Friday, May 06, 2011

From Starfleet Command

Life is but a whisper.
Engage.

Another lovely day in Winnipeg. 20 degrees, zero wind but for a gentle breeze. Out of work early, money in my pocket. Awesome.

I spend a lot of time alone still, have a lot of time to think. Last week, when the Prince married his pretty Princess Kate in a beautiful royal wedding, I remembered watching, vaguely, the wedding of his parents on television. Prince Charles and his lovely Lady Di.

"That was 1981," my Grandmother said to me when I mentioned it.

"1981...hey, wait....was that just ME remembering 30 years ago? What the Hell?" Where have I been all this time, meandering my life away. When you start remembering back more than three decades ago, it's time to start taking what life you have left more seriously, me thinks. I just might have 30 years left to spend living.

Yesterday, thanks to Facebook, I talked to a man I dated 20 years ago. I posted an "old" Guns n' Roses song (old, yeah right...so old. Rocket Queen will never be old). He said:

 ever been sooo high you broke out of a campground while listening to guns & roses ,,, while the poor ppl in next tent site are being nosey and think there has been a murder !! LMFAO ????


Well yes...yes I have...LOL


i often wonder if it would have been easier to calm down and find the EXIT instead of smashing through the entrance gate and jumping the ditch ?? oh well,, the story would not have been as interesting i guess !!


Calm down and find the exit...haha. If we had calmed down and found the exit, we wouldn't be discussing it 20 years later with big smiles on our faces.




We're too old for that shit now, no doubt. But it's still funny to think about and recall from time to time. Those poor people at the campground were scared to death. And so was I when we tore through that gate and jumped the ditch like something out of the Dukes of Hazard. But I didn't let that stop me from enjoying every stoned second of it. Oh my lady PCP, mixed with colored LSD, washed all down with endless beers.


I was 15 years old back then, in 1991. I was crazy and lost and thought I'd either die pretty soon or find my way along somehow and live forever. Either way, I didn't really care, and somewhere along the way I forgot to look for myself. It took twenty more years to find me.


Now here I am. 35 years old, living back at home with my Momma for the first time since the year we broke out of the campground like Beau Duke and Daisy Mae on crack. Since I arrived, three months ago, I've realized a bunch of things, but these two most of all: life is but a whisper. It's over before you know it; and: you have to make yourself happy first, then everyone and everything else just follows along.


I've loved a bunch of people in my life: My mother, my brothers, my first best friend Ehran, my son Jesse, my nephew, and two of my exes. The only person I never loved was me. I've realized that when you don't love yourself, you just end up taking that out on the people you do love, which sounds backwards as fuck when you say it, but it makes sense when you think about it long enough. When you don't love yourself, you have a hard time believing someone else might.


True story.


So I unleashed a whole lot of bullshit on everyone I love, my whole life long. There's nothing I can do about that now, what's done is done. I have no control over the past, but I do have total control over the future (as far as it involves me).


I've managed to make up some of it, with my family, who seem to have forgiven me for not being around these last two decades. Unconditional love is like that: no matter what kind of asshole you are, people will forgive you. And thank god for them, because this time, this time, there was no dragging myself up out of the gutter alone. Not this time.


People who  have known me a long time say that they see a change in me. I see it too. I have two regrets. One I think I can fix, and one I probably can't. But overall, it's good. I'm good. For the first time in a long time I can look myself in the mirror and see a happy face. So much older than she used to be, but smiling just the same. Only two things bring the pout on, but that's another story.


And fuck, I love my hair.







No comments:

Post a Comment