I can remember how happy waking up to watch cartoons in the morning use to make me. Sugary cereal, a house that smelled like home cooking, and my t.v.. That was all I needed to be fulfilled. My adolescence was such a simple beautiful time in my life; a time when working out and my own self image were the last things on my mind, while the first were late night sleep overs, video games, and laughing.
It's been a while since I really thought about how happy a child hood I had. Granted, sometimes when I reflect on my past I glorify things a bit in my head. Maybe that's a good thing.
One day you're young. You have this limited AND infinite view of the world as if you're wearing bifocals.
Then life happens.
Slowly at first... and then you blink. The next thing you know you're looking back at this tapestry that you have unknowingly woven. And it's so vast that you can only see certain parts of it.
It's interesting the things you remember and the things you forget.
My earliest memory is from behind the bars of my crib and looking at the brass hinge on my bedroom door and going back and forth between being terrified of it and then being okay. The next memory is of the corner store and barely being able to reach the door knob while my mom and neighbor were buying cigarettes. Once I grabbed hold, the door swung open and I clumsily fell onto the concrete outside where a dog began licking my head. I remember bleeding and thinking the dog was eating me. Once again I was terrified. The next memory I have is of my older brother Scott in our living room joshing me about my first day at pre school. I also remember my mom sewing me a pirate costume when I was four. I hated it and refused to wear it on Halloween. What an asshole I was even at 4. I have a hand full of memories from kindergarten involving some girl throwing up, another girl exclaiming she had a worm in her butt (she was sick with diarrhea), showing my penis to a boy while we were in time out which he was not cool with, and secretly telling a girl I had a Jem doll and her screaming it to the whole class. I was so embarrassed. Later on that girl would turn out to be a best friend and one of the reasons I loved high school so much. And even later on we would lose touch a bit and I would not attend her wedding (on accident if you can believe). Ties would be cut and then re-sewn.
Many of my early memories involve embarrassing moments like drawing a huge breasted woman in second grade and having the back left of the classroom laughing hysterically over it. That was until Mrs. Bowerline called me to her desk and had me sent to the principal's office. It was no longer funny especially as the only person in the office was my art teacher who I tried to convince I was taking her own advice when I drew the picture.... explaining that at first I was drawing a house and it wasn't going the way I wanted so "I did what you told me to do.... I made something else". I cried and she held me and rubbed my back while telling me it was okay. There are hundreds of similar memories running through my head when I think of grade school.
Then I became a teenager. I was the first person in my class to develop acne. I was about 12.
Karate. Note passing. Crushes on girls. My first experience getting drunk. Studying and not studying. Track. School dances. Balancing my time between two groups of friends.... ones that were from the private school I went to and ones that were from the local public high school. Pizza on half days. Comic books. Masturbating all the time. Baggy jeans. Baggy clothes in general. Snow days.
And then towards the end of high school my dad got sick. I had a love/ hate /mostly love relationship with my dad who thought it was funny dropping me off at school and BEEPING THE HORN EVERY TIME WHICH I BEGGED HIM NOT TO (when I was 12 years old). He tickled me, in passing, all the time which always annoyed me.
I'll never forget the first time I saw him cry. I was about 16. We had moved a hospital bed into the downstairs television room to take care of him. He was getting very sick. I had taught myself how to play a few songs on the piano during my spare time. And so I played them as he watched and listened sitting in his wheelchair. He cried like a baby. The gravity of that moment didn't hit me at the time but it hits me now. Looking back, I imagine all the things he must have felt in that single moment... things about the future... his son's future... a future that would never be seen. I held him in my arms, uncomfortable as it was to watch my hero break down before me.
When he died I was more relieved than anything.
And so I guess it's not that surprising that I traveled away from home to attend college in the South. College was a time of massive self discovery, acceptance, beauty, magic, and adventure. I look back at the four years that I fell in love with acting, my straight best friend, and a city that is among the most beautiful in the world with nothing but gratitude and love.
And then I moved to NYC. I met a lot of people. I broke hearts and got mine broken.
All these different chapters only exist now in glimpses. Distant and not so distant memories. What remains of those memories are mostly feelings, a few mental snapshots, sounds, and smells. Sometimes I hear a song I haven't heard in forever and it instantly teleports me back in time. Or sometimes I smell some one's cologne and it reminds me of an x and pulls up memories long forgotten.
Nowadays, after weaving so many layers onto my life, it seems to require a little more effort to be happy.
It's seldom that I wake out of bed like a child... wide eyed and seemingly happy for no reason. Quite the contrary. More often than not my eyes feel stuck shut dry and my first thoughts are generally how tired I am. I generally need a pot of coffee just to "function".
When I really think of it, many of the things that really make me happy today involve risk and searching. Falling in love required compromise and fighting and holding a mirror in front of my face and asking myself, "What do you want?" Finding "passion" required effort and walking down roads I didn't know I would enjoy. Many times I DIDN'T enjoy them. As you get older, the world becomes larger and you meet more people and you change more. So what you thought made you happy yesterday doesn't make you happy today. It's like I'm evolving at a quicker speed than when I was ten. And when you add the pace of a city like New York to that, it can feel overwhelming. You get people in places they never expected to be... afraid to change... in fact fighting change which ironically is inevitable. You get people that wake up and forget how lucky they are... how lucky WE are. How brief this all is.
So sometimes, I blog. To clear my thoughts. To reflect. To express gratitude. And to remind everyone how lucky we are even when we feel so unlucky.
