Disclaimer: Information included in this essay is no longer an accurate reflection of my life choices or extracurricular activities. Read this with an appreciation of the writing style, and take the information held within the words with a grain of salt.
Realization
I wake up still feeling exhausted; it had been one of those nights when you truly believe that you are going to remember everything the next day, and then upon waking realize that the blur of thoughts coming back to your mind is nowhere close to the full collection of happenings from the night before. Craving some form of quick nourishment, but too tired and hung over to climb into my poor excuse of a car and drive to get a hot, fresh McMuffin, I stagger down the shaky ladder from my attic room, followed by a just a noisy but slightly less treacherous set of stairs, and drag my way into the kitchen.
It's funny how things that were important to us as children don't always remain so as we grow up. Likes and dislikes come and go as our tastes and preferences change; convictions waver in either direction, searching for a foothold in the crags and cracks of morality and ethics; the shell of the cicada cracks along the seam as we stretch and grow until we finally break through and press outward, each time leaving the shadow of our former self clinging to the tree trunk. But what if we don't see the shell? What if, for whatever reason, we are numb to the feeling of that cracking along our backs' seam and we don't know that something is different about us until it is too late and the shell has crumbled and blown away in the wind? If that change isn't apparent to the person who experienced it, did the change really occur? Webster's Thesaurus contains many synonyms for the word "change:" alteration, modification, mutation, variation, transformation, innovation...however, all of these still leave me with a kind of empty feeling inside. It's as though a switch has been flicked, and the light bulb is not burnt out, but for some odd reason the light doesn't come on.
A change is not simply the switching of something from one form to another. It is a realization of a new position, a conscious awareness of a difference in something, be it a belief, a stance, a desire. I've heard it said that people can "change without realizing it." But have they really changed? If a man doesn't realize that he is different, is he really different? No, because to himself he is the same person. Until he realizes that difference, he has not changed to himself, and therefore He is still He to him.
The light coming through the dusty window above the sink is annoying. Definitely annoying because of the underlying throbs of my headache, and disappointingly so because it is supposed to be a new day, slate wiped clean from last night's Dionysian revelry. I search through the cabinets and refrigerator, hoping to find something to satiate my unstable stomach, and come across two things I absolutely loved in my childhood: apple juice and raisins. Why they are in the kitchen, I have no idea, because I have not had either one since elementary school. I decide to settle, mostly because I don't care enough to keep scavenging through the cabinets, but also because I think it might be nice to reminisce. Happy thoughts of childhood may help to relieve the unwelcome throbbing in my head and the thankfully subsiding churning in my belly.
Mom and Dad raised me well. My home was safe and loving, with rules as solid as the walls of the house we lived in. They were with me, right? As I left my parents' home and entered the world of college, I kept with me the foundation of life that they had poured and did not for a moment thing of stepping off of it onto the shaky, unstable ground around me. The rules of home left me safe and secure: in by ten, no smoking and drinking, no dating until you are 16, and even then only "Christian" girls, and (of course) no movies with higher than a PG-13 rating. I had my vices - I was a smoker. A relatively heavy smoker at this point, sucking down at least half a pack of Camel Turkish Golds a day. But I still held onto the basic tenets of my Christian home: no drinking because I wasn't yet 21, no drugs because they are illegal and harmful, must go to church every Sunday ("try to find a ride down to that church in Staunton because it's affiliated with the same ministry as ours; we don't want you exposed to incorrect teaching").
I plop on the old tweed couch in the living room, sinking in far deeper than I am sure the manufacturers ever intended. No one should own a couch this old. As I open the bottle of juice and slide open the top of the box of raisins, I think back to the times in the kitchen I grew up in. I close my eyes and hunt through my mind for the memories, watching them not from my own toddler eyes, but from those of an outsider undetected by the actors playing out the scene. I see myself sitting in my high chair, a large crooked smile on my face, waiting impatiently for my favorite snack of apple juice and raisins. My mother fed this to me almost daily, and I couldn't get enough of them at that time. Apple juice and raisins: a mother's dream to gently quiet her child's cries for sustenance. Small, easy to transport in their Minute Maid juice boxes with the bendy straws and small, red Dole boxes with the smiling immigrant woman on the front. She could easily throw several of each in her purse for when the moment arrives that she knows will be coming anytime throughout the day, probably at the most inopportune time: the impending embarrassment of a very public and very vocal explosion emitting from her child's mouth. Every child loves them, every child eats them, and subsequently every child shuts up for at least enough time for the mother to finish her errands.
