The 35

As you read this, I’m drinking heavily in New Orleans with good friends.

I spent my 27th birthday in New Orleans, so I have this weird desire to sort of retrace my steps.  It’s easy enough to do so – just walk drunk around the Lower Garden District all day, then buy a case of Abita and go back to the hotel room at night.  Because I’m that guy.  The guy who goes to NOLA and hides from people and goes to bed at 9pm.

My birthday is the 10th, but I’m scheduling this for the Friday before because my little calendar says May 10th is when “The Walkers” premieres in the Sunday Archive.  Originally titled, for some reason, “Half Again,” I don’t really remember writing that story, so the next four parts will be a revelation to me, as well!

In the past, I’ve put up several birthday posts.  Here’s the post from last year, and I still haven’t gone back to reread the linked 32nd and 31st birthday articles in the super secret tomb.  In fact…very little has changed since that post last year.

I guess I’ll be traveling, so my to-do list will be different.  But I’ll still be doing those same things, generally speaking.  Probably not as much indecent exposure.  My Amazon Wishlist is much larger, but it’s not about size, it’s about how you use it.

Actually, I do remember those linked articles.  For this one, it was the first time I saw my father since he left in 1986.  Though I don’t think I mention that.  I started reading it and realized that, at 31, I was an idiot.  Amazing how much changes in just a few years… And 31 does feel like a lifetime ago.  Hell, 33 feels like a lifetime ago.

This may well be a year of healing, though.  I feel that in the air.  A sense of renewal, the hope of connection.  Clearing out the baked-on grime of the last 35 years.  It’s two years since my cure, and high time I changed my way of thinking.  No more hiding, no more darkness.

And no more struggling with forgiveness and my place in life.  Fuck the people who fucked me over these last few years…hell, my whole life.  The friends who stole money, the lovers who cheated on me, the parents who left me… Fuck you all.  I refuse to make peace with your evil.  You’re symptoms of some illness that kept me kowtowing to mania and psychosis.  That illness is gone.  It’s time to start living this life the right way, without regard for the naysayers and the liars and the cheats and the fucking horde of idiots who darken all my doorways.

That’s it!  I’m going to go clean up my Facebook friends list and drink vodka!  Oh my god!