Waking Up For

Yesterday I watched Fight Club for the first time.  No, there's no dramatic build up to that, and no, as much as I loved it, this post is not about Fight Club, because, well, I can't talk about it.  But while I have not yet created an alternate personality to take over my life and flood the world with mayhem, I have not been sleeping well and understand the temptation.  And in the midst of rethinking the very fabric of my existence (and, for the record, totally calling the ending) I simply wondered about the idea of coping.  "Just survive the next ______" has become the rallying cry of my every 6:00 a.m. alarm sound, and I repeatedly come to the question: "what should I get up for?"

Yesterday I watched Fight Club for the first time in the basement of a dorm building at my future school.  I had spent the afternoon exploring the campus in the windy, perfection of heaven-on-earth that is Saint Louis for exactly two days in the spring.  Yesterday was one of them.  And in between lemon sherbet sunshine and sixty-something weather, I wandered among the towering brick buildings of my immanent future lost in that inexpressible subspace of thought that keeps me awake all night and started this mess in the first place.  Trying to determine what was wrong with me that I wasn't excited when all my classmates couldn't wait to graduate; why all of this did nothing to touch the void that seemed to be widening in my chest.  Why blue skies seem infinities away when in reality the azure air is all around us.  Why every passing step grows heavier and harder, even when I'm just walking down the stairs in the morning.  Why I'm suddenly growing curious about who would miss me if I disappeared or who I would miss.

And yes, I am definitely Jack's loss of sanity.

Yesterday I watched Fight Club for the first time in the basement of a dorm building at my future school next to my best friend.  And earlier that day, while sitting alone in my car in a slowly emptying parking, desperately wishing I had someone to fall apart to, my phone rang with the some of the most beautiful words I've ever heard: "Hey, I had a crappy day. Wanna come over and watch a gritty adult movie?"  Though we ended up saving Pulp Fiction for another crappy day, it's comforting to have a back up plan.  These are the days that become my sweet escape to a college campus that in our world is only twenty minutes away, but as far as my life's concerned, might as well be another world entirely. Somewhere that isn't here where I'm writing this down in study hall.  Somewhere free from the perceptions of people who know me, those that think they do, and those who couldn't care less.  The home of the one dude who's stuck with me my whole life, and every now and then is there to catch the pieces as I messily fall apart.  Or just watch something in a darkened dorm basement and let the world worry about itself for an hour or two.

And this is what I get up for, or with the memory of.  These are the things I love and the things that motivate each next step and perhaps the one after that.  Third step's a toss up.
I am Jack's next breath.

And I'm reminded that this too shall pass.