Not to belabor a point, but a month ago I really, seriously thought my life might have been shortened. I looked back over the course of my life so far, the shape of it in hindsight, and the direction the arrow is facing for the future, and I felt lucky. It was almost as if I could see through a rip in time to my sixteen year-old self, to look back and see that this is where I've come in fifteen years. I felt almost like I did when I was eight and learned that I could shoplift candy bars from the grocery store. My brother is a doctor with a house on a hill, a German automobile, and a rice cooker imported from Japan. A few years ago I was living on $300 a week, working an entry-level job at a videogame company in a basement full of high school dropouts. I stayed up every night writing for free for a few different websites, working on a movie that would ultimately stagnate in people's inboxes, and surviving on a diet of canned beans and spaghetti sauce. Along the way I also got into shape enough to run a half marathon. Some nights I wouldn't get back from my nightly run until close to midnight, after having worked a 12 hour day, and with more writing work to be done before I could fall asleep.
It was all done by choice. When I was running the half marathon finally, jogging along a coastal highway wedged between a golf course and some garish pink tract houses, I realized how absurdly indulgent it all was. I had spent sixty or seventy hours in the months leading up to the race doing nothing other than running, just so I could be ready for some random marathon event that wasn't even affiliated with any larger cause or charity. It was a bunch of motivated yuppies enjoying a communal run one Saturday morning because it made us feel better about ourselves, to know it was in the realm of the possible to run a marathon. I felt so silly about the whole ordeal that I was grinning to myself as I ran. A woman in a car drove past the course and rolled down her window. "That's the way to do it," she said. "With a smile the whole way."
So when I thought I was dying and looked back on the path behind me, I felt a similar sense of joy. There aren't any remarkable successes lying in my wake, but I've tried and tried to do something good. I haven't buckled under and traded my ambitions for a secure wage and a down payment on a home. I've been able to keep moving, from experience to experience, place to place, old friends to totally unexpected new friendships. I can't imagine having done anything to deserve all the lovely times and people I've had in my life. Lots of it has been crushingly hard, but the hard bits face away after awhile. I don't remember any of those nights when I went to bed early to make sure I got eight hours of regular sleep. The nights where I exchanged that comfort and normalcy to try and do something great, staying up to write something worth saying, trying to get better at my job, going out to meet a friend even though I was exhausted and it was Tuesday. Those are the moments I see when I look back, and I've had a lot of them.
I have been lucky. To wit, here are some of the things in my life that I did little to deserve, but which I'm stupidly grateful to have.
-My Parents. They bore me in Africa, put me through school, and gave me everything I needed to survive. They are the bookends of my subconscious.
-My body. I'm gangly, have sweaty palms, finger toes, bouts of back acne, and a monobrow that I have to shave periodically. It is my steed, my pleasure vessel, my bullhorn, my alphabet.
-My job. It's absurd. I write about videogames for a living. I am called a douschebag by thirteen year-olds almost daily.
-I'm grateful for C. She's a terrible listener, self-absorbed, too pale, has goat hairs on her chin, and one of her legs is shorter than the other. I love her.
-Finally, I'm grateful for N. My phantom limb. My sail. My friend.
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Love Machine: Taking A Break From Dating
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