I held strong to my beliefs, did not let them go for an instant. While everyone else was out on Friday night, I stayed in to read or watch a movie with the other homebodies. I didn't need alcohol to have a good time. I didn't need to bring a girl back to my extra-long twin bed and wake my roommate up at three o'clock in the morning as I tried to unlock the door. I was still the same little boy, enjoying the things I always had and not needing to try new ones. I was full and content. I didn't need anything other than the words from my parents' mouths and the television or a good book on the weekends.
The image of my smiling face happily shoveling raisins into my mouth fades slowly from the view of my mind's eye as a rumble from my stomach brings me back to my harsh, present reality f hunger and headache. I take a sip of juice and pop a few raisins into my mouth, waiting for those happy memories to come flooding back as I prepare for my stomach to be silenced. However, this is not the case. As I chew slowly, a new thought enters my mind. It takes me a moment to realize what it is, but as I slowly put my finger on it, it becomes more and more apparent: apple juice and raisins are disgusting! They are simply pasteurized, processed perversions of the healthy and satisfying deliciousness that is apples and grapes. This apple juice is nothing more than tap water with a drop of apple flavoring and a bit of caramel coloring. Raisins are the cadavers of delicious red grapes. Who wants to eat cadavers? The thought is repugnant to say the least.
My change in taste for raisins and apple juice had not occurred until I realized that it had. If someone had asked me prior to that morning on my old tweed couch if I liked raisins or apple juice, my answer would have been yes. This would have been, of course, despite the fact that I had not had either in years. It was the tasting of each that made me realize tat I no longer cared for either, and that moment is when the change occurred.
I look back over the past three years I have spent in college, trying to find some shred of proof that I haven't changed, that I am still the same person I was when my parents left me on campus for the first time and I was on my own. The sobering thing is, however, that I knew almost instantly as I played back the memories like a slow-motion silent film in my head that I was definitely not the same person. It is me who changed from the kid who doesn't drink but smokes heavily to the kid who drinks on occasion and still smokes heavily. My first party was at the Knights of Columbus house, where tasting the jungle juice turned out to be such a delicious experience that half a cup turned into three. It is me who progressed from drinking on occasion to every weekend, many times not remembering things the next day. For some reason, the pull of alcohol became more appealing than the pull of things from home, and it began to become the focus of my weekends. It is also me who wandered around an apartment complex drunk and ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time, resulting in having a gun pulled of me and having to come down to testify against the kid. And because of this new found love for losing my way, it is definitely me who lost my virginity in a drunken haze to a girl I didn't know and after that night never talked to again. Something so precious to me, something I wanted to save until my wedding night, was gone in an instant of intoxicated stupidity.
Bite into an apple...the texture, the crunchy goodness, and...juice! Pure, untainted apple juice. Why take the fun out of eating an apple by just taking the juice and eliminating the crunchy? It's like taking the time to put new strings on a guitar and then trying to play with your toes. You'll still get some sound out of it (perhaps even decent sound if you're Jimi Hendrix), but the real fun of playing it is gone. Now, take a grape...throw it up in the air and catch it with your mouth; bite down and taste the soft, cool flavor. Or freeze it and chew on it; see how the frozenness brings out the true sweetness of the fruit. Freeze a raisin...it's like a small, black, wrinkly rock that could take out an eye if you aren't too good at the whole throwing-it-up-and-catching-it trick. Or just go ahead and eat the raisin thawed and "normal," if one can refer to a raisin as such. The taste is metallic, the texture rugged and harsh. You may eve prick your tongue on a poorly shaped crag of dehydrated grape skin. And where is that explosion of cool sweetness on your tongue? It's gone, stolen by sunlight or heatlamp in order to make a snack for some toddler who won't stop fussing at the mall or in the waiting room at the doctor's office.
It's gone, that feeling of security and self-efficacy. The sense that I know that what I know is right and no one can tell me otherwise has faded from everything I learned at home to just a few key ideals that will stay with me throughout my life. Well, fuck...try saying that through a mouth full of raisins. Pastor Dad wouldn't like that word coming out of my mouth. He wouldn't like all of the alcohol and occasional (sometimes more than occasional) bong hit going into my mouth either - but that one phrase can sum up a lot of things I have gone through in college. Don't get me wrong, I have definitely come into my own over the past several years. I know what I want to do with my life after college. The real question is what do I not want to do with my life? I realize that I probably come across as incredibly bitter, but the thing is I am not in the least. I still go to church (not in Staunton; it's time for me to find my own way) sometimes, but not as often as my parents think I do. And I still hold what they have taught me dear.
