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| Drunky, Kelly, Anna, Gabe and Casie. |
I know, it's a little trite; hear me out.
Two years before this picture was taken, I took the riskiest possible path to self-esteem and paid for it with the life I lived two years after this picture was taken: the college dropout, living on his best friend's couch smoking weed all day. All my unique gifts, the whole of my potential, reduced to a walking stereotype.
In the moment this picture was taken, I thought I was living the dream: three thousand miles away from home, at my first-choice school, I was friends with everyone I knew - and I knew a multitude. I had, in my small pond, no small degree of fame, and I attributed that to alcohol.
In the way of life's consequences, it wasn't that simple: I was right and I was wrong. I wasn't living the dream because I was drinking; I was managing the dream despite the booze, in a tightrope walk that didn't last long enough for me to graduate. And I do hate that. But I love the friends I made, these four pictured not least among the multitude. Not long after I post the sixtieth picture, I'll fly off to Philly to watch Kelly get married; Anna and Casie will stand as bridesmaids. It might be the high point of 2011. Gabe is married, living in Los Angeles, and a pretty damned successful actor. They have been my friends for over a decade, and I cherish them. As I said yesterday, I don't know what my life at Vassar would have been like without alcohol; if my drinking was part of what brought me to these people, I can't regret everything. I cannot hate what brought me to those I love - even if I doubt that alcohol bears sole responsibility for bringing me these friends.
If I'm dubious about that, I'm certain of this: the life I lead today is entirely due to that sweaty, haggard face. Without addiction, I would not have found recovery. Without recovery and the principles to which I've been introduced as a result, my life would be a pale imitation of what it is no matter how many regrets it might mean escaping. I love my life today; even if I had graduated college, and was even today running the world the way I knew I could at twenty, I wouldn't be able to say that. I find it far more important to love my life, to love myself, than to love all the things I could have achieved had I taken another path.
So when the Sandblast List starts its ticker-tape crawl across the backdrop of my daily experiences, I do my best to focus on the joy. When I start to feel anything approaching hatred for what an eighteen year-old boy unknowingly did to his future, I remind myself of all the scenes in my past I would have missed if not for that heinous mistake. I forgive that boy, and I love him; without him, there's no me.
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