Release.

Sometimes, I think we just need a moment to vent our head caves to an audience that doesn’t know us.  I really do not feel like dumping my problems on anyone I know, and thanks to the nifty confines of this site, you can choose to ignore it.

My story begins when college ended.  The woman I had been with for almost two years decided to leave me, subsequently getting involved with a friend of mine.  She has found happiness and success in her new life, so I hold little ill will toward her.  In fact, I knew that the relationship was not healthy with my depression.  It dragged her down, but then she found true happiness, and I pissed off into an even worse depression.

In the midst of it, I found myself spending a ton of time with a friend of mine from college.  As these sorts of things go, we found ourselves developing feelings.  Her and I finally acted on it by venturing to a large city for New Year’s Eve, and we fell for each other in the dying embers of the fireworks lingering above.

She was the most intelligent person I had ever met in my life.  Two associates degrees before the age of twenty, and she was vying to get a Bachelor’s degree in my former discipline.  She was the cool, nonchalant, dark humored woman you always imagined you would end up with in life.   Someone you couldn’t wait to spend an entire night in bed with just so you could squeeze out the last few drops of the waking day in love.

After six months, things had gotten to the point where marriage was being thrown around as a possibility.  So–I proposed to her, against my better judgement.

“You mother fucker.”

My brain did not exactly process what had happened at first.  It did in the subsequent hour she spent telling me how wrong I was, that those texts of wanting to marry me were drunken, that she was too young.

Grabbing my ever emptying box of cigarettes, I planted a fresh one on my lips as she walked away for the night.  Getting into my car, I stared at the orange glow in the rear view mirror.  This, on top of a dead end midnight shift job, was too much for me to process.  I had done it with a yellow umbrella, an echo to our favorite series together.

I threw the umbrella against the window, beating my steering wheel like a petulant child.  The cigarette was mostly ash at this point, and I sure as hell did not feel any better.  I took one final slow drag, letting it lazily fumble to the ground.  After the hell of every single failure  of the past year, this was the straw that broke.  I was going to go home, grab my pistol, and then this would be over.  No more of a year in midnight, no more feeling inadequate, and there would not be another string of disappointments in my life.  The depression had won.

Closing my car door, I felt the faint vibration of my phone ringing.

“Hello?”

“Hey man.  How are you?”

“Look…this…this really is not a good time.”

“Oh.  Well, I just wanted to let you know, we have an open room in Vegas.”

“What?”

“Yeah.  I know it’s a long drive from the east coast, but we’d love to have you out here.”

“Uhm…”  I looked at my yellow umbrella.  “Yeah, yeah, I don’t have anything going on here.”

“Booyeah!  Well, since this isn’t a good time, give me a call when your plans are more solid.”

“Yes.  Thank you.  You have…no idea what you just did for me.”

“No problem.  Take care!”

“You too.”

From suicide to moving to Vegas.  What the hell?

A year moved by quickly, and I had developed a family of roommates.  They systematically killed my depression.  She never escaped mind, however, and before I knew it, a year had gone by on my own.  I proceeded to venture back to the east coast, living in New York City for a bit.  Then…I came home.

Stepping out of my car, home had changed, or maybe I had changed.  The country landscape felt foreign to me.  I took in the air of the hills that raised me.  After three months of taking care of my sick mother, I finally went to find her again.

It was spur of the moment, and the journey found me in my old college town again.  When we met up, she poured her year long story out to me, and it was rapidly apparent that she had move on to someone she truly loved.  I could see it in the way her eyes twinlked talking about him.  She had also developed a problem with addiction, and I was shocked that she wanted to tell me such a part of her soul.

“I…want to help you.”

“You can’t.  I’m not your mess to clean up anymore.”

She kept me there as long as she could, saying how very badly she missed having someone to truly talk to about the things in her mind.

She hugged me tightly, twice, we said goodbye, and the world on the other side of her door turned up in volume.  The ambience of the night became defeaning.

I walked to my car, this time a nonsmoker, and sat staring down the empty street.  I had spent an adventurous year pining for someone that no longer loved me, and somehow it was okay.  It was okay.

Cranking up the CD player in my car, I realized all the dreams I had let go of in pursuit of an unhealthy love.  I shifted to drive, raging out into the night.

“Goodbye.”

I relieved my finger from the trigger, and the world had color again.

My dreams were ready now.  The horizon of the interstate endlessly stretched on in front of me.

(For context, the latter part of this happened about three days ago.)