers. i wonder how i would have broken it to her, poor lamb, that i only wanted her if her heart was in it. and again, history repeats itself like so many poems by e. e. cummings. and somehow i’m a romantic type again, and somehow i believe there is hope and that i will find love—no, that love will find me.

three weeks ago, i escaped death. again.

the first date i was to have in a good 6 months or so after a rough breakup was interrupted by my car slamming into a telephone pole at 50 miles an hour. everything leading up to that moment, minus perhaps 20 seconds before impact, I remember without question.

a lazy day of maybe picking up around the house a bit, drinking a couple hard ciders washing down a pizza, and a brisk shower before go-time, i was on my way to arrive downtown at six sharp, 20 minute head start. it was a Sunday.

warmed my brand new beauty--Buick Verano Turbo, 6-speed, black--cranking the tan leather drivers seat to high heat (steering wheel, too). i was ready, zipping towards town without hesitation, passing a couple i knew from Facebook walking in the leaves along the road. they looked back in disgust, i could swear. i chuckled to myself.

five minutes from my destination, this rusty black Honda something taunted me, veering too close for comfort around my car, so i shot ahead and passed a car in another lane. the Honda tried to follow suit.

i was first to the left on the three lane main road to downtown, the Honda beater two cars behind me. as i did hundreds of times, i clutched it into first gear, squealing the tires right when it turned green, blowing them away. i was in the zone, 250-horses and all, shifting to second gear before redlining. that's when i felt something--not good.

as the adrenaline shot up into my heart, i got dizzy. i tried breathing in and out, in and out, and maybe even shifted it into third gear, or fourth. but up until i slipped back into consciousness in my hospital bed several hours later, blank--followed by patched layers of sight and sound.

it was like flickering scenes from Law and Order while dozing off on the futon, lying on my back waiting for the officer's condolences, hat off, arms folded, longing sorrow on his face from ambulance to ER. though you tend to dramatize things when a brain injury is involved. the doctors assured him that drinking was not a factor, that there was almost no alcohol in my system. good.

... the last time i was in a serious car accident--6 months prior--it wasn't my fault in the slightest. the intoxicated girl who had hit me head-on was okay, and so was i. instead of calling my girlfriend, i called my dad. good call. i got checked up just in case, and on back home i went, pissed about my totaled new Lancer, but more alive than ever! i survived my first wreck! the next day i borrowed my dad's truck, played some ultimate frisbee, and later raged at a Clutch concert on into the night. got a nicer, newer car within a few days and was ready to move on with my life. 

this time... first week, my tailbone was aching pretty badly and i had to ween myself off the pain medication. week two and a half through week three, i realized my bruised rib, taking a couple more pain meds to get me through that. holiday season without a car, without money or job... this time i could easily say i wasn't as lucky. asking favors from family has its moments. it's not easy for me, being independent for the most part since early college. asking favors of friends--not any easier for sure.

that girl understood. she actually saw me in the hospital. we went on that date the next week, tailbone pain and all. in fact, i've been on two dates since the wreck. and although i'm still unemployed, i'll be able to drive in about a week, so things are looking good. i have options opening up, possible new paths, new jobs--eventually a new car. no real rush in finding new love, but i've ridden this wave with a new kind of grace for the shit that happens in life.

time has opened to me and i'm freshening up on Spanish, as well as writing again. language is a passion of mine, right there with music and cars and adrenaline rushes. you hear of car accidents changing people's lives, ruining them, ending them. if you stick around, you'll learn that every job i've had involved driving, embracing the reality of a potential danger most people can't avoid in their day-to-day. my driving career is over for now--and that's tough for me to accept. but, as Goeth once said, "what is important in life is life, and not the result of life."