Saturday, April 26, 2008

In The End

Too much has happened in the past two years…I look back on some of these entries and laugh now.

Ultimately, my only hope is that I have changed for the better.

In most aspects of my life, I think I have.

To catch the story up to speed, I offer the following “Condensed Soup” version of the past 17 months.

The ex-roommate fell in “love” with some guy, they had a baby, and he thinks its mine. She has got to be the cutest kid I have been around. Happy, laughing all the time, good tempered. A lot like me in general. (For the Record, I have not even come within ten feet of her with our clothes off, excluding living together in a house with walls between us.)

Another roommate moved into the new house around the corner, then moved out this past December. My brother met a “girl” over the Internet. She came to visit and then moved here permanently. We didn’t get along very well, then I started to embrace Buddhism/Hinduism and gave up on hating people. (We speak sometimes about things other than the weather. I’m still working towards leveling the field.) My cousin moved back from CT, started having serious panic attacks, asked a mutual friend of ours to move in and now he’s here. My sister left my mom’s place and moved in here with a friend of hers. An old supervisor from my last job passed away in January of this year and an old co-worker of mine took that as a sign to move in/crash on an air mattress in the spare room. (For those keeping score, that would be eight people living in a five bedroom, three-and-a-half bathroom house.)

The rest of the family is fine, that I know of. I went through a period of absolute pain with the job at the big name cable company and quit. Spent five months looking for a new job, worked at a chain restaurant that’s name has a color and a type of bird in it, then went back to the most famous fast food chain IN THE WORLD before heading back to customer service at one of our nation’s wireless carriers. Started in December of last year and quit February fourth of this one.

The death of the aforementioned supervisor has brought many things to light, not the least of which is how valuable our time here is. While in attendance at his funeral, I also discovered that not only do the good die young, but they go out in style. There had to have been over 500 people in attendance, a fifth of them affiliated with the old job. There were cherry pickers parked in front of the church to let people know where to pull in. Through it all, there was a bit of happiness involved. His death allowed me to reconnect with some people who I never thought I’d come across again and see them with a renewed sense of sympathy.

This man who came over to my house and spent so many nights drinking and talking until the early hours of the morning, this man who spent time with me after his grandmother died attempting to cope desperately with her loss, this man who was so much to so many had died.

He left behind a legion of fans, ex-girlfriends, co-workers, a sister, a son, an ex-wife, a wife, and a huge amount of family outside of all of that.

It was a wake up call to me and another reason I am very happy to be on the path I have chosen spiritually. I won’t look down on anyone anymore. I refuse to take my life for granted. I won’t end up one of Jigsaw’s victims. (Ha ha? Anyone get that? Email me if you need help with it.)

In the end, it does really matter. I had to fall to lose it all, but in the end, it does really matter.

All in all, a pretty eventful almost year-and-a-half.

I’ll let more out as time goes by, but suffice to say I am where I ought to be for now.

Until the next belated update,

Much love to you all.