Biweekly drivel Thoughts by a 23 old youngster

“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

I keep hearing this in my head. Like everyone else, I reviewed his commencement speech the day he died. He had a way with words, a way of putting things. Steve Jobs could speak and it would really hit and reverberate in your head for a while. In a way, he was as good at conveying philosophies and placing ideas within you, as he was a businessman. I thank and appreciate him for being so romantic and certain in his ideals, because they reaffirmed so much of what I want to believe.

I keep having quick flashbacks to that moment where I fell on my face and lost my tooth. I cracked it off and buried half of it deep into my lower lip. I didn’t realize the damage I’d done until I was confronted with the bad news two mornings later by a doctor named Sokol. I planned on going to class that morning, but I was getting surgery instead.

My nose was brown and dark purple. My shins were bruised and hurt when I walked. I now had two sets of stitches in my lips, a tooth that was yanked out and replaced by a metal plate that was drilled deep into my bone. I felt so stupid.

When I told my mother, she responded by telling me she was already on the way to the airport. She was telling me not to go anywhere. That she was flying up to New York in order to tend to me for three days. I didn’t realize how alone I was, and how useless I felt, until I tried falling asleep while my mother dabbed ice on my face. She had a hard time staying as calm as she appeared. She hated seeing her son like this. 

A few days have passed, and my face obviously still hurts. Some friends visited me. But they’re gone now. My mother is gone now.

Everyone has their lives. I am trying to get back mine, but this slow healing process has given me all the time in the world to overanalyze every aspect of it first. I started this process the night I fell.

That night I went to bed with my mouth still bleeding. I figured the tooth was a simple chip, and that my mouth would eventually cease bleeding. As I lay on my back trying to sleep, swallowing blood, I started to thoroughly inspect and ponder every facet of my life. I did not sleep that night. 

I lay on my back for eight hours, hallucinating, analyzing the mistakes and choices of my life that led me to this point in time. I realized two things. One of them was a very basic realization that my todestrieb was alive and well. The other was a confident decision to slow down and improve my life.

The sun rose, and I went to see the doctor. I’m not sure where I’m going, but that day blasted me off in another direction entirely. 

The train ride was going to take a good two hours, but I didn’t care. I had nothing better to do that morning, and a weekend in the Hampton’s in the middle of June seemed appropriate at the time. Arriving at Penn Station, we had three minutes to purchase our tickets. This was no easy task at noon on a weekend in New York. The hall was crowded with tourists and groups of children wearing the same patterned clothing. As I gazed out over the masses, searching for the most effective route, Evan pushed me forward through the crowd, and directed us to the nearest ticketing machine.

Walking through the room, punctuating our thought-out steps and missteps with “sorry’s” and “coming through’s”, there was an indelible sense of disgust coming our way. I could feel it just as I could feel the cool dampness of my shirt. At first I thought only the pasty, overweight tourists from Florida were staring me down, but even the young groups of children, there on a school-trip, seemed angry. I wiped the sweat off my brow and turned to Evan, “Hope they’re not coming with us. They seem hostile.” He shook his head and kept pushing me through the crowd. “They don’t let poor people go to The Hampton’s, man.”

With no more than two minutes two spare, we arrived, finally, at the ticketing-machine. When we finally maneuvered through its semi-faulty, overly dirty touchscreen interface, it demanded thirty-seven dollars for a single round-trip ticket. I shouted, “Good God, man. They really don’t let poor people visit the Hampton’s”. I didn’t have enough money on my card nor in my wallet, and turned to Evan with a concerned, yet calm, face. He pushed past me and purchased two tickets for both of us, and we made our way to the train.