The house is a quiet, empty mess this afternoon. All of the books, boxes and furniture were picked up yesterday by the PODS drivers, and all that’s left in the house is an air mattress, our iMac, some clothes and a bunch of trash and old junky furniture that we are throwing away. Our container of belongings started its journey west just this morning. Ours doesn’t begin for four more days. The way the world swirled around us these last couple of months makes today feel like the eye of a huge storm.

The old home office. This used to be my favorite room in the house, but right now it’s pretty empty and sad.

As I was clearing out my cubicle at work yesterday afternoon, I got the text from my husband that the container had been picked up, and was driven off to our new home. By then I had already invited my coworkers to strip the valuables from my area (bulletin board, shelving, bookcases, printers, etc.) and I was sitting in my green chair in front of my computer at my desk for the last time. But it didn’t look like mine anymore. And it was right then that everything became very real for me.

We went out for drinks after work and a few of my coworkers were there, as well as some cherished friends who came out just to see us. And I was just as surprised by who came, as I was about who didn’t show up. There was a moment or two of absolute irony as I looked around me and saw some friends whom I’d had disconnected with some years ago. They were here. But then, some whom I had taken for granted would want to see Shawn and me for the last time before we left, they were absent. I have more to think on this, but it was a strange dichotomy that left me feeling both disappointed and…sadly, rather unsurprised.

These last few days are filled with awkward goodbyes. Goodbye is something I have never handled well. Many of my biggest goodbyes have been left unsaid. My mother and my father, for instance. My grandmother too. As a result I often show the most inappropriate emotional response while in the moment. I giggle, crack jokes, pull away from the teary hug just a little too early. I generally don’t cry, but leave the other person a mess while I remain stoic and uncomfortable. In a way it seems much worse than just letting myself feel sad in the moment.

I dunno. Crying by myself later in the car just seems so much more appropriate. 🙂

We have four more days until we take off for our big drive. I am in a holding pattern of boredom, unhealthy food and cleaning. I’m sluggish, I don’t feel much like running, and I can’t sleep past 6am. The dog is restless. So am I. I’m writing this blog post right now because I literally can’t get myself motivated to do anything else. I know it’ll be over soon, though. The “goodbye New England” phase will be through, and then we will finally be able to look forward to the “Welcome Home” feeling instead.

I’ve already planned out our stops along the drive. Ohio, Nebraska, Colorado and Nevada. I’m excited to see the progression of changes from one state to another, from ocean to trees to flat land to corn fields to mountains to desert, then to ocean again. I’ve seen very few places in the U.S. I’ll be glad to say I’ve experienced this journey, even if I am just driving through without really stopping.

Shawn and I are already talking about what we’ll do when we arrive. Shop for new furniture to replace what wouldn’t fit through doorways or inside the container. Drive down to Mission Beach and buy ourselves a carne asada burrito from one of the taco stands. Have drinks with our newly local friends. Get California driver’s licenses.

And I’ve already got a few plans of my own. I can’t wait to get my feet onto some trails out there. I’m saving a bunch of reviews I need to write, because I want them to be from my new San Diego perspective. I want to finally meet Vanessa and Shacky, and their adorable dog Ginger. I want to buy myself a bike for cross-training and errands, and a hammock for relaxing afternoons.

I can’t wait to find out what I’ll love about San Diego. I want to smell the air in October and know if it’s anything like the fall air in New England. I want to relish in a winter without snow. Drive 15 minutes to the ocean.

Right now my life is at a complete standstill, and full of nothing but potential. This is the feeling of starting over. And it feels fine.

Click here to read Part 1

Well I survived that night, and the next morning I went to school with those bruises on my face. But nobody really took notice, they probably just figured I’d lost another fight with one of the other female students. Go figure, all the people who wanted to hurt me, and I never learned how to fight.

In case it wasn’t already obvious, I really hated going to public school. I was used to my small class of kids who would at least get in trouble when they called me Mount Killaminjaro. Despite my friendly demeanor and my numerous attempts to latch on to anyone willing to talk to me, by the end of the year I hadn’t even made a single friend. Looking back on that school year now, I frankly don’t know how I made it through. I sat by myself at lunch every day, and tried not to piss anyone off. It sucked.

And even though I told the guidance counselor at my entrance interview that I fully intended to go to college, there was no evidence of that in my grades. I went from being a bright, A-B student to failing out of two classes and barely passing the rest. But thankfully, public school didn’t have to last much longer for me anyway.

