“So this is what Death feels like...”
Yesterday, July 29, 2001. Bloomingdale, IL. Stratford Square Mall. 12:06 p.m. Sitting outside the Food Court staring at children tossing pennies into the indoor fountain
This is exactly where I was when I realized what death was.
Numerologically, for me the day was a 7, indicative of its time in a nine-day cycle to get in touch with divinity and to be alone and ponderous. It was also a Sunday, sacred to Wiccans and other magickians as the day to praise Saturn, the Roman god of death. For most of the rest of America, Sunday also represents the end of the week, the day to sober up from the frivolities of the weekend and ready themselves for the work week ahead. Even God himself stopped creating life on Sunday and took time to look back over all he hath done.
Spiritually and culturally, everything was in place.
And there I sat, in the middle of a temple of suburban overdeveloped commercialism, watching snot-nosed suburban Abercrombie & Fitch kids toss shiny pennies into the timed choreographed blasts of an upward-shooting Disney-imagineer-styled indoor fountain, and the clearest thought that entered my head was,
“So this is what Death feels like...”
Seventh chakra fully open and glowing. The pinnacle of Maslow's hierarchy attained.
Self-actualization.
White light. White heat.
White noise.
All else droned out.
“So this is what Death feels like...”
Let me tell you a bit about myself. I'm twenty-three years old. I have spent the last six years of my life living alone and independently in a college town. Iowa City. “The Athens of the Midwest.” The first four-and-a-half of those years I spend studying towards a B.A. in psychology, which I attained. I also, through that time, acquired a huge circle of diverse and close-knit friends, held a salaried position as a nursing assistant in the psychiatric ward of the University of Iowa hospital, and met my officially first and hoped-to-be-final girlfriend.
I was deliriously happy.
The latter year-and-a-half I had free time to pursue other interests. My eternal desire to be an actor. A burgeoning desire for screenwriting and film. Performing my own monologues and poetry in front of a crowd. Moving in with my girlfriend and planning to follow her to Pennsylvania for grad school once she finally got out of college.
Nothing in life could seem to be better.
Then, all of a sudden, right around October of 2000, a 7 month for me, things began to change, to die. My girlfriend and I re-evaluated our relationship and decided that at our youthful age, we could maintain our devotion to one another (under the same roof) and start to venture out to try new terrain. She was in school. I was a working stiff. She had my car, my attention, my resources, all donated to help her get through school easier. I had a 40-minute walk to work at 6:00 am most days from a basement apartment located 25 minutes walking from anywhere social in town, friends still in school whose schedules were incompatible from my erratic non-9-to-5-Monday-through-Friday work times, and a growing sense of ignorance from her. I gripped harder, she shunned stronger.
She had study sessions, alcohol and flirtations galore.
I had a basement, alcohol, and independent films to relate to.
Things didn't work out.
We eventually grew so much tension between us that we both moved out to go our own way. Both living alone. She grew closer to her cultish new friends and even developed a new love interest. I grew deeper and deeper into myself, studying Taoism, Numerology, Chakras, and dreaming of going off into the world to strike it out on my own.
Everything in Iowa City reminded me of her.
Every CD in my collection reminded me of her.
Every book I read reminded me of her.
Everything I wrote was based off my memories of her
(including this)
Somehow we still kept in touch
Albeit rather painfully at times.
Depression set in. Low-grade alcohol dependence. Increased marijuana use. Stolen barbituates from the hospital. Panic attacks. St. John's Wort, Kava Kava. A pack-and-a-half a day smoking habit. Four-and-a-half hour conversations with myself in my secluded one-room apartment. Shaven head. Meditation. Insomnia. Money spent frivilously on myself to buy happiness; New clothes, good food, pot, Daily six-packs of Milwaukee's Best. A failed relationship with an immature, guarded 19-year-old. Impotence. Mental breakdown.
I was beginning to resemble the psychotic patients I took care of.
I should have known. Numerologically her destiny number is a 7. She's a Pisces, too flighty and idealistic for a grounded Libra like me.
I broke. Hit a dead end.
Nothing to do but go back to the place that bore me.
So yesterday I sat, three days after I moved back in with my parents. Sat categorically broke, with less than $150 to my name and no independent savings. Sat in an area of the country I was so happy to leave, an area based on brand names, strip malls, SUVs, ritzy designer homes, snobby upwardly-mobile families with more money than they can deal with. Sat in this testament to consumerism watching this water fountain, this antithesis of a fireworks display. Sat without a friend to call my own save the two people who were about to beg me to move back in. Sat with my crumbled dream 240 miles away with friends I froze up too much within myself to enjoy during our last weeks together. Sat numb in a web of overlapping villages where every restaurant advertises a children's special and a senior discount daily. Sat without guidance, an art-house theater, a community acting troupe, or any kind of burgeoning bohemian underground. Sat in a land of career mobility, fluorescent lights, resumés, aggressive office mentality, softball Friday nights, corporate mentality, and automation. Sat in a target audience I was too old, too young, and too intellectual for.
Mid-twenties breakdown.
Ground zero.
“So this is what Death feels like...”
Thing is, I still love her even though I can't bear to speak to her. She will still be the death of me.
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