Destiny Be Damned

No Sign of Yesterday, Part II

You've heard that expression, "You can't go home again"? Whoever said that knew what he was talking about. There's a feeling you get looking at old photos, especially those of places and people who are long gone from your life, and it usually boils down to one word: Regret.

We all have these, someplace in our past life, and it's the memory of who you were and what you were doing at the time the photo was taken that plays merry hob with your mind. It gets confusing when there are good memories tangled with the bad, and we desperately want the good memories to outweigh the bad...even if that's not really the case. Memories always fade with the passing of time, and I'm starting to think they're designed that way for a reason.

Lately, I've had a lot of my past dredged up from old photographs, and I've come to realize that the good old days weren't really as good as I thought I remembered them. Last week, someone accused me of running from my past. Let me state for the record right here and now: That's impossible. It can't be done. You can change the surroundings of your past, you can certainly ignore your past, and it may come to be that your past chooses to ignore you as well. But it's always YOUR past, you can't trade it in for a different childhood, or another 4 years at college somewhere else. Like that incident at the Canadian border a few months ago: My past appeared at the most unlikely of places. And ironically, they (the FUCKING CANADIANS!) wanted me to change it in order to come back into their country. Which I will never do.

*AHEM*

I came to Seattle 17 years ago, much less a human than an animal in sneakers. My volatile childhood had bred me to be a wild child by the time I reached puberty, and a certifiable paranoid nutjob when I was 21. My wife has gone a long way in changing the person I was into the person I am, and I'm very proud of my ability to keep the wolf on a leash for the most part. It gets out now and again, but you have to go a really long way to see it.

Back to the story - In the course of living out my anger and mistrust of humanity during my teenage years, I crossed a lot of people. By "A lot" I mean "Into the hundreds". I'm not making excuses here, but there was nothing I could do about that - I only knew one way to interact with the world, and it included adultery, lying, stealing and hurting those who were close to me.

My surroundings were part of the equation; you don't think of South Carolina and rocket scientists in the same synapse. Looking back, I'm surprised no one simply killed me and had done with it. I know I crossed the line on more occasions than I can count. There was a time in the early 90's - I can't pinpoint exactly when, but I remember the era - that I began to wake up and realize what living this life was going to eventually cost me. You can read about one aspect of that awakening HERE. I wanted to change myself, to draw a better deal out of life than I had been initially dealt.

And that was when I discovered I had already gone too far.

Like the boy who cried wolf once too often, most of the people I was "friends" with wanted nothing to do with me by this time. Most of their wives or girlfriends had slept with me. I had stolen things from almost all of them. Built a huge wall of mistrust between myself and anyone who came into contact with me. So when this new Bobbe showed up - Well, it was already too late.

I have maybe one person left from that time period - we talk on the phone sometimes, share the occasional email. And I wrecked his car when I was 17. I mean, I WRECKED it - took a sharp curve at 75 mph, hit the guide rail and left the fucking ground. A friendly oak tree assisted in stopping our momentum - said friend was still in the car with me at the time - and the windshield aided in my concussion.

There was nothing I could do to change my situation in Columbia. I had hurt too many people to count, and I was starting to see them every other day on the street somewhere.I would apply for a job, and oh look - The guy I fucked over last month is giving the interview! I would stop for gas somewhere, and someone I had problems with would pull into the lane next to me. Go to a restaurant and my waiter happens to be a girl I cheated on. These experiences really happened, by the way, I'm not simply making them up for artistic license. If there is one thing I learned from all that, its that KARMA IS A VINDICTIVE BITCH. What you send out will indeed come back to you - one way or another.

Now, I know a lot of people that simply up and left wherever they were living to find something better. I've looked back on people I knew years ago - Still in the same place, living the same life they ever did, the world passing them by and judging them as unremarkable in their lives. Only a fool stands in quicksand and believes he should go quietly into mire without a fight. When you are surrounded on all sides by people you can't trust, events you can't change and a future you won't see...It's move or die. And ironically, I've actually seen people choose death over living.

Coming to Seattle wasn't an attempt to escape my past - No one can really do that. Does an alcoholic join AA to escape his past, or to change for a sober life? Do people leave dead-end jobs because they are trying to run from minimum wage? No. What they want - which is the same thing everyone wants, no matter who you are - is something better.

And that's what moving to Seattle was for me, an attempt to find something better than what I had in South Carolina, to surround myself with people who didn't slip into a knee-jerk reaction when a black man walked towards them on the street, or meet a woman who didn't get pregnant before she graduated high school, or know someone could pick up a book without pictures and not be thought of as homosexual. I wanted a career that didn't include wearing a name tag, or steel-toed boots, or have the words "Waffle House" on the shirt.

You cannot change your past. But the future is entirely up to you write.

Like the song goes...Sometimes goodbye is a second chance.