You see, obesity and early-onset heart disease runs in my family, especially on the male side. Here is a good place to mention that by this point in time, my father had already suffered his first heart attack when he was 33 years old. No, that’s not a typo. I was twelve years old then, and he scared the living shit out of me. He scared me even more a few years later when he’d been arrested one too many times for DUI and went to jail for two months, awaiting trial. Because he was raising two kids on his own, they let him come back with an ankle brace and for several months he was only allowed to leave the house for work.

My father put a lot of fear into me. His lifestyle was so obviously reckless, even to me, that it seemed I was always waiting for something really bad to happen to him.

But nothing, not the threat of jail or of death, ever scared my father. Never stopped him from smoking two packs a day, drinking, snorting and living his life the way he wanted to. Not even the responsibility of raising two children.

Or maybe he really just thought that nothing could ever happen to him. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

On September 26th, 1994, during a late-night hockey game, the last bump of cocaine he’ll ever snort still highlighting his veins, my father suffered a massive coronary and died. He went down right on the ice at the Wallace Civic Center. Skates, goalie pads, helmet and all.

I awoke to the sound of the phone ringing that night, and answered it. It was someone from the local hospital, but she wouldn’t give me any information. But fate was merciful, because my grandfather and his partner Marge had been staying over that night, and were able to talk to them. They both disappeared from the house without telling me what was going on. A few hours later they came home to tell my brother and I that we no longer had any parents to take care of us.

That was the second time I saw my grandfather cry.

Soon after that we began the game titled “Who’s Going to Take In the Kids?” It was a fancifully demoralizing game of tossing the ball back and forth between this family member and that. My grandfather was in his sixties, retired and too feeble from his own struggle with heart disease to be taking on two teenagers. My father’s sister and brother-in-law were my Godparents, and they had a great big house out in the country for themselves and their three daughters. They were very well-off and financially able to take us in, but they weren’t about to make any alterations to their lifestyle just because my father decided to die so much younger than planned. The sibling rivalry between them was never more apparent to me than then.

For a week I stayed with an aunt from my mother’s side whom I’d never met before, and her daughter who was exactly my age and went to my high school. I hadn’t known before that she was my cousin, but now I was potentially moving into her bedroom and she understandably did not like it.

I think at that point it had become clear to my grandfather that we should be taken out of public high school. He knew that I was sneaking out at night, skipping school and getting bad grades. I had dyed my hair jet black and shaved parts of it down to my scalp. I wore gobs of black eyeliner and shapeless clothing that would have been baggy on a 200-pound man. I was headed straight into the cesspool my parents lived in before me, complete with abusive boyfriends, teen pregnancy and a lifetime career as a night-time gas station clerk. And if nothing else, at least he knew better than to send me there.

Instead he sent me to my Aunt Pauline’s house. Aunt Pauline was his brother’s wife, but his brother had died back in 1978, in his early 40’s (heart disease, shocker). All their kids were grown now, so Pauline had a giant Victorian house all to herself, located less than half a mile from the Catholic High School.

Pauline was well into her 60’s then, full of caffeine and tough as a bull whip. She was barely tall enough to ride the adult rollercoaster, but as soon as we moved in she put a noose on us so tightly that we could barely breathe. She wanted us to focus on academics and become upstanding members of society. But because she had heard the story of our dad’s parenting style from my grandfather (who has an all too familiar penchant for “remembering big”), she went totally overboard with the regulations.

She liked to call it the “thumbs down” approach.

First, she had our grandfather give away our dog. Then she took away the televisions we both had in our previous bedrooms and forbade us from spending time upstairs, something most teenagers usually do to be alone. We couldn’t talk on the telephone for more than 15 minutes a night and our calls were monitored. I wasn’t allowed to go out more than two nights per week during the school year, and working late at my part-time job counted as a night out. I had to sign up for as many honors classes as I was accepted into, and if I didn’t make the Dean’s List (all A’s and B’s) I was grounded until the next report cards came in. I couldn’t have a boyfriend until I was 16, but once I turned 16 I wasn’t allowed to have a boyfriend if I was cheering that semester. The way she put it, I didn’t have time for more than one “extra-curricular activity.”

