22.10.18
There's this RDJ quote where he goes "I wouldn't wish my trajectory on anyone, but it's been pretty sweet", and I think about it a lot. Everyone has their journey, and I would never, in a million years recommend that anyone live the way I lived. Ever. But it was my journey and it’s made me who I am and, more importantly, it’s what gave me the strength to to get through the last eighteen months.
I think a lot, now, about where I’ve ended up, and what’s got me here, but I don’t think too much about where I’m going because, well, I never have done. I’ve let my life go along, made the choices I made, and seen how that plays out over the years. Mostly, I end up being amazed that I survived, that I’m still here and still living my life the way I want to live it.
The way I was raised, there was probably never really a choice about living the way I want. I was given a foundation of independence, of being outside societal norms, of finding who you are away from what other people do. There’s a certain inner strength that I was lucky enough to have installed in me, a stubbornness that left me, more often than not, on the outside of groups of people, especially in my teen years.
Which isn’t to say I was always strong and independent and didn’t have weaknesses, if that were true I wouldn’t have done so much cocaine and I wouldn’t have drunk so much alcohol. But even within those hazy years, I was still making the choices I wanted to make. Were they great choices? Eh, debatable. Were they choices that let me get some shit out and move onward through my life? Yeah, they were.
Making excuses has never really been my thing, and it’s even less my thing as I’ve grown older. No one made me do coke, no one made me sneak cheap vodka in my school bag, no one made me quit coke or quit drinking, or made me date musicians, or made me drop out of uni. Those were all things I chose to do, and that’s how life is. My life would be less if I blamed my life choices on other people or outside forces.
Now, eighteen months after my dad’s death, I look back at those months and most of it is hazy. The time only really starts coming into focus around Thanksgiving last year when I was in Boston with my framily. Before that, I know things happened, I know I did so much stuff to fill the time, I know I filled in a lot of damn paperwork, but it’s not tangible. And I’m totally okay with that because it’s how I needed to spend those months.
Thanksgiving pulled things into focus because life needed to move on. We needed to clear the house and sell it. We needed to get on with our lives because that’s how we were raised. Yes, we mourn and miss our dad, but living in a mess of grief and memories wasn’t going to be our life.
And so. Life moves on as it always does. There’s a new city that awaits me and it’s funny because people keep asking me what I’m going to do there, and I take great pleasure in telling them that I don’t know, because I really don’t. That’s half the fun of living. My journey continues.