I finish my bite, mostly because I am trying to keep things moving inward, toward my stomach rather than away from it. I get up from the couch, place the juice and raisins back in their respective locations in the kitchen, and head back up the creaky old stairs, up the rickety ladder, and back into my always-comfortable bed. Sleep is a better cure for a hangover than kid food anyways.
I have had my realization. I am changed. And I am ok with that.
It's funny how things that were important to us as children don't always remain so as we grow up. Likes and dislikes come and go as our tastes and preferences change; convictions waver in either direction, searching for a foothold in the crags and cracks of morality and ethics; the shell of the cicada cracks along the seam as we stretch and grow until we finally break through and press outward, each time leaving the shadow of our former self clinging to the tree trunk. But what if we don't see the shell? What if, for whatever reason, we are numb to the feeling of that cracking along our backs' seam and we don't know that something is different about us until it is too late and the shell has crumbled and blown away in the wind? If that change isn't apparent to the person who experienced it, did the change really occur? Webster's Thesaurus contains many synonyms for the word "change:" alteration, modification, mutation, variation, transformation, innovation...however, all of these still leave me with a kind of empty feeling inside. It's as though a switch has been flicked, and the light bulb is not burnt out, but for some odd reason the light doesn't come on.
A change is not simply the switching of something from one form to another. It is a realization of a new position, a conscious awareness of a difference in something, be it a belief, a stance, a desire. I've heard it said that people can "change without realizing it." But have they really changed? If a man doesn't realize that he is different, is he really different? No, because to himself he is the same person. Until he realizes that difference, he has not changed to himself, and therefore He is still He to him.
The light coming through the dusty window above the sink is annoying. Definitely annoying because of the underlying throbs of my headache, and disappointingly so because it is supposed to be a new day, slate wiped clean from last night's Dionysian revelry. I search through the cabinets and refrigerator, hoping to find something to satiate my unstable stomach, and come across two things I absolutely loved in my childhood: apple juice and raisins. Why they are in the kitchen, I have no idea, because I have not had either one since elementary school. I decide to settle, mostly because I don't care enough to keep scavenging through the cabinets, but also because I think it might be nice to reminisce. Happy thoughts of childhood may help to relieve the unwelcome throbbing in my head and the thankfully subsiding churning in my belly.
Mom and Dad raised me well. My home was safe and loving, with rules as solid as the walls of the house we lived in. They were with me, right? As I left my parents' home and entered the world of college, I kept with me the foundation of life that they had poured and did not for a moment thing of stepping off of it onto the shaky, unstable ground around me. The rules of home left me safe and secure: in by ten, no smoking and drinking, no dating until you are 16, and even then only "Christian" girls, and (of course) no movies with higher than a PG-13 rating. I had my vices - I was a smoker. A relatively heavy smoker at this point, sucking down at least half a pack of Camel Turkish Golds a day. But I still held onto the basic tenets of my Christian home: no drinking because I wasn't yet 21, no drugs because they are illegal and harmful, must go to church every Sunday ("try to find a ride down to that church in Staunton because it's affiliated with the same ministry as ours; we don't want you exposed to incorrect teaching").
I plop on the old tweed couch in the living room, sinking in far deeper than I am sure the manufacturers ever intended. No one should own a couch this old. As I open the bottle of juice and slide open the top of the box of raisins, I think back to the times in the kitchen I grew up in. I close my eyes and hunt through my mind for the memories, watching them not from my own toddler eyes, but from those of an outsider undetected by the actors playing out the scene. I see myself sitting in my high chair, a large crooked smile on my face, waiting impatiently for my favorite snack of apple juice and raisins. My mother fed this to me almost daily, and I couldn't get enough of them at that time. Apple juice and raisins: a mother's dream to gently quiet her child's cries for sustenance. Small, easy to transport in their Minute Maid juice boxes with the bendy straws and small, red Dole boxes with the smiling immigrant woman on the front. She could easily throw several of each in her purse for when the moment arrives that she knows will be coming anytime throughout the day, probably at the most inopportune time: the impending embarrassment of a very public and very vocal explosion emitting from her child's mouth. Every child loves them, every child eats them, and subsequently every child shuts up for at least enough time for the mother to finish her errands.
I held strong to my beliefs, did not let them go for an instant. While everyone else was out on Friday night, I stayed in to read or watch a movie with the other homebodies. I didn't need alcohol to have a good time. I didn't need to bring a girl back to my extra-long twin bed and wake my roommate up at three o'clock in the morning as I tried to unlock the door. I was still the same little boy, enjoying the things I always had and not needing to try new ones. I was full and content. I didn't need anything other than the words from my parents' mouths and the television or a good book on the weekends.