She meant well, she was the best parental figure I ever had – but I didn’t like it even one bit. Naturally, we fought a lot. She sent me to a psychologist who ended up telling me I was a surprisingly well-adjusted teenager…and hinted that I should try to go to college in another state.

So I did. College was fun. I caused a lot of trouble and skipped classes on my own dime (which I still haven’t fully paid back yet). I did get through school in four years though, and with fairly good grades to boot.

It wasn’t until after college was over that I really had to face my mother again. Over the course of my teen years she had popped in once or twice, sure. Once she had a three year old child with her, Bo, who was taken away from her by Social Services and later adopted. Lucky kid. Another time she came to watch me cheer at a high school basketball game. It was weird.

My gorgeous mother.

But when I was an adult I got curious about her. I wanted to get to know her, I wanted to get over being angry with her. After a few strange visits, introducing her to my boyfriend or going out for dinner, it became clear to me that my mother was even more lost than my dad ever was. She was impossible to dig into – it was like she had a pane of glass covering her body. Nobody got inside.

Eventually I gave up trying to figure her out and continued on with my life. Then a few days after my 31st birthday, she died too. Of cervical cancer. I’d go into more detail, but I already wrote about it here.

And then there was just me.

Yeah, you’re probably thinking “that’s not true, you’ve got your brother.” But unfortunately, I do not. He never grew out of whatever it was that made him enjoy watching our dad kick my ass over the Kool-Aid he spilled on the floor. When I went to college he stole all of the jewelry from my bedroom and gave it away to some girls in his class. Then, after pushing our aunt across the kitchen floor, he ended up in a foster home. And then another. And then another, until he turned 18, dropped out of school (he was only a Junior, since he’d repeated 4th grade) and proceeded to wreak enough havoc on the state of Massachusetts that he still has warrants out for his arrest if he ever returns.

He served some time in Georgia for raiding a pharmacy for Oxy. Then he moved to upstate New York, where he still resides. I’m not sure where or how he lives, only that he repudiates the idea of working for a living and prefers living off “the land.” Which probably means he grows, smokes and sells a whole lot of weed.

Either way, he and I still get along like cats and dragons. We just do not understand each other. He blames me for our shitty upbringing, and I stay the hell out of his way. I check up on him every month or so on Facebook, just to make sure he’s still alive and kicking. And then I mosey on before he has the chance to ask me for money or remember how much he loathes my elitist, working-for-the-man, sell-out ways.

Meanwhile, I learned that I have a strong eye for design, and an even stronger capacity for writing. I’ve been admonished with compliments, awards and even some cash for my writing, and I managed to put my college degree to use, by scoring a full-time job as a designer.

I also love to run. And while I’m no Scott Jurek (heck, I’m not even fast enough to pace him during his 130th mile at Badwater), I still can run farther than a majority of the American population, so that’s something. And maybe I have something else in common with Jurek. With Mark Twain. And that is this: my childhood royally sucked. And I think those guys would agree with me when I tell you that I wouldn’t change a thing about it (well, maybe I would take back that ridiculous house party. And the black hair dye). Know why? Because it taught me about being tough, about sticking things out and about the art of bouncing back, more than it ever did make me cry.

I don’t usually tell people this story, either. In fact, an old friend I’ve known since 4th grade, someone I knew through most of the bad days, was utterly shocked when she read the first part of this post. She didn’t know about everything, and I never even thought to tell her. Why not? Well, you might think that I don’t tell people because I’m ashamed, or because it’s too sad for me to think about. But it’s neither of those things. I don’t talk about it with people because it’s not my life. Not now, anyway. It’s the story of the child I started out as, but it’s not the story of who I am today. It’s not the story of my future. That sad, sorry tale is what I see when I look backward. But I’m not the kind of person who sees any point in looking backward.

I am the kind of person who is ever moving forward, moving faster and faster toward the dawn of my future. Like my friend Vanessa once wrote, it’s just one foot in front of the other…forever. I think that’s probably my favorite phrase in the English language. And I especially like that it was written about an ultramarathon.

I suppose in some way my life has always been like an ultra (or perhaps it was always preparing me for one?). If you make it through the rough spots, the unbearable lows and the back-breaking hills, there’s nothing but glory at the end. Glory to last the rest of your life.

