I Went to a Wedding Yesterday

Wed­dings have always filled me with great joy and great sor­row. Yes­ter­day was no dif­fer­ent.

I know I’ve earned some­thing of a rep­u­ta­tion as a cyn­ic, but I do sin­cere­ly enjoy wit­ness­ing these cel­e­bra­tions of the only thing that real­ly mat­ters in this world—connection. Between new part­ners, between fam­i­lies, between strangers on the dance floor; I don’t real­ly care the form it takes. I know that many peo­ple who fall into iso­la­tion like I have tend to resent it when­ev­er they see it, jeal­ousy and anger over cou­ples show­ing affec­tion in the street and the like, but I’ve nev­er felt that way. I feel gen­uine, earnest hap­pi­ness for them. It’s a thing of beauty—finding that per­son who will keep you from chok­ing on a chick­en bone at din­ner.

Yet yes­ter­day, even as I clapped for the bride and groom with an unre­served smile on my face, I was struck, also, by a deep sense of melan­choly. I was sur­round­ed by their com­mu­ni­ty, their fam­i­ly, their partnership—all the rela­tion­ships they had built, day-by-day, through con­ver­sa­tions and cof­fees, shared strug­gles and tri­umphs, and every­thing in between. I looked at myself, then, and saw not a frac­tion of those bonds. That part, the part I caused entire­ly myself, makes me mourn.

The last few wed­dings I attend­ed were for my cousins. They were all love­ly events, but I did not dance because it felt, some­how, that it was ‘wrong’. ‘Yeah, your cousins are won­der­ful peo­ple,’ my brain said, ‘but they are your so-called ‘fam­i­ly’ you most­ly know through post­cards and sparse fam­i­ly get-togeth­ers. Should you real­ly dance with them? Doesn’t it, like, make no god­damn sense?’ 

As sil­ly as it might seem to most, danc­ing, for me, I guess, demands a cer­tain lev­el of famil­iar­i­ty and inti­ma­cy. It’s hon­est­ly just as much about myself feel­ing uncom­fort­able open­ing up that part of myself to strangers as it is me feel­ing like I am intrud­ing on some­thing impor­tant; some­thing they should be shar­ing with peo­ple they’ve actu­al­ly built rela­tion­ships with. But this wed­ding was with my col­lege friends, whom I’ve spent many days of my life with, and who I’m sup­posed to know well. So I danced, even though it does not come nat­u­ral­ly to me. When else, if not now?

Lat­er on in the night, I found out that one of my friends had a prob­lem with grind­ing her teeth dur­ing col­lege. I did not remem­ber that about her—I don’t know if I ever knew it at all. Some­times, I’m pret­ty sure I’m the most fool­ish man on earth.

This year has been a fan­tas­tic year for me. My father’s dou­ble lung trans­plant last Octo­ber put me to the test in a way that I had nev­er expe­ri­enced before, and I rose to the occa­sion. I am fair­ly sure I kept my dad from suf­fer­ing brain dam­age from car­bon diox­ide poi­son­ing, and I was asked about 7 times whether I had any expe­ri­ence in the med­ical field—and I promise, not in a snarky, how-about-you-shut-up kind of way. Weird­ly, I love the hos­pi­tal. I know many peo­ple find the hos­pi­tal fright­en­ing, or cold, but under my mask, I was walk­ing around the place grin­ning like a fool. Some­thing about see­ing so many peo­ple gath­er­ing, with­out think­ing, or phi­los­o­phiz­ing, to fight the one bat­tle that actu­al­ly mat­ters in soci­ety is nour­ish­ing. Also, there’s some­thing about the triage men­tal­i­ty that aligns deeply with my do-good prag­ma­tist ideals. Not to be a cliche, but there are times being mixed cul­tures, an athe­ist, a left-brained artist (not a real thing, i know), a her­mit, a total­ly-lack­ing-in-team-spir­it ass­hole makes me feel like I don’t belong, but that place makes sense to me. Dun­no why they put church­es in there, real­ly. The whole damn place is a tem­ple to human­i­ty.

