This ended up being pretty long, but it's definitely a truncated version of what life is to me...
My childhood was fairly happy, and quite sheltered, and I grew up afraid of every goddamn thing. I continued to be afraid of everything until around the age of 24. I dropped in and out of college several times, never lived more than a 30-minute drive from my parents, rarely went on dates or even talked to girls, and then only if they talked to me first (I was a virgin, to boot), maintained low-paying, no-future jobs like pizza delivery and retail. I was drifting through my life without any direction or motivation, all the while wishing like hell that I had a girlfriend to help ease my suffering (or whatever kind of dumb shit I thought back then).
On October 3, 2001, at the age of 24-and-a-half, I experienced a rebirth of sorts after finishing the Twin Peaks series for the first time. I got super-blazed and watched episodes 27, 28, and 29 all in a row, then went to sleep with my mind fairly blown (as you might imagine). I woke up 5 hours later because I had to be at work at noon. I lived with my parents at the time, and had a 30-minute drive, about half of which is on country roads through small towns and farmland, with sizable chunks of forest here and there.
It was a gorgeous fall day - partly cloudy, light jacket weather (my favorite kind of daytime weather) and at some point on the drive, I began to notice the sheer beauty in everything around me. All those same houses and fields and trees that I saw at least 5 days a week appeared brand new to me. The colors were more vivid, the smells were sweeter, and the whole thing was too "something" for words. (I should mention that at this point, I was just over six years away from my first trip, but my first trip reminded me of this feeling, only more intense.)
I began to cry, just a little, at the nameless heaviness of the experience, then I smiled, probably bigger than I'd smiled since I was 4 years old, and I continued to smile, almost non-stop, for at least 2 days, and I began to feel better about myself, and about life. And although I still had no real direction or motivation, I began to feel less nervous about everything, and I began, just a little, to appreciate the perks of being alone - that is to say, of not having a girlfriend. For the first time in my life, I started to seriously think about moving away from my hometown. I was considering Seattle because I had a friend there, because it sounded like a cool place to live, and because I'd recently finished watching Twin Peaks.
After visiting my friend in Seattle I'd pretty much made up my mind, and then I met a girl at a friend's wedding - I was the best man, she was a bridesmaid - and we really hit it off. She was easy to talk to, and there was definitely some chemistry. The catch was that she lived in Austin, Texas. I visited her there, and decided to move to Austin instead. About a year after moving there, I began to make a series of fairly stupid decisions that culminated in me getting married to a different, younger, sexier girl in January 2005, at the age of 27.
A year-and-a-half later, I was moving back to my hometown, leaving the cheating whore in Austin with her new boyfriend. Soon after I moved back, in a daze from my whirlwind marriage, I got myself mixed up with a girl who turned out to be way too fast for my love, and that spark was diffused as fast as it was ignited. On January 11, 2007, I decided that, whether I wanted to or not, I had to be alone, because women were evil whores sent from the darkest depths of whatever kind of hell you might imagine with the sole purpose of taking the souls of the hapless fools who fall prey to their wicked clutch.
Two days later, I decided to call a girl I'd met through that fast-ass girl who'd just crapped on my heart. This new girl and I really hit it off...in fact, she kinda reminded me of the girl I'd moved to Austin for, only better. The catch was that she was planning to move to Seattle of all places, and in less than two months. She had in fact made her plans right around the time she and I first met, the previous October, choosing Seattle because it sounded like a cool place to live. We hung out for about a week, then I made things awkward in that way that I do, and then she left, and I was sad. We've since become friends, exchanging hand-written letters and hand-made gifts on a fairly regular basis.
Now, at the age of 30, for the first time since I began to notice girls, I'm completely happy being alone, and thanks to self-reflection, meditation, Bill Hicks, psychedelics, (and, I suppose, to Twin Peaks), I'm finally beginning to develop both direction and motivation, and I'm finally beginning to appreciate and enjoy life for what it is: one ride in the amusement park of the cosmos.
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