I mean heck, maybe that’s why I love running so much.

now I’ve seen both my parents
play out the hands they were dealt
and as each year goes by
i know more about how my father must have felt

night falls like people into love
we generate our own light
to compensate
for the lack of light from above

and every time we fight
a cold wind blows our way
but we can learn like the trees
how to bend
how to sway and say

I think I understand
what all this fighting was for
and I just want you to understand
that I’m not angry anymore
no, I’m not angry anymore

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There is something I have always wondered about life: why is it that, throughout history, some of the brightest, strongest and most talented people alive (and some I know personally) so often arrive at success only after a series of brutally traumatic early life struggles? What makes it possible for these people to overcome such dire obstacles? Is it their very struggles that cause them to become so talented?

In school I always excelled in English and writing. I loved to read and write, as I do today. During one year in elementary school, each of us had to write a paper on a historical author. I chose Mark Twain because I happened to be reading Huckleberry Finn at the time. While researching his biography for the term paper, I realized that he went through this absolute monster of a life before becoming the epic writer whose stories we still enjoy. Four of his six siblings died as children, and his father died when he was eleven. Then, his close brother died as a young adult in a steamboat accident, for which Twain always blamed himself. And that was just the first half of his life.

Fascinated, I started to examine the early lives of other brilliant historical figures and found that many of them also had some pretty sad beginnings. Eventually what I learned was enough to form a theory in my mind, that those of us who are cursed with a rough and tragic childhood are thereby given the gift of learning how to endure, persevere and gather insight more aptly than most regular, well-adjusted people ever do.

Lately as I’ve been busy living the course of my adult life, I haven’t thought much more about that theory. But then last week I started reading Scott Jurek’s memoir “Eat and Run“, a story about how his early life prepared him for the triumphs of his running career, and it has reintroduced me to my original wonder and awe at the strength of those with unusually harsh childhoods.

Like myself.

Similar to Scott Jurek, Mark Twain and many others I know and admire, a huge chunk of my life has been downright tragic. And like them, I have been granted the gifts of profound insight, inner strength and creativity. Then again, it was a gift I had the choice to either recognize and take advantage of, or leave behind. My younger brother and I were both given this choice, and the years since have shown how differently we have each perceived it. Sometimes, like Twain, I blame myself. But that’s a story for another  time.

But now I will tell you, in a few truncated parts, the story of how it all began for me.

I arrived to this world by inconvenient, if not sadly commonplace circumstances. My mother and father were dumb, wild and barely out of high school when they fell pregnant with me. They weren’t really serious about marriage or each other, they had no money and when my dad’s father found out, he ordered my mother to go get an abortion.

My grandfather, having none of it.

They didn’t listen to him, but having me around didn’t make their lives any better, either. Both of my parents loved to party and get high, but my mother was into it more. They got married a few months after I was born, and had barely given birth to their second child before their loud, cocaine-clouded fights attracted police officers to the house on reports of domestic abuse and public intoxication. Soon after, my mother decided to head for the hills and leave us all behind. She moved to Florida and I didn’t see her again until I was a teenager.

By then I was almost four and my brother hadn’t even celebrated his first birthday. My father needed help with us so we moved in with my paternal grandparents.

Just the three of us.

My dad and grandfather were a volatile pair; they fought ceaselessly, and sometimes we would be caught in the middle of the arguments. I remember once being dragged out of a dead sleep at 3 a.m., to be told that we were getting thrown out of the house. There was clothing and a mattress lying out on the lawn and my father was punching walls. The only thing that could settle the two men down was my grandmother. She was always so soft-spoken, but reasonable enough to keep them from killing each other for one more day. But when she wasn’t around, my grandfather often took his stresses with my father out on us. If I didn’t clean my room to his satisfaction he would grab my hair by the nape of my neck and toss me down the hallway toward my room to go fix it.

When I was nine, my grandmother died of a pulmonary embolism. My six year old brother was the one who found her body, naked in the bath with the cordless phone receiver in her hand. That was the first time I ever saw my grandfather cry, and it terrified me even more than losing the only maternal figure I had left.

My grammy and grampa, back in the good old days.

Without my grandmother around to calm the angry tides, the fighting became unbearable. Eventually my grandpa no longer wanted to live in the house among the sad memories of his lost wife, and knowing that my dad had no savings, he gave the house to us and moved out. Now we were on our own.

