Country Livin'

Does anyone else ever feel like this?

Growing up I lived in the country. For better or worse, my family always settled into small town life whenever my parents deigned to move us to a new location. It wasn't until college that I finally got a chance to live in a "big city." Orlando to me, at least at the time, was a vast metropolis. I was a country girl that was used to climbing trees and playing in open fields. I would play Little Annie in my back yard with my Labrador. I'd let the horses out into the yard and run around the house with them. I'd dig in my grandparents old farming fields for arrow heads (or a dinosaur if my childhood dreams had ever come true).

Orlando had buildings that were over 4 stories tall. It had restaurants on every corner. It had more than one grocery store and gas station, and they were name brand stores as opposed to the mom and pop places I was used to. I saw my first homeless man. I ran away from my first homeless man. I remember the first time I went downtown and how amazed I was that buildings could be so tall. I sat in the passenger seat with my head out the window looking up the whole way to the bar. And the bar? Well let's just say the line dancing clubs I grew up with were nothing compared to that first night. Bands came to this town. Events were put on. There were parks and bike trails. But there were no trees...

That first year I lived in Orlando was scary. I rarely left my dorm room, and when I did I mostly stayed near campus. Now I live downtown, and though I’ve stopped recently, I used to go out almost every night. Those buildings that I once thought were tall are now just a part of the skyline that seems smaller every time I look at it. For a kid coming from nothing, this town seemed like a dream. But the more time I spend here, the more I realize it's just a stop on the road to something else.

Orlando is a small city, but still a city. I want more. More culture, more history, more skyline. But at the same time I find myself missing home; missing the trees and the open fields. For a little while longer I'll indulge this need to live in a big city. I’ll move to an even bigger city with more to offer. But I know that deep down inside I'll always just be that country girl that liked to hang out on the front porch at night and watch the thunder storms roll by. I'll always be that girl dragging her telescope out onto the carport to look at the stars and the moon. I'll always be that small town girl that would walk down a dirt road of the morning to catch the bus to a school that was an hour and a half away. One day I'll be back there, with a big house and a big yard. With a horse pin and a dog that likes to roll in the mud and lick my face. I'll be back there one day, and I'll be relaxed.

The Goodbye Tale

Part 1

I sit at the bar, fascinated by the swirling of my glass. The cheap whiskey I had ordered from the bartender is a yellowish brown, not the ordinary caramel color that denotes a fine vintage. This is harsh, hard to swallow. My throat feels like a deluge of chlorine has been assaulting it for hours. Instead it is this well whiskey. The whiskey that, though it tastes about as good as a shot to the head, is doing it’s job well.

Around and around the yellow-brown liquid goes. With it, my thoughts. I wish that I could send my thoughts down into the swirl of liquid, empty out my head, but try as I might, and as drunk as I am, her memory remains. I’m trapped in my own head.

This bar, this dive, is where we met for the first time. Back then this place was brand new. The first bar in what would become many to reside on this street in this middle of nowhere town. A new place for the young to frolic and the old to morn. Back then I was young, I frolicked.

She walked in through those doors, back before the paint started to chip and the hinges creaked. She walked straight in through those doors and took my breath away. Her looks weren‘t stunning,  except for her eyes that were as wide as the moon. Her movement wasn‘t elegant, but something in the air around  her caught my attention. I followed her outside through the back doors to what used to be the lounge area in those days. It was a patio with a second bar and metal tables set up around an empty dance floor. Now it’s just a place the bums of the neighborhood come to sleep on rainy nights. The owner says he doesn’t mind because the bums because keep the raccoons away. He’d rather have a bum who can buy a drink every now and again than a raccoon that just eats the stale peanuts he serves at the bar and the garbage he lets pile up outside. He’s a hero of sorts to the bums around these parts for this kindness.

