*Disclaimer: this made sense in my head...
I figured it out!
What, you ask?
I figured out why I am a little less homesick every day. You
might think it’s just because I am getting used to being away, and used to
being…here instead of there. And that is part of it. But this goes deeper. I
figured out why I am getting used to it.
The best way I can describe it (and it’s not great by any
standards) is by comparing it to watching the most awful movie I have ever had
the misfortune of seeing. (Sorry Quinton Tarantino fans. He’s great and all,
but this one was lost on me…also, spoiler alert. I kinda ruin the big twist
so…yeah.)
So the movie is called Dusk
Til Dawn. The premise: a couple of shady criminals (brothers I think)
kidnap a family for the use of their RV in crossing the border to Mexico.
Sounds like your run of the mill thrillerish movie. You have some family drama.
You have some suspense. You have some boobies. Basically, they make it across
the border and decide to pass the rest of the night in this topless bar until
the rendezvous in the morning (get it?...Dusk til Dawn). Well, all this only
gets you about a third of the way through the movie. What!? You
ask again? That’s right. A third of the way through the movie there is this
plot twist that can only be described by the effect it has on your brain. I was
in physical pain. I spent the next two thirds of the movie expecting someone to
wake up from this awful dream. The credits started rolling and I still expected
them to come back on and say “just kidding guys! That was all a nightmare.”
Days later I still wanted there to be some closure to this
movie, some different ending.
Now though, barely less than a year later, I can appreciate
the complete and utter brain fuck that Tarantino miraculously (if not distastefully)
performed. Getting such an extreme (near physical)
reaction out of a movie
audience here in the 21st century is nearly impossible. Even Sixth
Sense in all its glory couldn’t have prepared me for that. So even though I still
despise this movie from the depths of my soul, I have a deep appreciation for
Tarantino’s ability to leave me so uprooted, confused and betrayed you would
have thought that shit had actually happened to me. (And it was made in 1996)
How exactly does all this relate to my life now? Well I have
been doodling along in life with this expectation of how things will go. August
will come and I will start school. There will be some holidays here, vacations
there and around May I’ll be free again until August. (In the movie: something
will go wrong in the bar, shit will get real, the bad guys will lose…yadayadayada.)
Two years ago though, reality changed. My expectations didn’t. Maybe my schedule
changed, but my friends were still there and I was still in a familiar place, so I
tricked myself into believing that everything was…the same. In the movie the
guys walk into the bar and even after demonic vampires start coming out of the
woodwork…and continue coming out of the woodwork you convince yourself it’s all
a dream.
Even after I uprooted my entire life and drove back to East
Texas, got on a plane to Guatemala, got on another plane to Costa Rica, got a
job, rented an apartment…even after all these things I was still convinced,
deep down, that this was all a dream. This was all a vacation or a hiccup in
time. I hadn’t gotten to the credits yet when you have to really start
evaluating the fact that all of that actually just happened and everything you
thought was a dream was (for lack of a better word) real.
It is real though
and I am finally becoming ready to accept that. I’m finally ready to admit that
maybe things really have changed forever. Don’t get me wrong with my chosen comparisons, this isn't supposed
to be sad or depressing. This is a celebration of the fact that I am awake. I could
have found myself in much worse places (like that godawful, nasty bar in the movie.)
So in conclusion, I won’t be here forever. I’ll reinvent my life again and
again and again I’m sure. But now I know that I can’t just change it all on the
outside without bringing my heart and my mind along with me. Otherwise nothing
will ever connect, or seem quite right and I will be stuck wondering why monster-vampire things are eating my brains and...yeah.