Things just got worse for me in school as well as at home, after that. Without my grandmother around for me as a guiding motherly figure, my grades went down steadily, along with my self-esteem. I became overweight and my classmates routinely made fun of me for it. My father didn’t allow me to join the cheerleading squad because, as he told me, nobody likes a fat cheerleader. But he also wouldn’t let me join a street hockey team like my brother, because he didn’t think girls should play boy sports. However, I was still expected to find a way to lose the extra weight, even though we were getting our dinner at McDonald’s three times a week.

Our little house on Mechanic Street.

In addition to the daily brow-beating I would receive plenty of real beatings, too. At age 11 I learned how to make my father’s White Russians, and learned how to drive his motorboat, on the occasions when we were out on the lake and he had gotten himself too drunk to get it back to shore safely. Eventually I became fully responsible for keeping the house, doing laundry and taking care of my brother while dad was at work, playing hockey, out getting hammered or away for the weekend with one of his many girlfriends. If he came home to a messy house or a hungry son, I would pay for it handsomely.

My brother and I, before he learned how to milk the brother-sister inequality.

Obviously, my brother was spoiled and favored by our father. But he also had ADHD, and I believe, a touch of bipolar disorder. After awhile he caught on that he could get away with a lot more than I could, so he would play Nintendo all day while I picked up after him. And then about twenty minutes before our father was due home he would make a disaster out of the house, just so he could watch me get slapped around with a satisfied grin on his face.

Over time my father got drunker and more lost to the real world. He kept his day job at G.E. without much of a problem, but mostly because my grandfather worked there and would straighten him out when needed. He made good money too, but he would spend it all on booze, dope and hockey. One night when I was about 14, he came home after getting trashed at the bar and was moving about so loudly that he woke me up. When I came out of my room the house was filled with smoke, all the way down to the hallway where the fire alarms had been disconnected years before. In his stupor, my father had put a dry pot on the stove at high heat, with a frozen package of meat inside it. The pot was on fire now, the flames rising less than two feet from the ceiling. And there was my blitzed father in the living room, busy tripping over himself and giggling like a school girl. I screamed and cried for his attention, but he was too out of it to help. Finally I ran into the kitchen, lifted the burning pot off the stove and doused it under the sink, lucky as hell that there was no oil in it. By the time I was able to put out the fire and open all of the windows he had passed out halfway on his bed, fully dressed, both feet still on the floor. My brother and I sat outside on the swing-set for the rest of the night, because the house was too smokey to breathe.

When I was high school age, my father could no longer afford to send me to Catholic school, where I had been sent by my grandmother to avoid the terrible public schools in the area. A newbie and a Freshman at Leominster High, I was routinely beat up by tough girls who interpreted my terrified quietness as Catholic school snobbery. One morning I came to school and my locker had been spray-painted with the words “TRISHA IS A SLUT.” This was because I had unknowingly sat next to someone’s boyfriend on the bus to school the day before.

No doubt, all of that was a terrific recipe for my upcoming teenage rebellion.

With nobody else to accept me at school or at home, I made friends with the kids from the local projects about a mile from our house. These kids’ parents were absent enough that they would easily get away with every kind of bad behavior under the sun. They stole cigarettes from the corner store, smoked pot, drank their parents’ liquor and stayed out late without repercussions. Not surprisingly, I wanted to do all those things too. I would walk up there after school to hang out with them until it got dark, and then I would sneak out of my bedroom window a few times a week to cause trouble all night. Then I would skip school the following day and forge my dad’s signature on school paperwork.

And things kept getting worse as my rambunctious teenage years ensued. My father arrived home earlier than expected a few times, and caught me with boys in the house. He would chase them out the door, hurling death threats at them. One time the police had to call him home from a vacation with his girlfriend of the month, when they arrived to answer a public disturbance call. I had been hosting a 30-person house party that had gotten completely out of control. There were people on the roof throwing snowballs at cars, somebody had put my dog into the oven, and my father’s truck had gone missing for almost two hours.

When my dad got home that night and the police officers left, my father beat me so hard that he left bruises all over my face. After his rage lulled he made me get into the car with him. The way he was driving (drunk) made me fear that he meant to kill us both. But he didn’t kill us. He just didn’t want me to run away from home while he was out at the liquor store buying more booze.

Click here to read Part 2

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What’s so wrong about always seeing life like this?

“Yeah, soon I’m going to have to become a REAL adult.”