Back then the back patio was strewn with thousands of tiny white Christmas lights. It gave the place a warm intimate glow. A  far cry from the black and purple interior that was more conducive to one night stands with someone you’d regret having even talked to in the morning. Now all of the lights are either broken or blown out. I don’t go out on the patio anymore, but not for fear of the sleeping bums. Instead, I fear the images that would come to mind. Of course they come to mind anyway, but they might bowl me over if I were actually to venture out into the slumber party of smelly men and the occasional raccoon.

“Hi. I’m Alex”
“I’m Kendall.” she  smiled.

We talked for hours, Kendall and I. She was an artist, and was attending art school a couple of towns over. She had a love of music, was born and raised only miles away but her family was from New York. She had a brother she didn’t really know and had lost her father a few years ago to cancer. I joked that I had lost my dad too when I was younger, but it was to a mistress. She had been in the hospital only months earlier and since then had seemed to have the worst luck one could imagine. I told her about my family. About my sister never really being the loving sibling she should have been. About my parents divorce. About my grandfather, the only true father figure in my life, dying and how it still hurt every day. About going to college, but not really caring about any of it because all I wanted to do was create something that would make people happy. We exchanged numbers and promised to call each other soon.

“It was really great meeting you. Can we get together tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I replied.

“Can I fill you up?”
“Huh? Oh, no. I’m fine. Can I get the check,” I ask, back in the present day.

I can’t take anymore reminiscence tonight. I close out my tab and head home. Head still swirling like whisky in a glass, and my heart still beating despite the overwhelming feeling I always have that it has somehow gone absent in these last few months.  I walk out of the old creaky doors that once brought her into my life, and out into the cold dark night that envelopes me in its loneliness.

New Age Hippy Bullshit

I’m about to get all philosophical on you, so forgive me in advance. I generally try to keep my hippy-roots thinking to myself, but recent events have brought all of this back into my mind. Bear with me.

Growing up I had some difficulties. I’ve alluded to them in past posts, but never really delved into any explanations. I’ll skip the details because this isn’t a pity party, just a means of helping you understand where I’m coming from. But I will say this, in my short life I’ve lost a lot that was, and still is, important to me. Either through divorce, death, relocation, or even psychological disorders I’ve lost, and still managed to lose some more. But I came through it.

I used everything that I was put through as a stepping stone to grow and mature. I knew that better things were waiting, and once the clouds went away I’d be able to see the path again. Sure I felt sorry for myself. I cried and fought just like anyone else does when stuck in a bad spot. But I never gave up hope.

In my mind the world is a constant gauntlet. The more you’re put through, the stronger you are. We’re given challenges, but only as much as we can handle. The stronger our will is, the harder our challenges may be. I don’t see this as a negative as one may assume. Instead I see it as a testament to how much I’ve learned. I can be knocked down time and time again; it doesn’t matter. In the end I’ll always pull myself back up.

Sometimes people give up. They lose the battle. It’s not because the test was too hard or they were too weak, but because they weren’t willing to try. These people get lost in the idea that the world is against them. They don’t realize that others are out there in worse spots than their own. They don’t realize that these other people are pulling through. They don’t realize that these other people will survive; not because they are better off, or stronger, or luckier, but because they never gave up hope.

What we end up with in this life has nothing to do with luck. It’s all about the positive energy that we put out into the world. Someone that just won the lottery wasn’t spending the whole week thinking, “Man, I’m never gonna win.” They were thinking, “Man, what if I did win!” Maybe you bought a lotto ticket last week and thought that same thing but didn’t win. It wasn’t your time, but I bet if you spent the whole week thinking positively about that lotto ticket and had a big smile on your face, you probably had a pretty good week.

The point is this… Everyone goes through tough times; some more than others. And when we’re at our worse is when we have the most potential. Maybe you’re currently going through something that you don’t think you can handle. But maybe, just maybe, you’re the strongest you’ve ever been because you have to deal with whatever situation you’re in. It might be bad, it might be worse than anyone knows. But as long as you have hope, as long as you don’t give up, you’ll make it through. And maybe something great will come out of it. Because everything happens for a reason, even if we can’t see it while we’re in the clouds. But that’s a different philosophy for a different day.