Nav­i­gat­ing that cri­sis gave me a real sense that I had regained some kind of foot­ing in my life that I’d for­got­ten I’d even lost. Then, fol­low­ing that, I got on ADHD meds for the first time in my life. I’ve also found a job that actu­al­ly suit­ed me at the library, and made a stu­pid mis­take that I need­ed to have made ten years ago. For years, I have felt like the starter pis­tol has gone off, but my legs were still glued to the start­ing line. Now, sud­den­ly, my legs move, and it’s a strange thing. I guess it makes sense that the first thing I do is dance. I do think I could become a good one, even, with prac­tice.

I don’t know if any­one is real­ly fol­low­ing the progress of Challenger’s Chase, but I haven’t uploaded a chap­ter in quite a while. It may seem strange to be claim­ing that my legs are mov­ing, and yet the one thing that I’m sup­posed to be doing on this site; writ­ing and draw­ing a YA adven­ture fan­ta­sy series; I’m not doing at all. I admit, I’ve been puz­zling over it too. How odd that after tak­ing my ADHD meds, I’ve gained the abil­i­ty to use a cal­en­dar sched­ule for the first time in my life, and I can’t do the thing I man­aged to stick to for near­ly sev­en years straight. I think I know the answer, after this wed­ding.

Part of it is that Chal­lenger’s Chase was a life­line for me. In the deep pit of mis­ery that was col­lege (espe­cial­ly in the lat­ter years, as I dragged my liv­ing corpse-body over the fin­ish line of grad­u­a­tion) pur­su­ing fic­tion felt like the only thing that I had a chance in life to be good at. I had (and still do have) an under­stand­ing of tropes and sto­ry struc­tures that I think is rel­a­tive­ly rare among most peo­ple. I also have a wide bench of fan­tas­tic fic­tion across mul­ti­ple gen­res, medi­ums, styles, and cul­tures to draw from. I under­stand what makes some­thing good, and why. I remem­ber even hav­ing a whole eure­ka moment about it. I knew back then, pur­su­ing an office career in engi­neer­ing or what­ev­er was a sure­fire path to sui­cide or meth by the age of thirty—but chas­ing writing…maybe it was entire­ly pos­si­ble I could do it. Maybe, I wouldn’t have to suf­fer. Maybe, it would be fun, even.

Chas­ing that light at the end of the tun­nel, I wrote a ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble, draft of 300,000 words in about six months—which I knew was ter­ri­ble the moment I print­ed it out. So I revised. Then I revised again. Then I revised again. Then I revised—

After sev­en years of that, I can say with some cer­tain­ty, I’m a good writer now. Pret­ty good even. My art skills too, have been brushed up to a pass­able degree.  The fruits of dili­gent­ly putting myself at the desk, every day, for years, despite hav­ing the exec­u­tive func­tion of a wal­nut,. Look­ing back, I can’t believe I did it. Yeah, my progress was pathetic—I aver­aged 150 words a day—but I’m amazed. Espe­cial­ly look­ing at the lat­ter years, when the pas­sion had long since burned out. I can tell you, in the past four years, I don’t think I expe­ri­enced a flow state a sin­gle time. It has been hard, all the time, every time, writ­ing those stu­pid, god­damn 150 words. It didn’t mat­ter that I got bet­ter at writ­ing. My stan­dards rose equal­ly dur­ing that time too.

I know why, real­ly. It is a nat­ur­al tran­si­tion, I think, the grasp of a drown­ing man, to the grasp of a fanat­ic man. My rela­tion­ship with this sto­ry I was excit­ed to write about years ago had long since turned into an act of identity—a des­per­ate fight to not be that use­less thing that feared reach­ing out to a girl lest he drag her down too. To not be that use­less son that lived on the sec­ond floor, and need­ed reminders to clean his own room. To not be that fail­ing stu­dent, that clogged-mind work­er who couldn’t show up on time to save his life. And well, for all of those things to not mat­ter, to be erased in the scales of life, I had to be a writer. No, I had to be a good writer. No, I had to be a damn excel­lent writer!

