Calling It a Night (Blog #590)

It’s 10:30 on a Saturday evening, and I’m at home with my parents. I’ve been here with them all day and was here with them all day yesterday too. I don’t mean to brag about my social life, these are just the facts. Earlier this evening I took a shower for the first time in–I don’t know–several days. I shaved and everything. Now I feel like a new man. A friend just sent me a text and–because we were talking about weddings–said, “Let me know when yours is. I bet it will be a great party.” And whereas my first instinct was to think, That’ll never happen (because I’m single AF), my second thought was, Hey, wait a damn minute. That could very well happen! It’s not like I’m dead yet.

I mean, people do get married every day. People just like me.

This afternoon I worked on my photo organizing project, mainly going through already-put-together albums and trying to wrap my head around what I’ve been doing with my life. Two things struck me. One, I’ve been doing quite a bit–going places, seeing things. Even way back in my high school and college years, I put a ton of miles on the road. Two, I’ve said a number of times on the blog that I was fourteen when my dad got arrested and fifteen when he went to prison. But after looking through dated pictures and talking to my parents today, I realized I was fourteen for the entire ordeal. Dad left home two weeks BEFORE I turned fifteen. I know that’s not much of a difference, but still, I’ve been wrong about that little detail for a long time now.

All those years are such a daze.

As I’m only able to dig through my memories for a couple hours at a time (it’s not bad, it’s just “a lot”), I spent the rest of this afternoon watching two movies on my laptop–the animated film Coco and Crazy, Stupid, Love. And although Crazy, Stupid, Love was enjoyable (well, looking at Ryan Reynolds was enjoyable), Coco absolutely won me over. It’s about a boy who LOVES music but feels like an outsider because his family HATES it (because his great-great grandfather left his wife and child in order to “follow his dream.”) Anyway, it’s glorious from start to finish and even involves dead people (skeletons) dancing and singing.

I definitely cried.

Honestly, it feels like a movie night. It’s cold outside, and the idea of closing this laptop and crawling back in my warm bed with ANOTHER film sounds simply perfect. I don’t know–I’ve been reading serious book after serious book lately and flipping through all these memories/emotions, and I’m tired of thinking, thinking, thinking and processing, processing, processing. Plus, my stomach has been upset pretty much nonstop for a few months now, and movies are a good distraction, a nice way to “get away.”

So I’m gonna do that. Go watch a movie. Call it a night. Try again tomorrow.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Some days, most days, are a mixed bag. We cry, we laugh, we quit, we start again. That's life. In the process, we find out we're stronger than we thought we were, and perhaps this is healing.

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