Weekends are usually the bane of my existence. With the majority of my pals working odd-hour shifts in the "service" industry shucking oysters and cooking seafood and whatnot I've been used to Saturdays treating me like an unwanted child for quite awhile.
Boring stuff - usually wake up late, as late as possible, and lie in bed ruminating about my plight. Maybe *maybe* go out for a bike ride (at least back before the motorcycle was in the shop for THREE FUCKING WEEKS). Maybe do some laundry just to make me feel like I'm doing something productive. Maybe go running - not cause I like it or because I want to be healthy (although it's a nice side-effect) but mostly because I'm a junky just like the rest of you and the endorphines kick in and make me not so sad. You laugh, I know, but it's true. I don't even run long enough to get that typical "runner's high". I'm no
kitty bukkake or nothing. Just 6 miles on a good day, 4 maybe on a bad day.. but enough to so I can zone out a
little bit and by the time I'm home on the couch it's like being just slightly stoned. Just slightly. Okay, not really or nothing but those natural little endorphins have a way of making life's little thorns seem not quite as sharp. Chills me out. Helps me chillax.
That was the schtick for awhile anyway. Alone time. Too much alone time. Time to think and ponder and for a mind like mine - that's a dangerous thing.
Said to myself one simple Saturday running along the Eastern Promenade in the drizzling rain: "Michael, this is it. You're making a decision!" and so I thought, incredulously,
oh yes? what decision would that be? and I replied "That decision is this: This girl, this phantom, this thorn in your side, it is killing you - softly." and I thought
yes, yes it is, "so you need to build yourself a life-line. You need to give proverbial power of attorney to your better half, your logical side." So I contemplated this and mulled it over.
And how would I do that? I ventured. "This graduate school you think of.. it won't happen if you don't instill the drive, the want. You need a promise."
Yes yes.. okay.. so..? "So I think you should promise that you will go off to graduate school if this girl doesn't work out. When you're done, finished, on the ground and bleeding, you need to go to graduate school. When she is finished kicking you in the gut and the blood is mixing with your spit and dripping thickly from the corners of your mouth you need to get up and go to grad school. When the moon covers the sun and it is dark out and the ghouls and ghosts and goblins come ink-like from the darkest places to come carry you away into the night like a stolen babe, then is the time: go to grad school..."
and I thought it over for some time, as I ran *splash* *splash* *splash* in the rain and my ipod dripped sadly, soon to have a ruined LCD screen from that run in the rain, and I came to a conclusion.
Yes, you're right. For my own sanity.
And then I said, outloud - my voice appearing in the wet foggy breath in front of me, a rare occurrence talking to myself, indeed - "Yes, if this girl doesn't work out I will go to graduate school."
Done.
Over.
Fini.
And for some time afterward I didn't believe me. I would have internal conversations about my convictions, about how trustworthy I was, about how committed to my own internal word I was. Fearing a deceitful back-stabbing I rushed out and verbalized my promise to friends thereby securing the promise in reality. By speaking, outloud and in mixed company, the conviction of grad school I effectively put giant meat hooks in the flesh of this decision; rooting it, chaining it, leashing it to this world - the one outside my head.
So Saturdays are turning into the space-out burn that the week used to be for me. I can sit now, at home, with little worry about production numbers or social outings. I watch movies by myself but I'm no longer alone in those afternoon hours of the day - I am accompanied by all the voices in my head that are attempting to choreograph my life like a thousand junior stock brokers yelling into telephones in the boiler room of my mind. Except they are all yelling at the same person.
Me.
They are loud and annoying but I know they mean well so I listen, intently, and I pick through the dialogue for useful tidbits of wisdom, advice, and morality.
There are some in there, truly.
I still run - more so now than ever - because it gives me time to let each voice have it's turn and it helps remind me where I'm going. Whether I'm running in a circle or down the street or around Back Cove I am figuratively running
towards something, somewhere. There is direction.
Some day the emotional trial - the tough one that is this girl - will be over. This emotional trial which is easily the hardest emotional trial of my life to date (admittedly not very hard at all by many standards but to this little short lived mind a very hard trial indeed) will end somewhere in the future. It may end happily or with regret. It may end remorsefully or abruptly or simply peter out like the dying light of the day. But with my decision and my promise - the promise of grad school - I have been given a new lease, a stay of execution. This trial shall continue later but for now the court is in recess.
So what do I do now? I live out my years as a poor student again knowing that out there somewhere - in the direction that I am running - there is the end to the trial. The last fall of the judges gavel. Adjournment.
And that is what I am running for.