It’s strange. No one ever tells you this about ADHD meds. If it works cor­rect­ly, it oblit­er­ates a huge part of your per­son­al­i­ty. Resolv­ing old wounds has a sim­i­lar effect, too. I always thought I was lazy. I always thought I was a ter­ri­ble stu­dent. I always thought I had to be a writer. None of those things are true any­more, and they were only ever half-true in the first place. Now, I can be so much more than I once thought.

This sounds like a good­bye to Challenger’s Chase—it’s not. Right now, I’m just wait­ing for it to sound like fun again. Now that all that grasp­ing isn’t nec­es­sary any­more, I can see how tox­ic my rela­tion­ship to my craft was. If I close my eyes right now and imag­ine work­ing on it, my stom­ach twists into knots from the antic­i­pa­tion. That is not the rela­tion­ship any­one should have with their art, and it cer­tain­ly isn’t the appro­pri­ate vibe for writ­ing a fun and clever adven­ture series. I know there’s a crackin’ fun sto­ry there, though, and I’ll come to it when I’m ready, maybe tomor­row, maybe in a year. Who knows. In the mean­time, I’m going to try stuff that I’ve always want­ed to, but nev­er had the where­with­al to han­dle. Mod­ding, for exam­ple. I’ve been doing that a lot. Becom­ing flu­ent at read­ing code has always been an impos­si­bly large bar­ri­er, and these days, that doesn’t  seem like such a big deal any­more. I also want to get bet­ter at lots of basic life stuff. Chores are total­ly easy now, and I can actu­al­ly under­stand why a per­son would want to learn how to cook bet­ter. And, of course, writ­ing. I’ve actu­al­ly been doing tons and tons of it, on the side.

Screw it, part of my goals is to be more open about shar­ing my cre­ative pur­suits, so here goes. Most of my recent atten­tion has been writ­ing a high­ly spec­u­la­tive book on social engi­neer­ing, which…is my earnest, hon­est attempt to try to save the world. We live in bad times, and worse ones are on the hori­zon, and as fool­ish as it may sound com­ing from some­one who has spent the major­i­ty of the past ten years hid­den in their room…I think I have come to under­stand some­thing impor­tant about the world, and I want to write it out to see if it is total bunk or every­thing I hope it could be. Hon­est­ly, it’s fine either way, and regard­less, I know it will be tak­en poor­ly by just about every per­son that reads it. That too, is fine. I just can’t sit around and add to the use­less churn of rage and con­fu­sion of the inter­net anymore—nor can I allow myself to ignore the very real, and very dan­ger­ous rot that is caus­ing it. It’s a project I know I will need help on, so I’ll need to learn how to ask for help too. Yet more aspects of myself I need to grow.

Here’s a link to the project, if you want to take a look. It’s a whole lot of shoot­ing from the hip, right now. Please attempt to destroy it with your knowl­edge.

In the mean­time, if any­one is work­ing on any­thing, per­son­al, or oth­er­wise, reach out and show it to me. For all that I have fall­en behind on build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty, I have built some­thing in my head that is not entire­ly with­out use. I can help you find vision, voice, clar­i­ty in what­ev­er cre­ative or expres­sive pur­suit you have. I have an abun­dance of spoons now, so feel free to demand a few of them from me. I know I will nev­er be that guy who orga­nizes out­ings, but this, I can do. I sup­pose this is how I build com­mu­ni­ty, I guess, rather than jump­ing out of the dark try­ing to start con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple I think too much about but don’t give them a rea­son to hang. Sor­ry if I ever jump­scared any of you kind folk.

As always, my heart was two steps ahead of my head at this wed­ding. My brain said this was just a fun event, noth­ing to sweat. My heart told me to pack like I was going into a war­zone and, also, clean your god­damn room too. And look who was right. The con­scious mind is most­ly a use­less piece of crap, I’m telling ya.

Cheers. ‘twas a good one.

(Oh, hey would you look at that. 1.8k words, easy peasy.)