30 to Life
Of all the events that surely should have dragged me back here once again after yet another long hiatus, I turned 30 on February 21st. In my life, it feels like that alone is an accomplishment. That isn’t to say I’ve led any kind of particularly hard life; far from it. I’ve always been about as sheltered, naive, and (occasionally willfully) ignorant as they come. I just held this strange belief for a lot of my teenage years that, because I couldn’t envision what my life would be like when I was 30, it had to mean I wasn’t going to make it there, right? Seriously…I believed this for years. I think part of me held onto it up until 11:59PM on February 20th. But being the hardcore thanatophobe that I am…well…it’s not like I was about to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. No fucking chance!
What I will say, though, is that I haven’t really been the same since then. As fucking retarded and cliche as it sounds, I don’t think anyone around me much understands what turning 30 has meant to me. Not without Will around, anyway. My fiancee Heather…she tries to say that turning 25 a few weeks later was just as hard for her, but I find that to be bullshit. But that’s just me. I don’t know…I’ve just been such an uncaring, introverted, introspective ass of a human being for the past several weeks. But not all the time. Which makes me normal, I guess. I don’t even know for sure anymore. To tell you the truth, I’m completely in shock that Heather hasn’t said something to me about being overly forgetful, unresponsive in conversation, or anything like that lately. I mean….it’s been over a month now. And I know I come off as completely depressive. It’s obvious even to me. Which means it’s fucking OBVIOUS, because I’m an idiot.
Maybe some of it is the impending wedding. The plan is to get hitched on Sunday, October 31st (yes, Halloween…it’s already our anniversary). We’ve done next to no work on getting the goddamn thing planned. Her mom has done any and all of the work that has actually been accomplished. I don’t know…it’s quite weird….like both of us are just not enthusiastic about the entire enterprise. And I’m really not. It surprises me that Heather isn’t. Really. But me? That’s about as surprising as rain in the Amazon. I don’t really get overly excited for much of anything anymore. I take joy in small places when and where I can, but, by and large, I don’t get giddy anymore. It seems like that should be a problem, doesn’t it? I mean, if I can’t get excited about getting married, doesn’t that bode ill? Or maybe it’s just the way I’m wired now. The highlight of my week is generally Wednesday, when new comics come out. That probably isn’t such a great omen, either. Hrm. Well, I have thoughts about how my life is rolling these days, but I don’t know that now is the time for all of ’em. There’s a lot of shit twisted and turned up in my feeble li’l brain that needs continued stewing. Perhaps one day soon there will exist in this space a dissertation of how this relationship works as opposed to how this relationship is perceived. In short: I seem to be the only one who thinks it kinda sucks sometimes (how often "sometimes" is kinda varies), whereas everyone else thinks we match perfectly (spoiler: we don’t).
Time to move on…but first…
Now Playing on Dave’s Mental Jukebox: "Nemo" by Nightwish, "The Art of Suicide" by Emilie Autumn, "Dear Agony" by Breaking Benjamin, and "Gunslinger" by Vincent E.L. (it’s the theme song to the awesome web-show Atop the Fourth Wall, which is linked on my front page).
Heather and I made a trip out to California about a month ago. Flew into (and back out of) LAX. That was a fucking nightmare in itself. I had to drive us through morning fucking rush hour in a goddamn Ford Focus for the trip back home. As strange as it is to say this, California really didn’t look all that different from Tennessee, terrain wise. I mean, yeah, there’s the fucking Pacific Ocean and such, but there were lots of hills, though the mountains were impressive. The beach was shit. We drove up the Pacific Coast Highway to Santa Barbara just to pay a visit to the beach there, and it sucked ass. Smelled like an anchovy’s cunt (as George Carlin would say). The sand was gross, the water was gross, and it was raining. Yeah. Nice. When the fuck does it rain in Southern California? When I’m fucking there, that’s when. Hoo-ah! Anyway…it was a pretty nice trip, overall. Ate some Carl’s, Jr and some In and Out Burger, just to be able to say I did. I’d love for my next trip to be another solo trip to visit Will and Monica in Kansas City sometime soon. I miss those guys like hell. I need to just say fuck it and move there, really. If I had, like, $50,000 I’d pick up and go now, I think. Maybe.
We are less than one month away from this diary’s 9th birthday. That’s so fucking amazing. There is so much of my life in this thing. There’s essentially a chronicle of about 5 years of my life on a daily basis in here (2001 to 2006, I think). I mean, of all the entries in this thing, only a small handful have come after 2007. And, after checking, this is the 7th, to be precise. Only goddamn 1 in 2008. ONE! This is so invaluable to me when I get into it. I feel like maybe it could be again. Here’s hoping.
With that, I go, hopefully to soon return. Now if only I had a dollar for every time I’ve said that. I’d have about $7. HA!
Sayonara.