A One Way Ticket to NOT HERE

Hey, Cyberspace. I suppose I haven't told you much about my life recently. Think it's about time for too much information?

Alrighty.

So, let me just tell you, this has been one hell of a quarter. I've had depression for a few months now, which has to do with Hashimoto's Disease, I think. I've been in Seattle for two years now and I'm restless. I can never be in the same place doing the same thing for too long. So at the end of this school year, I'm going home to California, and then in the fall I go to Rome. May or may not come back.

Earlier in the quarter, I got accepted in the Law, Societies and Justice major. LSJ is kind of like a mix of sociology and anthropology and political science, which is the best way I can explain it. So I'm doing that, and I'm also an art major. Don't ask me what I'm doing with my life. Why do people always ask you that? I mean, here I am, I'm living. For all I know, I could die tomorrow. This right here is what I'm doing with my life, I'm here right now, doing it. In five years, I don't know where I'll be, but I sure hope it's not the same place I'll be in ten years, let alone twenty. Nobody is happy just picking one path and sticking to it forever. I mean, maybe you could find that person, but good luck.

A couple weeks ago, I was sitting in Tea Republic working on a research paper on the environmental impact of the Italian Constitutional Court (OH DEAR LORD) when I overheard this guy say he would be sleeping on the street tonight. The guy looked to be about my age, fairly clean and carrying a guitar on his back. When he complimented my shirt later, I offered him the couch at my house. It was an absolute leap of faith. I don't know if this has ever happened to me before, but I honestly felt God talking through me. But I figured that my house is co-ed and we all lock our bedrooms at night, so the worst that could happen is he steals my housemate's stereo. Between the chance of replacing the only thing in this house worth stealing and letting a person sleep in the rain that night, I really couldn't justify letting him walk away.

The weird thing is, I think about how easy it would have been to never see him again. I met him at the very worst point of my depression, and after that night, I've spent a lot of time with him and consider him a dear friend. He tells me about how he wants to make it big as a musician, how he decided to move out of his parents' house and just go out and live in the city to focus on his music, even though he doesn't have everything all sorted out yet. He doesn't know I have depression, so he doesn't know how much just talking to him really helped me. He's only a year older than me, and he was living with his parents like a lot of kids, and he walked away from that to go on this adventure and start a new life. How many times do college kids sit in coffee shops writing research papers, thinking, what if I just got on a bus or a plane or fucking walked out of here and never came back? And he actually did it.

Granted, he wasn't in school so maybe his situation was a little more dire than mine. I think everybody has their own breaking point, where they get to that point and suddenly realize that this path they're on has hit a dead end and it's time to take a leap. I'm riding out these last couple weeks in Seattle, but I really can't be here much longer. It's always dark. I don't feel close to anybody at school. I don't sleep well, I've been missing class. I'm ready for my next adventure.

If I were to do something crazy, this is what I would do: I wouldn't come home after my trip to Rome in the fall. I would buy an old VW Bus and find a friend and we would live in our car, busing all around the continent. We would hit Venice, London, Oslo, Paris, maybe even make our way over to Asia if we felt like it. I would make enough money to eat and to be happy by drawing portraits on the street. Maybe I would paint, and get my paintings in galleries and coffee shops if we stuck around for long enough. Maybe my musician friend would come with me, and he would play Taylor Swift cover songs with his guitar case open in front of him and people would find us interesting and maybe this blog would get a reader every once in awhile.