2006-01-08 - 11:47 a.m.
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A year in the life
365.
365 days is all it took.
365 days to pack it all up, move it all out, shove it on a plane, land in Phoenix, unpack everything and live here with her.
365 days is all it took to throw away everything I had built up before - all the plans I had yet to build up, all the opportunities I would eventually pass up and walk away from, all the minor things that used to hum in the background and now remain silent and missed - and build anew.
It's been one year here in Phoenix. Exactly. I woke up a year ago and I was sleeping next to a woman I knew but only sort of, in a city I've seen but only slightly, to start a life I knew would go on but eventually. I was only 366 days sleeping in a bed in New York, the same 4 walls I had slept between for 24 years, the same house I'd lived in for 24 years, the same life I had lived for 24 years. I had no direction with my job, no car, no money to speak of and no strife. I was complacent and lazy and let the world spin beneath my feet as it always does and always will.
And here I am. Here I am a year later -$7,000 in credit card debt, a car that needs $3,300 to work perfectly, a bed that still costs $894, a job that pays only $1900 a month. I'm stressed, I'm usually worn out, my sleep apnea keeps me up and keeps her up, there are pets I've never had before peeing and shitting everywhere, the toils of my job are slowly stripping me of all my dignity and personality and everyone I know that I left behind keeps telling me that they just want me to come back, to come Home.
Home.
I don't know home. I don't really know this as a home and I don't recognize my Home when I return to it because it really isn't my Home anymore. It's their home - my parents and my sister. It's their home - my family and friends. I've long been replaced by a void, replaced a year ago this day and now, the way memory works, they've probably remembered more wihtout than with me. I'm behind the times. I'm back issues. I'm the past shoved in a crate, stacked in your closet or in your garage, dusty and full of cobwebs until one day, you take me out, swing me around, laugh and jump and remember when I was there full time only a few days later to be put back onto the shelf.
This is life.
This is how things work here.
You could never take it all with you. You would have to move into a house to fit everyone you ever knew, have their lives follow along with you, have all their dreams and aspirations match yours for it all to follow you through life. And it wouldn't be the friends. It wouldn't just be the family. You'd have to pack it all. Acquaintances. Enemies. Favorite places to hang out. Restaurants that don't exist in other places. Foods that aren't made in other places. Water and air and nature that are non-existant in other places. How could you do it? How could you bring it all with you and if you did, why? Why would you? There is a world so huge out there that it makes me cry when I think of how little I've seen of it. And it's "small". We consider the world to be soooo small. And it's not. The world is a big, nasty, empty place. The world is not your city. It is not your town. There is a vast stretch of earth out there just waiting to be walked on. There are over 6 billion people waiting to be met. There are 1000+ tongues to speak in. There are foods of every variety you've never tasted and if you have, you've probably tasted an imitation of the real thing. Tell me you've had Chinese food in China and Italian food in Italy and I'll tell you that you still haven't done it right. Think of all the things you've seen and those things are still nothing in comparisson to what's out there.
There's a mountain outside my apartment. I wake everyday to see it, with an antennea on top with red lights to prevent the planes from dying on it. I've never seen a mountain everyday before. And now I don't even notice it. It's background now. I used to marvel at it coming from Long Island, the flattest place in America. The place is a damn sandbar. Not a mountain or even a decent hill on it. And now I have hills. Now I have mountains. Now I have bluffs and buttes and crags and plateaus and I just don't care. That's the trouble with everything as well. When we've gotten what we want, we want something new or we forget what we have.
But while I'll forget from time to time where I am, who I am, what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, I'll always know that in the end, I can always turn around and look back to see where I was, who I was, what I was doing and why I did it. And when I look back a year ago, when I see what I left, I don't mourn for the loss of things. I don't regret moving here because honestly despite my debt, my car, my throat and my job, I'm very happy looking into the eyes of a woman I love every morning and kissing her on the forehead, knowing we've both survived one more day together and get one more chance to spend time together again. And when I do this, I know that at Home, where I came from, they are still doing it too. They are waking up and they are where they want to be, doing what they want to do and one day, maybe down the road some, maybe tomorrow and the worst case never again, we will meet and our days will melt to one, our time will be shared, wheter through the course of a couple of days or for good. I never left my family because I hated them, I never ditched my friends because I didn't want to be around them - I left because there was a whole world out there and I couldn't begin Myself until I left them, until I saw it. And while my home slowly is becoming my Home, I will always turn around and see my first Home, remember my first Home and I will always love my first Home and all I left behind to go into the world and find myself.
Here's to one year and many more.
What did you just say? - What's he gonna say next?
