Where once we dreamt in vibrancy, we now pray for stillness and quiet. WHere once the world held infinite possibilities, we see the path before us growing clearer with every step. We are bound by every choice we’ve ever made and the illusion of greatness fed to young, eager minds bubbles and tears in the flame of reality. We slip passively into this dulling of our youthful ambitions. Our plans to conquer the world, explore every crevice and achieve the ehights we imagined. Some of us, anyway.

The rest of us glower at our oncoming futures with the stubborn persistence of a toddler three steps from a tantrum. We will not peacefully hand over our ambition. We will not silently join the ranks of morning commuters. No. We will insist until the last possible moment that we are exempt. We are special. We are Going To Be Something. We watch our friends go off to college, then careers. All the while, we insist we are still immune. We are still free, and nothing will ever cage us. We bounce from job to job, with little icnrease in pay or position. Our friends are buying cars and buying housrs and we’re still arguing with the apartment office whether they can fix the A/C on a Saturday.

Then one day it starts to creep up on us. We get irritated at coworkers who don’t take their jobs seriously. We start working towrads promotions and raises and more responsibility. We start looking for better jobs, different opportunities, and we might even find a few. And then there is that unavoidable roadblock: “All applicants must have a 4-year degree.”

In the end, there’s no real way around it. That rather expensive piece of paper opens the door to better career opportunities, quicker promotions, bigger raises and the chance to achieve the highest success possible. Yes, you also pick up some extra knowledge on the way, a few good tips and habit. Maybe even some connections if you work at it a little. We, the stubborn Peter Pans of our respective generations, gradually accept this. We trade in pixie dust and pirates for textbooks and deadlines and begin the long, slow journey to bettering ourselves.

In class, we’re focusing quite a bit on time management and how to be more productive. We’ve made schedules and planned out weeks and listed possible pitfalls we might have. The recurring theme is procrastination and wanting to come home after work and actually do nothing for once. In response to that, everyone says, “Make a schedule! Plan it out!”

Because it was an assignment, I do have a schedule. As of right now, I’m about 15 minutes behind on everything and a majority of the things I’m supposed to do today, I really don’t want to. (Then again, one asks, how am I to properly follow a daily schedule when I can’t even seem to post here when I say I will? Ha.) As I was walking Misha this evening after work (blocked in pink from 5:45 to 6:15 PM), I began thinking about this whole concept of charting out every minute of your life. True, it could make you more productive, but how much time is wasted filling out planners and making lists and trying to remember everything that must be done in a day? Plus, there’s the whole life issue. It happens, and it doesn’t care if you’ve jotted it down or not. So then all your meticulous planning and scheduling and making of lists is thrown out the window because you failed to take into consideration that maybe traffic will be backed up or maybe you forgot to do the dishes the day before (or both, quite possibly, and even though you left work thirty minutes early, you’re still late for the myriad assortment of tasks for the evening).

I suppose the real challenge is practicing moderation in your scheduling, but how do you know where to draw the line? And, if you happen to be a compulsive procrastinator, how do you keep from that fifteen minute break on the couch to rest your feet from turning into an hour and a half of spacing out in front of the TV? How do you suppress that urge to say, “Oh, well, I’ll do that later”? That part I haven’t figured out. Maybe it’s trial and error. Maybe some people are just better suited to having their lives mapped out so precisely.

The real question, though, is: Why do we feel the need to cram so much into one day? Is it really so bad to not know what the evening has in store for you, or take the time to stop and appreciate what’s happening now rather than worrying about where you have to be in fifteen minutes?

Yesterday, in between battling the online library for school and fighting the vacuum cleaner (which can apparently only work when touched by the magic hand of Tophmonster), I took a break and found myself prowling through Myspace. My life at the moment is all about change and taking on new challenges. We’re getting ready to move in a few months, I’m about to start a new job about the same time, and most recently, we’ve both just gone back to school. I suppose it’s only fitting that, any time change is the predominant thing, we start to look back at where we started.

