Jessica Wildfire's Blog, page 419

Patrick Stewart is one of my favorite people.

Patrick Stewart is one of my favorite people. I even got to see him once, as a kid. So childhood had some bright spots. ;)

Break all the rules you can

Sometimes I forget how nuts I look. My partner and I went backpacking through the Rockies one winter, and the trail ran out. It turned into this thin squiggle alongside a vertical rockface.

He started to turn back. Not me. I hugged the crag and started inching around, jabbing my snow shoes into the frosty ledge. It must’ve been a hundred foot drop if you slipped, but that didn’t matter.

Here’s what did. The trail widened on the other side of the rock. I could see the path. And I wanted to reach the top of this fucking thing.

But my partner stood motionless. “Babe, this doesn’t look safe.” We argued a couple of minutes. Every time I tried to wave him toward me, he freaked out and asked me to “please keep your hands on the rock.”

Finally I gave up and we took another, less impressive route to a lower peak. At least a few times, I called him a coward.

But it’s fine. Because we had sex that night, and I apologized. And we drank hot chocolate.

I’d seen plenty of peaks by then. Despite my disappointment, I felt nice. We were on vacation, after all. We should both enjoy the hiking. Not just me. How selfless. Later, he actually said thanks. Such a sweetheart.

Rock climbing in my early 20s taught me one thing. Don’t fear the fall. Or the fail. Rock climbers fall a thousand times a year. You come to love the thrill of a 12-foot plunge. A bloody finger, the slight chance of death. All that just makes your final accomplishment all the more satisfying.

Sometimes, we climbed without ropes. The professionals call that free-soloing. But we were just college fuckheads. Once, we even climbed up the side of a hill during a hike because it looked easy. Maybe fifty feet.

We camped that night during a severe thunderstorm. Hunkered down in a tent. Lightning. Winds at 60 mph. Better than any rave.

Most of the time, rules keep us safe. But other times, they just hold us back. I’ve broken more rules than I can remember. I’ll do my best to recount the important ones. Breaking rules is good for you. Everyone breaks rules on their way to success.

When the cops showed up, my friends bolted. We’d spent the past hour exploring the ruins of an abandoned asylum. Why? Beats me. I’ve always felt a connection to forbidden, taboo places.

The officer cuffed and loaded me into the back of a patrol car. Trespassing carried a $500 fine. Prison didn’t worry me. The fine did.

Imagine my relief when he let me go with a warning. “If you ever come back here,” he warned, “You’ll spend a weekend in jail and lose your last paycheck. Understand?”

As if. Back then, I barely made $400 a week as a lowly TA.

Inspiration comes from the strangest places. Every visit to some lost, haunted location helped me find a little piece of myself. I’d spent almost a decade sneaking into old prisons, sanatoriums, factories, and haunted houses.

Sometimes I got arrested. Sometimes, I got lucky.

No regrets.

At least, that’s what you hope. Even your worst mistakes should have meaning.

I’m not advising anyone to live recklessly. You should always think through the consequences of your actions.

But sometimes, the risk is worth the reward. I’m not talking financial perks, a raise, a promotion, or Bitcoin. Sure, the same logic applies. But most fulfillment comes with a certain twinge of uncertainty. That girl at the gym you like? You have to risk rejection to ask her out. Whatever goal you’re eyeing, you have to commit if you really want it. You can’t shield yourself from danger and expect joy from life.

There’s this one episode of Star Trek. The best one, in my opinion. The prankster Q allows Captain Picard a chance to travel back in time and “correct” a mistake he made in his youth. Young Picard started a fight with some aliens and (spoiler) got stabbed in the chest. But after he “corrects” the “mistake,” Picard finds his new feature. He never became a captain. He never led any expectations. He just stayed safe. How sad.

Like others, I’ve felt my share of failure. Heartbreak. Shame. Remorse. But you can learn from the most from gut-wrenching mistakes. If I could rewind my life, I wouldn’t change anything. Sure, I wish some things might’ve turned out different. But enough things went right. So why fuck with it?

I’ve recently reached the age when other people start asking me for advice. It’s all the same shit. “Should I do X?” They all get the same answer. “If you feel compelled, then do it.”

Most of them want to know if they should write a novel. Or a memoir. Or if they should pursue a PhD. These have always been bad ideas. But people like me have done them anyway.

It wasn’t a matter of choice.

Big life decisions never require as much thought as you think.

You just have to imagine two scenarios — the best possible outcome, and the worst. If you can accept the latter, then live your dream.

Take drugs. I’ve smoked all the weed I ever cared to, because the worst that could happen was I got arrested. The best outcome happened: I spent a magical weekend with a guy in the woods and lost my virginity in a log cabin. Memories I’ll have when I die. Thanks, weed.

Cocaine? Different story. A handful of friends tried to get me to do coke. Worst scenario: you turn into a babbling lunatic and have a heart attack. Best scenario? You turn into a babbling lunatic and don’t. I’ve studied people on coke. It never looked like much fun.