This is a sentence I overheard the other day from someone several years younger than I, during a group conversation about homeownership. Because I know the speaker, I was able to safely assume he was also referring to things like marriage, childrearing and owning a BJ’s shopping card. I didn’t say it out loud, but my initial reaction was, “Why? Why do you have to do that?”

The saddest part is that the comment was uttered with a tone of trepidation. Foreboding, even. Like it was something he knew he had to do, but just didn’t want to yet. Truth is, just about all of us risk get sucked into that “you must do this” mentality once we become adults. We get the sense from others that if we do all of these seemingly responsible things that we are expected to do, then we will be somehow rewarded later on. But this reward we are seeking, what is it really? Is it the approval we gain by other adults or by our parents? Is it the reward of being seen as “responsible”? I’m really not sure…because it’s certainly nothing tangible, from what I can tell.

‘We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.’
– Joseph Campbell

Leaving that unanswerable question aside, what does a “responsible adult” look like, anyway? What makes buying a home more responsible than renting? What makes staying in a job we hate more responsible than making less money at a fun job or doing freelance work? Why are we considered more “adult-like” if we have children and save for their educations, rather than saving for vacations or retirement homes with our beloved spouses?

‘Life is too important to be taken seriously.’
-Oscar Wilde

And, more disconcertingly, why do we make our life decisions based on what other people will think of us? Why does what we think of ourselves matter so little by comparison?

‘This above all, to thine own self be true.’
-William Shakespeare

In my travels I have watched well-educated people destroy their lives making decisions based solely on what they want others to think of them. I’ve seen people live miserably unhappy existences in an effort to appear wealthy, well-dressed and successful, stay in a loveless marriage to circumvent the appearance of failing at something, and even have more children than they wanted just to satiate a family member. It’s one thing to make seemingly reckless decisions in order to enhance your eventual happiness, but to do so just to augment another’s opinion of you, and thereby decrease your own happiness…well, that’s just downright irresponsible!

‘To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.’
-Theodore H. White

In my ripe old age of 33, I have come to realize that the most responsible “adult” decisions I have ever made have turned out to be mostly gainless and ineffectual. I have purchased two homes, and I have lost tens of thousands of dollars on both while never increasing my happiness at all. I spent my entire savings on a big (to me) wedding and at the end of the day, every penny felt wasted. I invested in a 401K and lost most of it when the stock market stumbled. So far, none of the things I was “supposed” to do turned out to be worthwhile for me.

‘The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.’
-Joseph Cambell

On the other hand, some of the decisions I’ve made that would be viewed by the world in general as irresponsible, wasteful, juvenile or foolish have brought me significantly more happiness. Going to college for art. Renting an apartment (before the idiotic decision to buy). Standing behind my husband while he quit his job to become a freelance artist. Deciding not to have children. Heck, even running barefoot.

‘Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.’
-John F. Kennedy

Turns out, every time I turn doggedly away from the things I’m “supposed” to do and decide my own path, the rewards are manyfold. And because of this, in the near future I will be revealing more ballsy, life-changing decisions that may have others up in arms, but will bring me happiness beyond what the average “responsible adult” behavior can appreciate. Sure, being cheered onward from friends and family is great, but approval from others is not my ultimate goal in life. Not anymore, anyway.

‘In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice’
-Richard Bach

Now, I’m not saying that everyone should quit their job or live in a hovel just to buck the system. I just believe that there is no one true path to everyone’s happiness. Some people love the idea of living their entire lives in the same town, but not everyone. Some people love children and want many, but not everyone. Some enjoy the security of a long-term employment in one place, and of a long-term retirement savings plan, but not everyone. Some believe in the benefits of a plant-based vegan diet, but not everyone. See what I’m getting at here?

Everything is right for some people, but nothing is right for everyone.

‘Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in Nature’
-Helen Keller

The American Dream is not one dream. It’s millions of dreams, held by billions of Americans. Forcing everyone into one ideal “responsible adult” lifestyle is ridiculous and irrational. And that is why, by its own definition, I don’t plan to “buck up” and become a REAL adult. Not now, not ever. In fact, it’s the worst thing I could imagine for myself.

Instead, I plan to undo the decisions I’ve made in this vein, as much as I can. I plan to retrace my path back to where I started before any of that outside interference, and make careful steps along my own path. And I’ll draw my own map from now on, thank-you-very-much.

‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.’
– Mark Twain