Visions of Grandeur Chapter 1

I could sit here and tell you life has some spectacular meaning, that god loves you and this world is a test for an afterlife full of promise and bliss. I could fill your mind of visions of grandeur, that there’s some complex underlying meaning to why we’re here. But that would just be feeding you bullshit, and seeing as we are fed enough of that to feed all of Africa, I’ll be straight with you. When you die, it doesn’t matter. It’s a basic, primitive system in all actuality. We live, and then we die. Who honestly would want to accept that? I know I didn’t want to. I had to go out for myself, I had to test it. Surely, there had to be something. Some reason, whatever it may be, that the world is what it is. If you can accept the possibility of this, that your life is empty and means nothing, I’ll tell you how I know. It’s a long story, inane in the idea that I have to fill you with hours of reasoning to how I have discovered the truth. But never the less, it must be done.
         I suppose it all started when I was about sixteen. By all means, nothing made me superior to my peers, and I certainly did not know anything that they didn’t. The usual grief; school, love interests, parental problems, sibling rivalry, financial situations, and all of the rest occupied my days. At the time though, it seemed impossible to fathom that everyone went through these things. I wasted many hours contemplating good and evil, right and wrong, why we are here. If I ever became satisfied of a reasoning, it lasted only a brief time and then I was right back where I started, possibly back even farther as I had even more questions then when I first embarked. This is probably so because I have been exposed to every side of every argument, and I thought I had my side picked and ready, each time only to be uprooted by the next, polar opposite.
         Starting to my earliest days, I thought I had it all figured out. Live by the rules, live straight, work hard, and that if I applied myself to what I wanted, It was mine for the taking. My parents naturally were ecstatic to have such a young child so world aware. They took me to open bank accounts and encouraged me more, all the while I eagerly stored my pennies and thought of future success.          
         But as I got a little older, I realized this task was not going to be easy. I had slid through my first few years of school, going off of natural intelligence and well practiced manipulation. When the day came that I would have to apply myself as the rest and could not manipulate my elders, I did what was inevitable. I buckled to the pressure. Spent my days cavorting with friends, causing all kinds of mischief and getting into several fights. All along, distancing my self from my parents.
         And then the day came where I had pushed myself too far. My grades were in shambles and my home situation in equal peril. I had no choice but to move and attempt to start over. I suppose I had no real incentive to fix the mess though, as I knew things would be no different in this new scenery. It was a quick fix, and somehow I had managed to make my parents believe it. I guess they wanted to, or had to. It is an example of human weakness at its purest form. However much I told myself that I was cured, my self described “new life” was no more successful then before. By now I was not just sneaking out with friends to egg houses and occasionally smoke pot, I was regularly using prescription pills and engaging in life threatening activity. Never my own though, I was to much a coward for that. We would hide and shoot paintballs at car windows as they drove by, jump smaller children for their money, and throw bricks at people’s homes. My two previous life styles were utter disappointments, but luckily it was all about to come together.
         I was now a junior in high school, and totally fucked if I do say so myself. That’s just the only word to describe how dire the situation was. I went back to my roots and turned on to drugs. Marijuana I realized, was a spectacular tool. In my youth, I had never realized how deep of a drug it was. We smoked miniscule amounts and ventured to McDonalds, thinking we were so cool and on top of the world. But now, I was all grown up. Sixteen, going on seventeen. I now used the drug to explore my mind and please the senses. Words from Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead overloaded my mind and blew me away. And as young people do, I again fell into a new transition. I shunned what the “status quo” called the norm, and did what I felt was important. Aided by my newfound love for music and LSD, I set out to make my mark.
         But then the day came again where I had to question all of this. I was no poet, and I had no musical skill. This was not a road I could take; I had no means to survive. I threw down my tie dye, and asked myself, “What do you need boy, what is it you’re looking for?” My response was “fix it.” I didn’t know what that meant, but I tried to do it. I fixed my grades to the best of my ability, but they were just too far gone to do much to help it. I kept my style and look and pretended to be what I was, if I even was it to begin with, and lived my life. I graduated high school, and just barley. My parents wondered how a child so full of promise could end like this. And I wanted to know as well. So I packed my bags, said my goodbyes, and headed out to discover myself.
         One week into my journey, I realized my parents had not been sugarcoating anything. A life like this was more then undesirable. A friend and I lived out of a car, working occasionally when we needed money. There was no promise land, no community of people living to spend time with those they loved. What we found were drug addicted, self centered people who used others. We found cults, scams, and more things then we wanted to. But not what we set out for. This isn’t to say there weren’t good times, because there were many. Either way, my friend had had enough, he was going back home to go to college and fix his life. I wished him well, and remained in my private hell. For some reason I could not go back, I couldn’t deal with the fact that my parents were right. That everyone but me was right. It was then I realized that the 1960’s ended for a reason.
         So I settled down in a small village in California, I don’t even remember where. But this was the place I learned the dark truth mentioned afore. I got by peddling anything I could, stolen goods, homemade crafts, and drugs. Whatever put some food on the table was good. Times went by when I relapsed back into my optimistic hippie days; I enjoyed watching people, emotions and tried to emulate them through song and poetry with no avail. Although I do not remember my time their specifically, I remember one night as clear as Caribbean water. One thought ruled the night. This life style, this will go on for as long as I allow it. There is no safety net, there isn’t anything preventing me from failing or even killing myself. I could change it, but only to an extent. The point was it could go either way, and it would, regardless of what I wanted. There wasn’t any fate that was going to steer me right, or bring me down. What I did would have the outcomes and they would fall as they did. Fate I understood, was an excuse. An excuse for the success of others, and the failings of the rest. People want reasoning for why their life happened the way it did. They can’t accept that it just did and they are no more significant then the others. They day will come when they are forgotten, and they will have mattered not.