This post is intended to be nothing more than a vent, so that I can clear my mind and feel happier.
My brother graduates high school today. This is nostalgic for me.
This nostalgia has nothing to do with my brother really; it's actually more of a relief that, despite his best efforts, he will nonetheless be a high school graduate. Not that he deserves to be, for he doesn't put forth effort in scholastic pursuits, and I get the impression his teachers have passed him just because they don't want to deal with him anymore. He was voted "Most Dazed and Confused" in his yearbook, a most "doobie-ous" honor if I should say so myself. But oh well, I'm sure he'll figure something out. I can't really blame him for his apathy; growing up where we live, one is prone to viewing life as ceaseless struggle and defeat, and to surrender one's will to chance disguised most devilishly as God. The charade of religion, in retrospect, has been the focus around which this apathy revolves. And it is not a benign apathy. It breeds depression, self-loathing, and failure. And even though by some miracle my brother graduates today, in a larger sense it takes on the appearance of something more tragic than miraculous. Having five years of experience on him, it is easier for me to see the reality of where he is and where he's going than it is for him. Even so, was he blind when I went through all my shit back in the day? Why has he repeated almost all my mistakes?
While my famliy situation is frustrating in a tragic sense, that is not the root of my nostalgia.
Five years ago I graduated high school shortly after falling in love. I have since come to realize that when you're a senior in high school is the ABSOLUTE WORST time in your life to fall in love. Falling in love tends to change all your plans abruptly, and changing plans abruptly when you're a senior is almost guaranteed to fuck up your life. Falling in love when I did fucked up my life, though I don't regret it, for I make it a policy with myself never to regret things. Five years ago my girlfriend was at my graduation. It wasn't too big a deal, as girlfriends are expected to attend graduations, but today thinking about that gives me a deep, sad nostalgia that can't be shaken, for she is now gone.
It's been about a month and a half now, and it is the second time we have broken up, though I am reasonably sure it will be the last. My girlfriend and I grew apart, slowly, ever trying to fool ourselves into believing that initial infatuation could somehow be recaptured. I don't miss her as she is today; I miss her as she was when she watched me graduate five years ago. Five years ago. That puts us before 9/11, folks. I'm 23 years old, and that five years was a good portion of my life.
After today, my brother and I will both have graduated from the city school system, and all the last vestiges of that chapter in my life are evaporating this year. I will go with my family to the beach in a few weeks, and it will most likely be the last time. I realize my childhood is over. I realize it is time to move on. But what now?
I'm 23 years old. Who am I? Where am I going? What am I still doing in this god-forsaken corner of the world? There is nothing tying me down to this place except the obligation I have to my parents to finish college so their money may not have been spent in vain. I feel so utterly out of place at my university. It is a regional university that is lackluster in everything I can think of, but it is cheap and it gives you what you need. The students attending this school are likewise lackluster, and there is nobody I have met who shares my interests. I miss my girlfriend I suppose, but she didn't share my interests either. All my life I have been looking for my niche, but increasingly it seems as though I will have to get out of this fucking place before that happens. And I'm looking at at least a year before I can do that.
I don't feel sorry for myself; any other day I would be quite happy, but that is only because all this sadness has been pushed to the background. I realize things could be worse, but I can't help dwelling on the discrepancy between what I am doing and what I wish I was doing. Yes, all is dependent on choice. Even in circumstances beyond my control, I choose how I react, which bears immeasurably on the outcome. But these choices are occurrences in a process, and like any process, it takes time. Time is a killer. Literally. When a person dies, it is because their "time" came. Well, that is what I'm up against. I have to bear with my situation for as long as it takes, all the while accepting the fact that, even with all the patience and wisdom in the world, it is still possible for everything to fuck up when random fate plays a hand. What, then, is the point?
I have more to write, but I should go to work now.
-------------------- No; truth, being alive, was not halfway between anything. It was only to be found by continuous excursions into either realm, and though proportion is the final secret, to espouse it at the outset is to insure sterility. Only connect...
|