After updating myself on the people current in my life, I started looking back at the ones who used to be there. A majority of them were just classmates. People I knew of more than I actually knew. But a few were close friends. Most of them have kids – two seems to be the most consistent number – and quite a few are married, mostly to other former classmates. Looking over the acquaintances was interesting and a little odd. The last time I saw these people we were all teenagers more consumed with getting drunk or stoned than anything else. Now we’re all in our mid-twenties with the only resemblance being slightly older faces. Seeing my old friends was a little harder, though. I was tempted several times to email a them and see what they’ve been up to. Then I realized I had nothing to say to them. I didn’t have any idea how to explain how I went from the person they knew to the person I am now, and that I didn’t really care about their lives now. We spent most of our time together seven or eight years ago, but now we have no real place in each other’s lives. Honestly, the only high school friends I have any interest in seeing again are dead. That wasn’t a particularly happy realization either, because, of course, being dead, I can’t really expect them to be great correspondents.

But it got me thinking. So many of these people have stayed where we all started. They still have the same friends and go to the same places. I was always the transient one. I couldn’t even stay in one place for the three years I was in high school. I never expected the rest of my life to include this tiny little town in West Virginia, and so far, it doesn’t. I have absolutely no connections in the place I spent most of my childhood and whenever I’m asked where I’m from, I answer without hesitation: Savannah. In a way, it feels like my time in the WV never existed, at least not in any tangible sense. My time there feels like one big waiting room and once my name was called, I walked through those double doors without looking back.

I miss some of it from time to time, but even as a teenager, I had the sense that I wasn’t really supposed to be there. I’d go out with my friends and hang out at the theatre, but I always knew I was biding my time until something better came along. It would be nice to be somewhere I had long term attachments. People who’d seen the progression from rambunctious little kid to odd young man. But it’s not necessary. I have a home, and attachments and commitments, and the fact that most of them only date back two or three years doesn’t make them any less valid than if they’d lasted forever. I’m slowly learning that what we’re taught is expected from us isn’t always realistic, and deviating from that plan doesn’t make us any less worthy. Every person has their own challenges to face and goals to accomplish. There are still things I want to do, things I’ve wanted to do since I was younger, and I’ll admit to a slight amount of jealousy knowing that some of my former classmates have done these things. But I also know there’s still time. I’ve done things none of them will ever imagine being able to do, and that fact doesn’t alter anything. We each have our own lives to live and what is right for one isn’t right for the other. Would I be happier if I’d gone to college right after high school and then leapt into a career? No. For one, if I’d stuck with my original plan, I would’ve been working on my senior year at UNO when Katrina hit. I wouldn’t have met any of the wonderful people in Savannah who I now consider part of my family. I wouldn’t have met the Tophmonster.

Everything that happens, happens because it’s meant to. Sometimes it might hurt. Sometimes we might think it’ll kill us. In the end, we always step through it still more or less intact. It doesn’t matter where we start out, or even where we end. It really is how we get there that makes us who we are meant to be.

Whether we embrace it or run from it, change is inevitable. Every day we’re in a new arena. Funny enough, the things that change us the most are the ones we never really notice.

Two years ago, my life was a mess. I was trying to build a life I didn’t really want while still clinging to one I only wanted because it was familiar. Most of my time was spent drunk, stoned, and hating various aspects of myself. And yet through all this, I was reluctant to move out of my imposed masochism because the alternative was too scary. It required change. Like most things, though, when change is vitally necessary, we have little input on how or when it happens.

Somewhere in the past two years, I’ve turned into someone else. Grown up a bit more, though I realize there’s still a long way to go on that front. If we stop changing, we stagnate. The only way is to move forward. I’m about to start a great job in a city I love with the person I adore most. We’re house-hunting for a place with a nice kitchen and a yard and looking forward to dinner parties instead of going out to the club.

