Addressing Recent Personal Rediscovery

Internet (or, well, me and myself), I feel the need to confess a few things. It's been a funny sort of year, and I've done things I could never imagine myself doing — good and bad.

I destroyed the possessions, personal artifacts, and relationship with someone I held dear, and I still haven't been able to reconcile with them. It caused me to lose contact with people I loved being around; people who pushed me to be better, to think better. It's something I try to push out of my mind everyday, so I don't bawl my eyes out and waste precious time trying to pick up the pieces.

In a haze of God-knows-what for weeks after and during blowing up everything I held dear, I stumbled on a new perception of the world. It was a very wide view, and was very hard to shrink back to human proportions. I lost my humanity as I focused only on ideas. I have a hard time forgetting about it, and saying it was total nonsense, but I also have a very hard time explaining it to others. I think for others' sake, but mostly to try to push it from my mind, to forget about it in daily life, I chalk it up to loss of self and derealization from some acid, lack of sleep, and big ideas run rampant.

But the truth is I learned more about myself and the universe in one week than I have my whole life. I think it might've been too much all at once, though. I filled my head to bursting, and that's just what it did.

I spent the next six or so months in a constant depression. I was angry at the world, and that's a poisonous thing. I noticed faults where I would've noticed features. I looked for things to brood about, rather than things to smile about. As I would've said before all this, I was indulging in emotion. I was paralyzed in my own self-built labyrinth of depression.

I was clinging to the hope that what brought me such joy about the universe at the beginning of the year would somehow deliver me from the shit swamp I was muddling in. I knew then just as well as I know now that the universe changes no one. It always comes from within. But I was deceiving myself — I thought the universe owed me. A veil of self-deceit masks the perfectly obvious truth very well.

I hit rock bottom lying alone on the floor in an apartment I couldn't afford in a state I didn't know. I realized the last thing I was clinging to, a brilliant and lovely girl, was being held back by me. I had come to the state for her, because she was my last connection to a cosmic consciousness I thought I still held. But that, too, was self-deceit. Truly, I was leeching on her, hoping her beautiful view of the world would call the universe to deliver me from my shit swamp.

After shaving my head to "feel something" and buying helium for a last departure, I decided to can it all, and try my luck at deliverance someplace familiar, a place I was truly happy before. I waved, and that was it. She immediately found what made her happy, and is still off there today.

I returned to my old university, UCF, and slept in the Engineering building. I tried to cheer myself up with luxuries like fast food, but of course, that's fleeting, and soon I was scrounging the campus for nickels and dimes to get vending machine crap. But I took solace in being somewhere familiar. It wasn't sustainable, though. The day I left, I found notices on doors saying the building could not be occupied for maintenance reasons. I'll never know if it was a coincidence, or they were kicking me out, but either way, it was time.

My saviour was a guy an old pledge brother connected me with to build a prototype for a start-up. I liked the guy. He was nice, he gave me a place to stay, and he took me in as his own. But I still wasn't taking charge of my own change. I was betting on the day I would finish his prototype, I'd make enough money to live on my own again, and I would just be delivered from my shit swamp.

I did a lot of things to make me feel different, to escape from my feelings, or at least remembering I was feeling them. I did the bare minimum to make it seem like I was working. It's there I recognized my saviour was running from something, too, and while I can't say I didn't truly care for his own well-being, I didn't want to believe it truly mattered.

So we kept our daily routine up for a couple months: he'd go to work and have a shit time, and I'd buy whatever and cigarettes to put off realizing my shit time. But one day, our kooky landlord popped a nerve, and we ended up apartment searching.

The day we moved in, we could feel some unseen weight lifted. Like we dropped a bunch of worries, whether or not we caused them, and we could relax a bit. We made it.

With my own room, and I think I felt I once again had draw in the world. I was no longer drifting through time — I had an anchor. It's amazing what having your own bed can do. It was a safe place to become introspective where I needn't worry about what others who paid my bills thought of me. I slowly learned to be honest again to myself, then to others.

I was regaining a simple view of the world and people. Things became clearer. I found the words I wanted to say to my saviour, who seemed lost in a similar way. Well, I roughly found them. I fudged the delivery and ended up writing umpteen pages of text to say it clearly. When he returned, his own veil of self-deceit was lifted.

I draw tears thinking about it, but the Dread Pirate Roberts is my brother. If it took a year dredging through shit as high as my mind could imagine to come upon true friendship, I'm glad it happened. I've learned so much, met so many people, shared so many memories — it's some kind of humanity.

I'm not even, yet, but with a friend so true and clear by my side, I know I can right all my wrongs, even if it takes the rest of my life.

So to Rambo, the Ninja, and the Vine, I apologize for all I've done to you. I won't stop till I make up for my misdeeds, whether it takes blood, money, or a genuine truth. I may not have done what you expected or needed, but I will find a way to one day have a beer with you. Ain't it a recurring cliché: I'm not perfect. But dammit, I will be as perfect as you need me to be.