November 17 Redux

Originally written November 17, 2006

You could call this a mid-life crisis since there are people placing bets fifty will be the high water mark.

At 19 my friends in D.C. took me out to dinner and showed me no matter my decision, whether I left for Kansas or stayed at American, no birthday would have to be spent alone. At 20 I drove from Kansas to Bloomington to spend a day with my grandmother, and wound up laying the foundation for the London adventure with Jen. At 21 I drove from Kansas to Bloomington once again, then through the thickest of fog to Chicago to watch my grandfather lead the Illinois Republican Party executive committee meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance, and back to Bloomington for the Illinois State band formal. Band prom as it turned out to be. At 22 I drove from Kansas to Taylorville for a decidedly unremarkable weekend. At 23 and24, Pete and I would sit around watching television and playing video games, eating our burgers and drinking our beer. At 25 I lived in the lap of luxury, as close as one could get in Lawrence, prepared the crab legs, Bailey’s, had a nice afternoon with Kelli and called some old friends that had been out of contact for too long.

At twenty-six…I used to be a little more, but what I choose is my choice. The walls they were closing in on me from every direction in every place, and I could never go home again, there was only what is and what should never be. We walk through these personal confessions catatonically, acknowledging that something is not the way it’s supposed to be but refusing to do anything about it.

Change what you can, hide what you cannot.

These confessions are meant to give ground to stand while on facing the saint at the gates. Am I letting others take solace in seeing their own fears and triumphs reflected back towards them? Does The Battle of Evermore end here in Hong Kong, will it have to end when we make it back to Chicago, after everything that has happened here all ready, how do we go back to the way things were?

Tonight, at twenty-six, sitting on the Kowloon side of the harbor with Elodie by my side, looking across at the starlight skyline that will haunt me to that day then. We sat there in the dark, in the silence, listening to Smashing Pumpkins, of all things, watching the city go to sleep. The sounds of the life you left behind and the people that make their stand with you now. For a moment the world stopped in its place as I watched the lights of the city one by one flicker out into darkness.

This moment in time where the conscience becomes transparent to all, where you expect yourself to confess to the question that has been on everyone’s mind here: why I came to this island. But we sat in silence, understanding that each of us had left something behind, that we are in our most basic form here, stripped down to the bear essence of who we are.

I am finding out there was something else there all along these past few years. Held in check, it was a different life, but freed of its confines...the fighting, the pride, the ability to let that which does not matter truly slide. At twenty-six, we started over.