Today, I look back at the tapestry that is my life. A tapestry three decades in the making. One in which no one will ever see the way I see it.
I'm okay with that.
It's been a while since I really thought about how happy a child hood I had. Granted, sometimes when I reflect on my past I glorify things a bit in my head. Maybe that's a good thing.
One day you're young. You have this limited AND infinite view of the world as if you're wearing bifocals.
Then life happens.
Slowly at first... and then you blink. The next thing you know you're looking back at this tapestry that you have unknowingly woven. And it's so vast that you can only see certain parts of it.
It's interesting the things you remember and the things you forget.
My earliest memory is from behind the bars of my crib and looking at the brass hinge on my bedroom door and going back and forth between being terrified of it and then being okay. The next memory is of the corner store and barely being able to reach the door knob while my mom and neighbor were buying cigarettes. Once I grabbed hold, the door swung open and I clumsily fell onto the concrete outside where a dog began licking my head. I remember bleeding and thinking the dog was eating me. Once again I was terrified. The next memory I have is of my older brother Scott in our living room joshing me about my first day at pre school. I also remember my mom sewing me a pirate costume when I was four. I hated it and refused to wear it on Halloween. What an asshole I was even at 4. I have a hand full of memories from kindergarten involving some girl throwing up, another girl exclaiming she had a worm in her butt (she was sick with diarrhea), showing my penis to a boy while we were in time out which he was not cool with, and secretly telling a girl I had a Jem doll and her screaming it to the whole class. I was so embarrassed. Later on that girl would turn out to be a best friend and one of the reasons I loved high school so much. And even later on we would lose touch a bit and I would not attend her wedding (on accident if you can believe). Ties would be cut and then re-sewn.
Many of my early memories involve embarrassing moments like drawing a huge breasted woman in second grade and having the back left of the classroom laughing hysterically over it. That was until Mrs. Bowerline called me to her desk and had me sent to the principal's office. It was no longer funny especially as the only person in the office was my art teacher who I tried to convince I was taking her own advice when I drew the picture.... explaining that at first I was drawing a house and it wasn't going the way I wanted so "I did what you told me to do.... I made something else". I cried and she held me and rubbed my back while telling me it was okay. There are hundreds of similar memories running through my head when I think of grade school.
Then I became a teenager. I was the first person in my class to develop acne. I was about 12.
Karate. Note passing. Crushes on girls. My first experience getting drunk. Studying and not studying. Track. School dances. Balancing my time between two groups of friends.... ones that were from the private school I went to and ones that were from the local public high school. Pizza on half days. Comic books. Masturbating all the time. Baggy jeans. Baggy clothes in general. Snow days.
And then towards the end of high school my dad got sick. I had a love/ hate /mostly love relationship with my dad who thought it was funny dropping me off at school and BEEPING THE HORN EVERY TIME WHICH I BEGGED HIM NOT TO (when I was 12 years old). He tickled me, in passing, all the time which always annoyed me.
I'll never forget the first time I saw him cry. I was about 16. We had moved a hospital bed into the downstairs television room to take care of him. He was getting very sick. I had taught myself how to play a few songs on the piano during my spare time. And so I played them as he watched and listened sitting in his wheelchair. He cried like a baby. The gravity of that moment didn't hit me at the time but it hits me now. Looking back, I imagine all the things he must have felt in that single moment... things about the future... his son's future... a future that would never be seen. I held him in my arms, uncomfortable as it was to watch my hero break down before me.
When he died I was more relieved than anything.
And so I guess it's not that surprising that I traveled away from home to attend college in the South. College was a time of massive self discovery, acceptance, beauty, magic, and adventure. I look back at the four years that I fell in love with acting, my straight best friend, and a city that is among the most beautiful in the world with nothing but gratitude and love.And then I moved to NYC. I met a lot of people. I broke hearts and got mine broken.
All these different chapters only exist now in glimpses. Distant and not so distant memories. What remains of those memories are mostly feelings, a few mental snapshots, sounds, and smells. Sometimes I hear a song I haven't heard in forever and it instantly teleports me back in time. Or sometimes I smell some one's cologne and it reminds me of an x and pulls up memories long forgotten.
Nowadays, after weaving so many layers onto my life, it seems to require a little more effort to be happy.
It's seldom that I wake out of bed like a child... wide eyed and seemingly happy for no reason. Quite the contrary. More often than not my eyes feel stuck shut dry and my first thoughts are generally how tired I am. I generally need a pot of coffee just to "function".
When I really think of it, many of the things that really make me happy today involve risk and searching. Falling in love required compromise and fighting and holding a mirror in front of my face and asking myself, "What do you want?" Finding "passion" required effort and walking down roads I didn't know I would enjoy. Many times I DIDN'T enjoy them. As you get older, the world becomes larger and you meet more people and you change more. So what you thought made you happy yesterday doesn't make you happy today. It's like I'm evolving at a quicker speed than when I was ten. And when you add the pace of a city like New York to that, it can feel overwhelming. You get people in places they never expected to be... afraid to change... in fact fighting change which ironically is inevitable. You get people that wake up and forget how lucky they are... how lucky WE are. How brief this all is.
So sometimes, I blog. To clear my thoughts. To reflect. To express gratitude. And to remind everyone how lucky we are even when we feel so unlucky.
Today, I look back at the tapestry that is my life. A tapestry three decades in the making. One in which no one will ever see the way I see it.
I'm okay with that.
And I'm in awe.
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