My life is unfathomably complicated. I've lived everywhere, met thousands of people, and explored the world. Many strange things have happened to me, and my life has taken many unrelated courses.
Read my claims below. These are some stories I tell a lot. They sound like lies, don't they? They're about as easy to believe as the claims of a homeless man who says he's the son of Marilyn Monroe. At best, my stories sound like the exaggerated musings of a pipe dreamer.
Read them, and see what you think:
-I knew when a white truck was about to lose control as my mom drove me to school. I told her to get away from it. Immediately afterwards, it spun off the road and smashed into the embankment.
-I've moved more than twenty times.
-I lived in a bank for awhile.
-There is a video of me viciously biting a mall Santa while wearing a prim, blue, velvet dress and pearls. My mom plans to show it to any man crazy enough to ask me to marry him.
- I have worked as a makeup artist, an assistant dog groomer, a caretaker for the elderly, an oil painter, an interpreter, a legal secretary, and an account exec. I can play the piano, paint, dance, read tarot cards and palms, restore houses, and learn languages almost instantly.
- I once walked into an abandoned house at night that had hundreds of ravens living in the rafters. They spooked when I came in and swarmed me.
- The show South Park was based on my hometown, and I know Mr. Garrison personally. In fact, I bought him a cactus for Christmas.
-My best friend is figuring out how to clone himself so that he can save his brain and put it into a younger body.
- I lived with a Spanish woman who saved money by turning off the hot water just before I got into the shower every day and refusing me access to food.
- I invented a religion when I was eight. It had songs, meetings, a language, a code of ethics, and sixty or so members. When I wanted people to listen to me, I would say that I was simply telling them what the invented God had told me to say. The success of my religion got me thrown out of class the next year.
- I faint when I breathe too much second hand smoke or have to deal with blood.
The list goes on. And on.
By now you think I'm testing you or that I'm lying, but I'm not. Everything on the list you just read is absolutlely true. Every time I go somewhere, something unbelievable happens. My head is always overflowing with stories that I just don't want to tell people because they will inevitably think that I'm off my rocker. That may be true, but so are the stories.
I have lived out of a suitcase by the skin of my teeth, without commitments of any kind for most of my life. Some people see glamour in that, but I see glamour in the white picket fence of stability.
I envy the girl who marries the boy next door and buys a house right down the street. I envy her because she knows who she is and where she is going. It's simple for her. She has a perspective because she has always looked at things from the same point of view.
I don't have a perspective anymore because I have had too many incongruous experiences that I have chosen to learn from. Now I see situations one hundred ways at once. I just can't help it.
When I was a child, I was like the picket-fence girl I described. I saw everything from the same point of view. I still remember it vividly. My stubborn soul was a thick window that I looked at everything in life through, like the lady of Shalott looked through her mirror.
Here in Atlanta, I have begun to develop a cohesive life for myself again. It's not there, but it's coming together. I'm focusing on permanent friendships, lifelong mentors, and attending to my life's only real work, which is writing. I'm cutting out anything that stops me from getting where I need to go. I'm doing away with distractions. Instead of dreaming, I have committed to winning through consistent actions that propel me forward, one small thing at a time.
My whole life has been a Devil's Playground, but I'm building something to come home to after all the adventures. Wish me luck.
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It sounds funny to say, but my dad has always said life isn't about a quick sprint to the finish line, it's a marathon that you have to train yourself for, prepare for and then dedicate yourself to. It sounds funny because so many always talk about how life is so short. Well it is, but only when you romanticize it, when you look at the love, the drama, the ups and downs.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at most people's daily lives though, people who don't move all over the world living by whatever they can to get by, you see a lot of boredom. You see a lot of mediocrity and simplicity. People sitting in traffic every morning and afternoon, bustling their ways through grocery stores, and simply doing their jobs so they can go home. Then getting home and wondering what it is exactly they have gotten home to. Do they stand for something, are they living with someone they love, are they making a difference to anyone at all? Who really knows?
The thing is picket-fence girl next door and little Jimmy down at the pond fishing, they may not have been all over the world with all kinds of crazy experiences, but I've lived in one city all my life and I will often see things from a million different points of view. I just choose not to. I choose to believe that I am happy and content even though I don't know what all I might be missing out on. I choose to believe that the people I surround myself with love me, even though some of them I have nothing more to go on than their word, and sometimes their actions contradict that. It has been said that people who are "normal" are only that way because they have a natural ability to see the world around them from an unrealistically positive point of view. And that people who are depressed or have other psychological issues are seeing the world much more the way it really is, they just can't help it.
Do people idealize the concept of living freely and having no obligations that keep a person really grounded? - the biggest usually being a family. Yes. However, most I've met that have lived lives similar to what you describe would agree that they envy the picket-fence girl. Maybe it's just the grass is always greener. I think it's about the ability to know that tomorrow the world as you know it will be the same as it was today and you don't have to worry about people realizing that you're choosing to be close minded about it.