But if I try to pinpoint how that person two years ago turned into the one I am now, I can’t say exactly what changed it all. Yes, there’s been a lot of change in those two years. A few different jobs, moving a couple times, and of course, the lovely introduction of the Tophmonster, and I’m sure all of those things contributed to the change, but the real change happened on a day to day basis. Little things. Small shifts in priorities. My life has settled into a routine where the highlight of my day is beating my boyfriend at Scrabble, and it’s wonderful.

“Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is one of the most common types of progressive dementia. The central feature of DLB is progressive cognitive decline, combined with three additional defining features:  (1) pronounced “fluctuations” in alertness and attention, such as frequent drowsiness, lethargy, lengthy periods of time spent staring into space, or disorganized speech; (2) recurrent visual hallucinations,  and (3) parkinsonian motor symptoms, such as rigidity and the loss of spontaneous movement.   

“Like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, DLB is a neurodegenerative disorder that results in progressive intellectual and functional deterioration.  There are no known therapies to stop or slow the progression of DLB.  Average survival after the time of diagnosis is similar to that in Alzheimer’s disease, about 8 years, with progressively increasing disability.”
National Institute of Neuralogical Disorders and Stroke

I keep thinking: He can’t stand hospitals. He’s going to spend the rest of his life with doctors and nurses and he hates them. Further down the line, he’s going to be even more disoriented and out of it, and he’s going to be living with strangers. He’s going to be scared and unhappy and I can’t protect him. Then I think: I won’t be able to go anywhere until January at the earliest. When we finally get married, he won’t be able to be there, and even if he can be, will he actually know what’s going on? When we have kids, he won’t be there. I spent so much time fighting against him, and now that I want him in my life – now that I need a father – he can’t be there.

My mother the psychologist says, “That’s how these relationships work. Sons fight with their fathers as teenagers. It’s how you assert your manhood.” Most of the time, sons get time to restablish that bond, though. Most of the time they don’t end up at 23 with a father diagnosed with dementia. Yesterday, I cried. I yelled that it wasn’t fair and that I shouldn’t have to deal with this. I complained about not being able to do anything from the other side of the country. My mother the psychologist says, “And what could you do if you were there?” And I say, “I don’t know. Try to fix it even though I can’t. I should be able to fix it.” And she says, “That’s the worse part about being male; you have to fix everything. Right now you have to deal with the emotions.”

Yesterday, I wanted to call my almost-father-in-law, but I didn’t. I wanted him to take my father’s place for a little while and tell me what to do. We don’t have that sort of relationship, though. We probably never will. So I called my father, and for fifteen minutes, I had absolutely no idea what he was saying, but I pretended I did.

In the past 24 hours, I’ve crammed as much information about LBD into my head as possible, and none of it makes me feel any better. Reading through the list of symptoms is like cataloging my father for the past five or six years. My mother says worrying about the death part isn’t the way to go right now, and I’m not. By the time we get to that point, it’ll be… I don’t know. They say that by the time death occurs, it’s already several years after complete cognitive decline. So, essentially, my father will be gone before he’s actually gone. And I don’t know how I feel about that. How do you deal with someone who’s there and not there at the same time? My mom’s doctor friend said the best thing I can do is see him as often as possible, so it’s not so much of a shock. Make the most of the time we have. Which really isn’t a lot of help, considering the distance and the fact that going anywhere from August to January is next to impossible work-wise, and while I would, theoretically, be able to go home over the summer, except this summer. This summer I can’t go anywhere.

I am not ready to be strong for my father. I still need him to be strong for me.

I remember my first trip to the zoo, or rather, the owl cage at the Pittsburgh Zoo. It was this huge (at least from the perspective of a toddler) mesh cage with twisting branches running up to the top and the owls dotting the branches. Except in my memory, it’s a cage full of cats. I only know they’re supposed to be owls because my mother told me they were. Apparently, at that young age, I was convinced these hunched little figures with their tufts of feathers were cats, and the misperception lodged itself permanently in my memory.

