mar 6 202~
dark room, window pressed against the leaves, drizzle, eurythmic hum pressing through the air. basinski, mad men, mission. two four years ago, in the library of demosthenian hall. it was around spring break and no one was there. very, very empty.
dt was alive but not active. sitting at that desk staring out, elijah craig in the ginger beer, "don draper makes an old fashioned." ginger beer cuz that's what my mom got us as kids, mad men because I was around suits and professionals for the first time. I knew to know how much I didn't know, but I really didn't know. a good bit of that was coming out of villa rica and being in suspension in smyrna, and so much of it was how much I forgot over the pandemic. wasn't present, wasn't ready, wasn't focused. the break I prayed for in february 2020 started a month later, and I wasn't ready for it to end until may 2023, my worthless ass. by the time I got back to uga, I didn't speak the language, especially not in the body, and I was still betwixt and between dirt. not a businessman, not a lawyer, not anything. all I cared and thought about was what I felt and could feel.
I wasn't ready for what I thought I prepared for all throughout high school, and that's why I was hiding out in that library. it was comfortable, quiet, resting in the resin of old architecture, more humane than modern. it was a place to mingle with history at a time when I wasn't ready to read it, much less write it. I was just reflecting on life and myself at the time, not the actual academic work. that's on me, not anyone else, and I'm not the type who gets that kind of luxury easy. I paid with time and opportunity, not money. I sat in myself those couple months and gave up the next three years.
a little more than a year after that, was at where I am right now, nearly. on the loveseat in this basement, windows open on the fourth of july. linux on the old laptop cuz the one I bought landscaping broke. stephanie mccurry, ash and christian, that paper I wrote down here in the puddle of time, drinking with travis/shane/sabrina/jacob. had no idea allllll the others that would end up down here. miracle. a weak, precious whisper of what once was of that basement in mirror lake, where all of villa rica swirled. missed it, but as I said, let that heartfelt drum tap tap out, got up and walked.
that's the sad part: it doesn't feel like growing up. there's no big emotional experience or payoff like there is with everything else. no fireworks or music, no neurochemical explosion. you just do it, just happens. at some point it's just life. this is shitty to say, but you miss the lows along with the highs. depression can feel like it means something, clocking in typically does not. you have to make it matter, and at some point along the way I did. that's the mark of having grown up. it's been three years since I graduated and landed down here, incomplete but at least degreed. nickel creek and the song about forever. whatever happened after that, I was gonna have to do. an old lament of mine about puberty and your late teens/early twenties is that even if you ain't doing SHIT, shit happens. things change, you change. after that, they don't. it's on you.
and here I am, at that point. these have been a very unremarkable three years. the year at the firm was Boring and very much empty, but I learned. the first year at candler was good, even in the moments it was hell. the second year has led to this. the extended moment I've been waiting for. spring break, which I could reasonably drag out to the eighteenth if I get shameless enough. maybe. we'll see. by that point, the green really should be on its way in and, maybe, I'll have an idea where I end up in the fall. more pressingly, if I get everything I need done tonight, I'll have the albatross of revision off. the research I have wanted but not been able to do. a story to tell, a future to imagine, an argument to make. which is what lawyers do, and what I have not been great at all these years. maybe this is where I can change that. speak the language I didn't know, my God, four years ago. like I said then, get it done. it's so close, and it can go so far.
