Lessons Learned, Bridges Burned

"I got more sick with every sour second rate kiss, everything I never would miss again."

Somehow I'm still conscious. Actually coming out the other side of this dead-tired thing now. Figures. I wanted to get to sleep by maybe four or five. Of course, the way insomnia works, I'll be wide awake as soon as my head hits the pillow.

I was writing an e-mail earlier, and I got to thinking that maybe I'd lost sight of the reasons I started this blog in the first place. Yes, it was about my writing and my politics and various crazy theories. But it was really about how I felt when I turned twenty-five. That was the theme of my very first post here, and I seem to have avoided it ever since. I think that's because my current malaise strikes me as extremely childish. My mid-twenties seem to have signalled something of a second puberty. Suddenly I'm questioning authority for very base and obvious reasons. Suddenly I'm analysing the way I feel in ways I've largely ignored for the past seven years or so. Suddenly I'm as horny as a ten-peckered owl.

No sudden growth spurts or embarrassing incidents of my voice cracking yet. I'll keep you posted.

I appear to be going through the things that many my age go through, while at the same time experiencing something I missed out on when I was twenty-one. I dropped out of university after the first year, and threw myself straight into a job. It was only then I began to feel that I'd left behind all the emotional baggage that plagued my teens. It was only then that I found myself and started having a good time. I didn't think or analyse at all. Work, drink, write, repeat. I was enjoying it, but it was all happening on a very visceral level. I was just existing. Which is no bad thing.

I climbed the promotional ladder with surprising swiftness, going from popcorn seller in a quiet suburban picture house to manager of a highly-regarded West London cinema in a little under two years. When I was twenty-one, I was making decent money, far more than any of my graduate friends.

I wasn't switched on. I was on auto-pilot. I allowed the routine of my work and my social life to take over. I never sat down and thought about what I was doing and why, what I expected to gain from it. The absinthe binge was what changed me. I haven't gone into great detail about it here because I've written it up so many times now that it bores me. For those still curious, there was a night a few years back when I got into a drinking contest that resulted in me downing eleven shots of absinthe (75% by vol., fact fans) in just under an hour. This on top of a night that had already been dedicated to the great God alcohol. I wound up in a very bad place, physically speaking, and I'm sure - with the benefit of hindsight - that I almost died that night.

After a hangover that lasted three days, I remember waking up and realising I felt okay again. The first thought that followed that revelation was what the fuck were you doing out there? I couldn't answer that question, and it troubled me enough to act as something of a wake-up call. I realised I'd drifted away from my writing and the things I wanted to achieve. Instead of fighting against the things I didn't believe in, I was removing myself from the world. I was giving in. Something had to change.

Two-and-a-half years later, I'm unemployed and living at home. Not exactly life as I intended to live it, but better than what I was doing. Better than being lost. I'm sure of myself now, and I'm sure of what I want. That makes all the difference in the world.

My point, I guess, is that twenty-five is one of those landmark ages. The closer I got to my last birthday, the more horrified I became. Suddenly I was an adult. It's not like being eighteen or being twenty-one. They call you an adult then, but it's accepted that you're not. You can still afford not to have a proper job or a steady partner or a mortgage. You've still got time to decide. You can still hang on to the last fragile threads that connect you to your childhood. Once you're in your mid-twenties, that's no longer normal. You look around and find that your friends are suddenly married and have careers and maybe children. Even those that don't are on that road. Things have changed. Suddenly you can no longer relate. Suddenly you start to feel very immature and very alone.

I refuse to feel that way. I think things like marriage and mortgages and careers are merely a process of acceptance. I think most people are frustrated and desperately unhappy and infected with a kind of insanity. I think we're pushed into these things with little or no choice. It's the way the world works. It's what everybody else does. It's traditional. It's...well...it's conservative. It's the ultimate behaviour of the herd.

Now, I didn't come here to piss on anybody's chips. Some of my friends are very happily married, and they tell me that they genuinely enjoy their careers and their lives and their property and their children. All good. I'm not saying those people are wrong. I'm not even saying those institutions are inherently wrong. What I am saying is that the moment you settle down, get married, and start dropping babies all over the place is the moment that you give up on your dreams. What do you think the mid-life crisis represents? Why do you think it is that the idea of a middle-aged woman going back to college after a divorce or after her kids are all grown-up is such a cliche? Why do you think men of a certain age tend to gravitate back towards the trappings of their youth, towards tattoos and motorbikes and young girls? It represents dissatisfaction and a desire to revisit that which has been lost. It represents stolen dreams.

I have many friends who encourage what I do, but even they tend to look at me from the corners of their eyes sometimes, as if wondering how it is I can possibly still be comfortable with my childish pipe-dreams. The general consensus is that it's something I need to grow out of, or that I'll meet the right girl and she'll change me.

Wake up call for those people: I do what I do because I believe with a passion that you'll never catch your dreams if you don't chase them. I won't change for anybody because I am what I am and I'm very comfortable with that. I won't ever meet a girl who persuades me that settling down is a good thing, because I wouldn't be attracted to a girl that desires such a thing. I'm not settling. I only have one life, and I don't intend to waste it looking at the same scenery with the same people day after day after endless fucking day. Maybe when I'm older, when I've achieved the things I want to achieve and gotten tired of lighting my candles with a flamethrower, maybe then I'll pick a place I love and want to call home. Until then, the only home I need is the one inside my head. I don't believe in marriage because I don't believe I need a ring or a legal document to prove that I love someone. If anything, I believe that dilutes the idea of love. 'Here. I love you, but just in case you're a little insecure about it, here's PROOF'. Hell, if you need me to prove it, I doubt very strongly that you ever loved me in the first place. I don't want children because I have no desire to bring a new life into such a hateful world. That's another one that may change someday, if I ever get past the fact that I know my beliefs would make me a terrible and conflicted father. I had one of those myself, and I've absolutely no desire to inflict that pain on another. I don't want to put down roots because I don't want to be tied to one place. I like that I can just move on if I want to. I like to walk away. I like to burn my bridges. I like to feel new.

That's me, and I sit here and judge you now only because of the massive judgement you have passed on me. Don't label me. Don't try to impose your belief system on me. Those aren't my rules and they never will be. I don't consider myself a genius. I don't consider myself above you. I accept the way you live your life, even though I don't believe in it. I would never try to change you because the reason we're friends is because I like you, not because you're like me. All I ask is the right to be me without your strange looks and your tendency to roll your eyes and this certainty you have that someday I'm going to wake up and join the rest of the world. Is that such a harsh request?

Above and beyond all the rhetoric and the bullshit of quarter-life crises and childhood dreams, what it boils down to is that, despite our differences, I believe in you. Unconditionally. I accept what you are and I'd never want to push you to a place where you feel you have to defend it.

So why can't you just believe in me?