My mother raised me primarily on her own. My father was camping trips and visits to the zoo and KennyWood and a a stash of candy in the glovebox. I remember watching through the living room window and running out to meet him when he showed up. It was the highlight of my week, those two or three days with my father. He used to read me fairy tales at night until I fell asleep, and because he couldn’t be there most of the time, he recorded my favourite ones for me to play whenever I wanted. I remember crying while I listened to them and feeling an odd sense of comfort from his voice coming through the speakers. I remember being taught the proper way to hold a saw, and being excited about the prospect of using the big chainsaw one day. Playing with the chemistry set in the basement and watching the different reactions with curious fascination even though they were never the reactions we expected. Learning how to play baseball and basketball and ride a bike. I was wholly my father’s son in those years, and I idolized him. We used to sit in the kitchen for hours talking about everything as he patiently explained different concepts to me and tolerated my never-ending questions.

Then, of course, I became a teenager. I wanted to go out and have fun and be independent, and my father couldn’t keep up with that. He tried in his odd, old-fashioned way to maintain our relationship, but I wasn’t interested. I had a whole world to explore and the doddering old man was just in my way. As he got older, he was around more and more, and decided we needed to do things together. Movies were a good common ground, expecially when the Star Wars trilogy was re-released. It was the first time since I’d been a little boy that I looked forward to my father’s visits. We’d go to the movie then out to dinner, just the two of us. In those brief moments, it was like it used to be. The rest of the week we’d be at each other’s throats, sometimes literally, but that one night it was okay. Eventually that came to an end, as well, and I got even more stubborn and independent and resentful and Dad… Well, he just didn’t get it.

I think about these things over and over now. Running through the timeline again and again. Two years ago, he almost died. He’s always had a knack for getting himself into accidents, particularly with large trucks. But this time, I couldn’t hop in my car and run to the hospital. This time I was five states and eleven hours away with a car of dubious quality and very strapped finances sitting in the back room at work trying to tell a nurse in West Virginia about a man I didn’t know at all. After that began a series of phone calls from Pennsylvania to Georgia, my father confessing the srangest things and me listening and accepting and dealing with them in my own insulated, self-destructive way because I felt I owed him.

There isn’t enough time. That’s the thought surrounding all of this. There isn’t enough time. But for what? My father and I have made our peace, and while I haven’t forgiven myself for everything, he seems to have. I’ve started thinking of it as my “mid-twenties” crisis. A friend of mine argued I couldn’t possibly be having one since I’m nowhere near my mid-twenties, until I pointed out that I’ll be 24 this year, at which point he began calling me old, which was incredibly helpful. A few weeks ago, my father was put into the hospital because he completely lost all of his strength. He’s home again now, after a very lengthy stay in the hospital, but there’s still no explanation for what happened.

I find myself wondering if it’d be any easier if he were 47 or even 57 instead of almost 77. I feel this recurring need for a father figure that’s been popping up ever since his stay over Christmas. Is there some weird phase no one tells you about (like we’re ever really fully informed on these things) in your nearly mid-twenties that it’s absolutely vital for you to have a particular parent? I guess, in a way, what it is is that I’m on a precipice. I’m slowly edging out of the leeway zone between being a teenager and being an adult where you’re supposed to have things figured out a little. Don’t ask me why 25 is that magical number for me; it just is. The problem is, I don’t have a clue. I still feel like I’m 12 and incredibly ill-equipped for being the man I’ll have to be in the relatively near future (thus far, I still insist on referring to myself as “boy”). I worry about being a good husband, a good father, and especially at the moment, a good son. Does anyone ever really know how to be these things or are we all just guessing?

Maybe there will never be the time to say or do all the things we want or hope for, or maybe it’s there, we just don’t make good use of it. It is possible to spend more time worrying about being P.C. than being honest, apologizing for past memories rather than making new ones, running from problems rather than looking for solutions, and wasting energy on fear when the next time, however terrifying it might be, could open a world of possibilities. There is a time for stubbornness and pride, and there is a time for humility and compromise. The latter is far more difficult, of course, but I’ve found that the best things in my life have been far from easy. It’s the struggle that makes us what we are, and it’s through the struggle that we learn who we are.

