So, as some of you might know, today is my birthday. For the last few years, this has brought up some really strange feelings. It’s like I can’t really believe that I’m as old as I am. This year I turn 32. I know this doesn’t really seem all that old. But it’s just crazy to me that I could be that old. Plus I think with each passing year, I feel the added weight of what I haven’t done that year. It’s a very strange feeling to know that I’ve spent another year of my life not really knowing what I’m doing with it.
I wish I had answers for where I’m going in this life. I wish I knew what I was supposed to be doing. But the more I search for these answers, the more confused I seem to get. And as the years add up, I see all the people my age or younger, that have made something of themselves. They’re living their dreams. Or at least living their lives. I feel like I’m stuck in this never-ending spiral. I’m not really getting anywhere. I’m just ending back here again. But a year older. A year more tired. A year lazier. A year further down in the ruts I’m digging for myself.
So, with each year, it becomes harder and harder to dig out of the hole I’ve made for myself. I try different things to get out of it. But every time I end up back here.
If this post seems kind of cyclical, that’s because that’s the way I see my life now. In so many ways I don’t know why I should even really try anymore. Which brings up the other reason that I have a hard time really celebrating my birthday.
When I was turning 19 was the darkest day of my life that I can remember. I had gone, against my better judgement, to SDSU for my first semester of college. I was looking forward to getting out of the house. To be honest I wanted, more than anything to be a party kid. I wanted to spend my time at college getting into as much trouble as I could find. I even signed up to be in the dorm that I had heard was the party dorm.
But then I found myself in the reality of being alone in a new place with no friends and no one to talk to. I had a job and a class schedule. I can tell you that soon after the semester started I knew that I’d made the wrong decision. In both my major and in going to college in the first place. It was during this time that I realized that I wanted to write. But I had gone to college to be an engineer. I truly wanted to be an architect, but I’d heard that it was a better career decision to become an engineer. But I was all alone. I had no one to really talk to this stuff about. I felt so alone. I started dropping classes. Or just not attending them. I started spending way too much time stuck in my room playing my guitar.
Keep in my that I had struggled with depression for most of my teenage years. Then I found myself so utterly alone. I felt abandoned by God. I felt so distant from everything that I had known. I didn’t even end up going to any parties, because I didn’t know anyone and didn’t really get to know anyone.
I’m not sure how long we’d been in school, but it obviously couldn’t have been too long since my birthday is this early in the school year. But I know that when my birthday came around in 1999, I felt so bad that I just wanted it all to end. But I didn’t know how. I laid in bed trying to figure out what was wrong with me and why I should even continue living another day. During these years, I was having such a hard time sleeping that I would sleep with headphones on. On the night of September 14th when I went to bed, I had, for whatever reason, chosen to listen to the Bon Jovi CD, Crossroad. I was laying in bed and looked up at the clock to see that it was midnight. It was now my birthday. I burst into tears and could not think of a reason to go on. Then the pictures popped into my head of me laying dead on the dorm room floor. And I can honestly say, the reason I didn’t do it then, was that I didn’t want my roommate, who I barely knew, to have to deal with that.
But then a song came on called “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night.” I won’t tell you all about the song, if you want to hear it, click on the title and it will take you to the music video for it. But it’s about people being down and out, but not giving up and making something of themselves. For me it wasn’t that I felt I was supposed to be famous. I just felt as I listened to this song this time, that I was supposed to go on and keep on trying. That I may be down and out now. But that didn’t mean I always had to be that way. That I could still live and have a good life.
This song actually started me back on track to seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. That semester was still the worst time in my life. But I don’t think I’d be who I am without it.
Shortly after that I would start going regularly to the Nazarene Church in Madison, SD. And through God and the love of the pastor and his family, I fought my way through that semester.
Sorry, this was a little long. The words just started to flow and now we’re around 1000 words. But anyway. This is why my birthday is both a good and bad day for me. It’s a very complicated day. I never really know what to do with it. It’s a day that everybody says they’re happy to have me around. But every year, I’m reminded that I don’t always want to have me around. How’s that for a sad thought for your birthday.
So, here’s to another year. Maybe this time next year I’ll be in a different place. Or at least I’ll have tried.
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