week 4: wild

there have been... several... moments over the years where i stopped and realized that i had moved on to a new chapter in my life. this has not necessarily always been a positive realization.

there were nights when i felt trapped in relationships that made those friday night trip to blockbuster seem like a chore, renting movies i didnt want to see and well aware that there were people within the sound of my voice going out to have good times with friends.

there were nights that i was throwing up after every drink, vaguely wondering if it was blood or the cranberry mixer that was the reason it was so very dark red.

there were nights spent in the company of a woman, someone i loved very much, feeling like for once in my life i was comfortable in my own skin and that my life was exactly the way i imagined it would be at that age.

there were nights that i dont remember so well.

the nights when id walk into the local corner bar and everyone knew me and generally care about how my day had gone, and nights when i had cut myself in a fit of drunken self-loathing, alone in the dark, wondering if i finally managed to do it deep enough this time and watching it congeal in the light from the monitor.

there was the time i ended up somehow in a house party on halloween, on castro street, surrounded by booze, drugs, people making out in line to the bathroom and an episode of girls gone wild being tape in the room facing the street, with nude women hanging out the second story windows grabbing at the beads being thrown up to them.

or the next year where i met a beautiful woman on haight street and we... we spent the night mostly talking about vague nothings but enjoying our stash of wine coolers i had liberated from a party earlier that night, waiting for dawn and for muni to start running again.

the night i locked myself out of my apartment in my boxer shorts at three am because i took a wrong turn and ended up in the garage instead of the bathroom, my roommate being out of town for the week.


and all the nights spent at the Isotope.

each time i remember thinking along the lines of "so this is my life now." sometimes with smiles and other times in tears.

about a year ago i came very close to killing myself in one of the messiest and most painful way i could imagine. i had been saying goodbyes, not in the obvious way, but i was attempting to straighten out as much of the damage i had done before i died. i did tell one friend that all in all i had a good run. that it was okay.

i do think that i have managed to fit alot of... experience, into the years ive lived.

i have had a wild life, and while i never really thought i would make it to thirty - and therefore didnt really make any long term plans - i have come to slowly accept that this next chapter is a gift, time i never expected to have, not to be wasted but used, this time doesnt belong to me in the traditional sense, i guess its like finding a bag of ALOT-SHIT-TON-O'money, you could keep it all for yourself and change your life or use it to change the lives of so many others.

that said, my friday nights have changed over the years, some crazier than others, these days friday nights mean that i get to work on making this blog a collected graphic novel, take a handful of like 10 pills and when that kicks in i can either let my cat sit on my lap and eat my fingers, go out for a cigarette, or take a six pack of diet coke or diet dr pepper with me into the bathroom with a book and a nice warm bath.

and you know what? right now, im really okay with that.