We’re all aware of the transitions in our lives. We all know that eventually we’ll get older and won’t or can’t do the things we do now. It rarely occurs to us, however, that this aging thing happens every day. That we won’t simply wake up one day twenty or thirty years from now wti hgrey hair and arthritis.

Five years ago, the sole focus of my life was going out, getting high and having fun. I could out-drink everyone I knew and never had a hangover. If anyone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, there was a vague list of things like director, writer, world dominator, but most often I’d simply reply, “I’m Peter Pan. I won’t grow up.” And I believed it. The plan was to stay young forever. I wanted to be a nomad travelling all over the world without commitments or attachments. Everything I owned would fit in my car and I’d stay in one place only when I needed money.

Fast forward back to the present. While I may still stay up until the early hours, going out or doing anything but watching TV after 9 PM is highly unappealing. My vices have been reduced to nicotine and chocolate, and I’ve been completely sober for six months. Instead of being the perpetual traveller, I want a modestly nice house with a backyard, a stable schedule and my idea of a fun night out is dinner at a good restaurant and maybe a movie.

Last night, a friend of ours came back to town for a visit. We went out to dinner, did a little shopping, then started bar hopping. Going out to bars isn’t exactly the thrill of a lifetime when you don’t drink, but it can be fun in the right context. I had a good time catching up with people I hadn’t seen in awhile and dancing with the Tophmonster, but I was glad when 2 AM rolled around and it was time to go home. We ended up getting up around 2:30, rolling into bed a little after four. And when I woke up today, I could definitely feel it. My chest hurts, my entire body aches, and I’d be more than happy to be back upstairs in bed sleeping the rest of the day away, and I stuck to soda last night.

Sometimes I wonder where that Peter Pan me went off to, but I’m not disappointed that he’s gone. I’ve gotten older, maybe a little boring, but I’m happier than I ever was then. There’s this emphasis in our society that growing up and getting older is a bad thing. You have people desperate to cling to their youth, whether it’s through expesnive surgery to look younger, or just going out every night to make themselves feel younger. But what is so bad about maturing a little?  If we spent half the energy on other things that we spend trying to reclaim something that can never be reclaimed… Well, the possibilities are endless. As for me, I’m quite content to grow up and get boring.

I’ve given myself a mission of sorts in an attempt to drag myself out of the ever-increasing drama of retail. I’ve done it before (twice successfully, twice not so much) so one would imagine I’d go into this with a certain amount of confidence and reassurance that it is, indeed, something I’m capable of. Yet there is something about deadlines coming and going and the pressure to achieve a certain word count by a certain time that always reawakens that last minute panic.

The Goal: Complete a novel in 30 days with a minimum of 50,000 words.
The Plan: Chart progress in a prominently displayed area with a requirement of 1,667 words per day, face the inquisition of the Tophmonster and the threat of unpleasant chores if word count is not met.
Current Progress: 6,649 words.
Today’s goal: Reach 8,335 words.

This is the experiment. I used to be quite a voracious writer. I have stacks of old notebooks dating back to when I was 12 or so, every one filled to the brim with phrases, paragraphs, random scenes, snippets of this and that. If you go through some of them and pull out just the right passages, you can actually create an entire, chronological piece. You won’t find a single complete work in any one notebook. This is the way my mind works. I scatter things. Through the courses of various major life changes and quite a few more mundane ones, however, I’ve completely cut off that aspect of myself. At one point, I even convinced myself I had to rely on another person to create something beautiful, which we did, but it wasn’t the right story. Now it’s time for me to stand up on my own two feet and tell the story that should have been told in the first place.