The image of my smiling face happily shoveling raisins into my mouth fades slowly from the view of my mind's eye as a rumble from my stomach brings me back to my harsh, present reality f hunger and headache. I take a sip of juice and pop a few raisins into my mouth, waiting for those happy memories to come flooding back as I prepare for my stomach to be silenced. However, this is not the case. As I chew slowly, a new thought enters my mind. It takes me a moment to realize what it is, but as I slowly put my finger on it, it becomes more and more apparent: apple juice and raisins are disgusting! They are simply pasteurized, processed perversions of the healthy and satisfying deliciousness that is apples and grapes. This apple juice is nothing more than tap water with a drop of apple flavoring and a bit of caramel coloring. Raisins are the cadavers of delicious red grapes. Who wants to eat cadavers? The thought is repugnant to say the least.
My change in taste for raisins and apple juice had not occurred until I realized that it had. If someone had asked me prior to that morning on my old tweed couch if I liked raisins or apple juice, my answer would have been yes. This would have been, of course, despite the fact that I had not had either in years. It was the tasting of each that made me realize tat I no longer cared for either, and that moment is when the change occurred.
I look back over the past three years I have spent in college, trying to find some shred of proof that I haven't changed, that I am still the same person I was when my parents left me on campus for the first time and I was on my own. The sobering thing is, however, that I knew almost instantly as I played back the memories like a slow-motion silent film in my head that I was definitely not the same person. It is me who changed from the kid who doesn't drink but smokes heavily to the kid who drinks on occasion and still smokes heavily. My first party was at the Knights of Columbus house, where tasting the jungle juice turned out to be such a delicious experience that half a cup turned into three. It is me who progressed from drinking on occasion to every weekend, many times not remembering things the next day. For some reason, the pull of alcohol became more appealing than the pull of things from home, and it began to become the focus of my weekends. It is also me who wandered around an apartment complex drunk and ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time, resulting in having a gun pulled of me and having to come down to testify against the kid. And because of this new found love for losing my way, it is definitely me who lost my virginity in a drunken haze to a girl I didn't know and after that night never talked to again. Something so precious to me, something I wanted to save until my wedding night, was gone in an instant of intoxicated stupidity.
Bite into an apple...the texture, the crunchy goodness, and...juice! Pure, untainted apple juice. Why take the fun out of eating an apple by just taking the juice and eliminating the crunchy? It's like taking the time to put new strings on a guitar and then trying to play with your toes. You'll still get some sound out of it (perhaps even decent sound if you're Jimi Hendrix), but the real fun of playing it is gone. Now, take a grape...throw it up in the air and catch it with your mouth; bite down and taste the soft, cool flavor. Or freeze it and chew on it; see how the frozenness brings out the true sweetness of the fruit. Freeze a raisin...it's like a small, black, wrinkly rock that could take out an eye if you aren't too good at the whole throwing-it-up-and-catching-it trick. Or just go ahead and eat the raisin thawed and "normal," if one can refer to a raisin as such. The taste is metallic, the texture rugged and harsh. You may eve prick your tongue on a poorly shaped crag of dehydrated grape skin. And where is that explosion of cool sweetness on your tongue? It's gone, stolen by sunlight or heatlamp in order to make a snack for some toddler who won't stop fussing at the mall or in the waiting room at the doctor's office.
It's gone, that feeling of security and self-efficacy. The sense that I know that what I know is right and no one can tell me otherwise has faded from everything I learned at home to just a few key ideals that will stay with me throughout my life. Well, fuck...try saying that through a mouth full of raisins. Pastor Dad wouldn't like that word coming out of my mouth. He wouldn't like all of the alcohol and occasional (sometimes more than occasional) bong hit going into my mouth either - but that one phrase can sum up a lot of things I have gone through in college. Don't get me wrong, I have definitely come into my own over the past several years. I know what I want to do with my life after college. The real question is what do I not want to do with my life? I realize that I probably come across as incredibly bitter, but the thing is I am not in the least. I still go to church (not in Staunton; it's time for me to find my own way) sometimes, but not as often as my parents think I do. And I still hold what they have taught me dear.
I finish my bite, mostly because I am trying to keep things moving inward, toward my stomach rather than away from it. I get up from the couch, place the juice and raisins back in their respective locations in the kitchen, and head back up the creaky old stairs, up the rickety ladder, and back into my always-comfortable bed. Sleep is a better cure for a hangover than kid food anyways.
I have had my realization. I am changed. And I am ok with that.
