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the empty years
Posted on January 26th, 2007 2 commentsListening to tracks from Vegas by The Crystal Method takes me back to the year 2001. Driving around in the Integra was still a pretty new thing for me, and I remember in particular driving around with M. on a warm summer night. Keep Hope Alive was blasting from the stereo as we pulled out of the parking lot behind the Angelic to head east.
I don’t remember what we were doing or where we were going. The smart money is on “nothing in particular.” I idled away almost all of my time in the years since 2000 when I reconnected with M. in Madison. Lots of this, that, and the other thing. Countless nights spent either shooting pool at Cue-nique or drinking at the Irish Pub (usually both), forming no meaningful friendships with anyone new in the process. I didn’t really know much about myself or (it seemed) anything for that matter, so I figured I could just continue tagging along to experience whatever M. was up to on any given day. Turns out I was trying to be drinking buddies with an alcoholic.
Some people claim your early twenties are the best years of your life. Mine weren’t. They were the emptiest. I abused my body, and my spirit followed it down during those years when I just didn’t have a clue or much of a personality to speak of. I felt that way so through-and-through that I’m sure people could see it. I think that’s why I needed M…to have a reason to be doing something, anything.
After I quit my job, spent a few months in Baraboo, and moved back to Madison in 2003 to set about putting my life back together, things were different. I think it was then that I made the first strides toward really doing things myself — things that were in my best interest. I started writing in a journal. I started caring about my health. I got back into dating. I took up kung fu. I met a girl that I thought I might marry some day if only she wouldn’t move away. Things weren’t quite on the right track yet, but my life was far better than it had been.
That album is colored with recollections of a lot of following along, a lot of partying…a whole lot of nothing. To hear it again is at once sentimental and unsettling.
2 responses to “the empty years”
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Too bad you fail to mention that “M” put you up very nearly rent free while on “The Acres”; was there for you at perhaps you’re most dire moment at 3AM; lied to your parents to allow you to “re-birth”; introduced and accompanied you to the first Kung-Fu school visit (and many more there after); etc.
It’s disapointing to see that you implement ME in YOUR “wasted early twenties.” Did you notice that your alcoholic drinking buddy became a massage therapist, became a wood worker, started a commercial window washing company and enrolled in Arch. Tech while you were busy “idling away” your time?
Obviously you don’t have to allow this through moderation and if you do I will be surprised. I will be returning to Kung-Fu after graduation and while you may not like me (maybe even resent me) I know that you will be professional about the shared interest in martial arts. Won’t you?
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If you read the post again carefully, I hope that you’ll see that it reflects on my inadequate social skills, my poor judgment, my personality issues, my experience. I hope you’ll see that the only thing I said about you was that you were my drinking buddy and that you were an alcoholic, which you have not disputed.
This post wasn’t about you. You are defending what has not been attacked. If it’s important to you to enumerate your charity and accomplishments, you have your own blog and are free to describe your early twenties in whatever way you see fit, as I have.
The first occurrence of the word “wasted” on this page appears in your comment. I called the years “empty” because I experienced relatively little personal growth over that time compared to similar spans of time at other points in my life. I don’t understand how you take offense to this unless you feel that you are somehow responsible for how I lived my life in my early twenties, which has never been the case and was not implied in my post. Everything in my early twenties led up to and prepared me for everything that has happened since. Those years are no more a waste then any other part of my past. Unfulfilling and on the whole rather empty, yes, but not wasted.
See you in class.
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"M" January 29th, 2007 at 15:31