Writing for me is not only a hobby of sorts, but it’s a way to look at myself objectively, in a manner of speaking. Of course there’s always a certain amount of real life filtering into characters and events, but beyond that into style, vocabulary, imagery, metaphor. I’ve found it’s an easy way to plot my own changes and development. Not so long ago, it also helped me realize how far I’ve moved away from certain things in my past. And I suppose, in a way, that’s the real experiment. Sometimes we all need tangible evidence that an era has ended. Words are loose and fragile, actions subject to interpretation, but objects are symbolic. This is why we treasure otherwise worthless objects, why we spend hours agonizing over just the right ring for that special someone, why we collect and horde without ever realizing that’s what we’re doing. I have entire cedar chest of random things my mother collected, some of them I know the reasoning behind; most I don’t. Now it also has some of my contributions and some day I’ll give it to my child and he’ll do the same. Because those things represent a phase of life, and there is power in that symbolism.

I know what you’re thinking. How did we get from writing a novel in one month to object symbolism? Everything is connected one way or another. We all go through transitions in life, from one step to the next. We only pay attention to the big ones – births, weddings, funerals, etc. – but sometimes the little ones have just as much affect. We go through our lives handing out pieces of ourselves to various people – friends, family, old lovers – and every time we leave one of them, we leave that piece of ourselves with them. In the past, I’ve given bits of myself out far too easily, but I’ve since learned it’s much better to save them for someone who knows how to care for them properly. I’m in the process of closing the book on a part of my life I’ve outgrown and opening the page of something exciting and beautiful and meaningful, and to do that I have to reclaim myself entirely. Writing this novel is part of that, silly as it may seem, but in the end, it will stand as a reflection of my life right now. It’s always a little fun to look back at things like that.

Fear is the new drug. We feed it to our children. We share it with our friends. With take it with our morning coffee and right before we tuck ourselves in at night. We allow it to consume as and we allow it to control us. We us it as a barrier, an excuse and a rationalization.

We fear change.
We fear routine.
We fear chaos.
We fear structure.
We fear conformity.
We fear abnormality.
We fear love.
We fear anger.
We fear each other and we fear ourselves.

We spend so much time running from what’s out there simply because we’re afraid, and then we look back and regret never taking the chance. We lash out in violence and anger because we’re afraid, and then we use that fear as justification for our actions like that somehow makes it okay. Isn’t it better to face our fears and conquer them rther than let them conquer us? Isn’t it better to attempt forgiveness, acceptance and love rather than dwell in judgment, condemnation and hate – not only towards others, but towards ourselves as well?

I’m afraid my life won’t have meaning. I’m afraid I won’t be understood. I’m afraid I won’t be equal. I’m afraid of knives, scissors and anything sharp. I’m afraid of being hurt and not being perfect. I’m afraid of people.

What are you afraid of?

Each of us has something we are meant to do. Some goal we can’t stop thinking about no matter what happens or where we go in life. Maybe it’s to be the president one day, or travel the world, or find a cure for cancer, or become an artist, or some almalgamation of all those things. Whatever it is, it follows us. Haunts us. Nags us to remember that while we may be doing just fine wherever we are currently, there’s still some unfinished business we have to resolve before the curtain call. Some, of course, pursue this urge right off the bat. They don’t go after the traditional wants of financial security and corporate employment, nice house, etc. There are other, of course, who don’t pursue it at all. The dream sits there, year after year, burrowing a hole in them until they’re sitting on the back porch with their grandchildren saying, “I wish I’d only tried.”

And then, of course, there are those of us who started out going after the dream, then got distracted somewhere along the line. You took that job just to pay the bills for right now and it ended up lasting a little more than temporary. Then you got a new job that paid better and you thought might be an improvement, but you had to work shitty hours. And on and on and on until the next thing you know, it’s five years later. You’re not the wide-eyed teenager who thought anything was possible anymore. Your tired and all your muscles ache and you can’t imagine why you put off what you love for so long. There’s nothing really wrong with your life now; you’ve got an okay job, you’re doing okay financially, but there’s something missing. You still want more.

The hardest thing in the world is to step away from that nice, safe, okay world and do something bigger. Then again, nothing worth anything is ever easy. Maybe it’s all right to gamble financial security, two cars, a three-storey house and a comfortable job to actually make a difference. We’ll see.