A teacher once wrote me up for running in the hallway. Such bullshit. She sent me to the main office for hole punches. If you got 5 hole punches on your behavior card in a week, then you missed out on ice cream Friday or something. Anyway, I had three hole punches already.

Running in the hallway carried a sentence of one hole punch.

But the front desk lady didn’t like me. When I handed her my card and said, “I got caught running in the hallway.” Here’s how she responded:

“You mean you were running the hallway when you shouldn’t have been?”

Even at the age of 9, the bullshit wasn’t lost on me. This cross granny didn’t just want to punish me. She wanted to shame me for something that comes natural to most people: running when you need to get somewhere in a hurry. But that was the rule: no running.

It didn’t matter if the hallway was about 50 feet wide, built to accommodate dozens if not hundreds of people making their way from classroom to classroom.

When I was running, this vast hallway was empty.

I’d chosen to run precisely because of this reason. I’d been sent on an errand. I had to be back by a certain time. The errand had taken longer than expected. And I was late. The hallway was empty. The chances of me colliding with another human being or object was….slim.

You see, children can make these kinds of decisions.

So when this angry little woman corrected me, I didn’t respond well. I folded my arms and scowled. “You’re not a teacher,” I said. “Just a secretary. So give me my hole punch so I can go.”

So, three extra hole punches. And a phone call home.

It was Friday. So I definitely missed out on ice cream.

And I also got spanked pretty hard with a paddle. My mom did it right over the bedroom dresser so I could see my face scrunch up in the mirror with each crack. Yeah, parents still beat their kids in the 1990s.

But that changed nothing. I was all too glad to sit on a bench, anticipating my beating, and watch all the other kids lick chocolate off a stick for an hour. Fuckers, I thought. I held my hole punch card like a trophy and smirked to myself. One day, I knew, this would become a great story.

Oooooorrr, you could have a couple of drinks. :D

Oooooorrr, you could have a couple of drinks. :D

Talk shows? Naaaaah ;P

Talk shows? Naaaaah ;P

Enjoy!

Enjoy!

Yeah, meaning is always there (I’ve learned). ;)

Yeah, meaning is always there (I’ve learned). ;)

Great pieces! Let’s hope for an even better 2018!

Great pieces! Let’s hope for an even better 2018!

Thanks! :D

Thanks! :D

You nailed it.

You nailed it. I threw away a couple of hours going back and forth with trolls earlier this year. But then I realized how awful it made me feel. So I stopped!

Celebrate new year’s eve your way

New Year’s eve always found me single and desperate. Call it bad luck, or just poor choice in guys. Only a handful of times did I slide into the new year with a functional relationship.

My best New Year’s party remains the one I stayed home and gorged myself on supermarket sushi while taking generous swigs from a bottle of single barrel bourbon and watching “Dexter.”

That also remains my cheapest NYE party.

These days, I’m in a stable relationship. Call it what you want — life partner, marriage, whatever. This year, we’ll dine in and fall asleep in front of Netflix on the couch. Maybe we’ll check in on cable networks to see if any of the hosts get drunk and do something embarrassing.

Utterly blissful.

Fuck that neon, seizure-inducing sphere and that predictable, cliche countdown. Once you hit your 30s, that mess loses its thrill. It’s like Sesame Street played backwards on acid.

Throughout my mid 20s, I always partied at the same handful of bars and clubs, with different interlocking social groups. Met someone new. Touched lips at the ball drop. Exchanged numbers. Started the cycle all over again.

A handful of times, I already had a date. Either way, we still went out and spent too much on booze. How wonderful it was to spend an entire drunken evening grinding on a dance floor. Drinking away my TA stipend. Making out with someone who wouldn’t give me an STD.

But sometimes I didn’t have a partner.

Sometimes I had to procure one.

Kissing someone at midnight meant everything to me back then. Somehow it convinced me that my life had meaning. My friends and I patrolled for eligible partners. If nothing else, meeting new people took the sting off whatever recent breakup I’d gone through.

My desperation led to some interesting choices. Once, I hooked up with a blue-haired punk rocker with a cocaine habit. I was 22. Senior in college. I’d had a crush on him for a while. We worked at the same bar.

For some reason, we never talked much until this bad breakup in mid-December. He caught me raw, and bought me a drink. We talked, and he validated all my emotions. So we set a date.

I’m pretty sure it was more of a pact than a date. Neither one of us wanted to spend New Year’s Eve alone.

But on Dec 31, he kept disappearing to the bathroom with some of his friends. Finally, he offered me a hit. Or a snort. I can’t remember what you call it. A line, maybe?

It sounds judgmental, but I left right after the midnight kiss. He texted me a few times the week after. Those texts never earned a response, but I didn’t exactly ignored them. My brain devoted a lot of energy to deciding my next move. Date him? Dump him? Party a little longer?

Looking back, I feel a pinch of shame. Clearly I used him for a night to stave off the black hole of despair that would consume me if that midnight had passed without romantic attention.

I’ve done lots of things to avoid solitude on New Year’s Eve. Even endured a party attended by my ex-fiance — barely a year after our breakup. All I can remember is drinking a lot while glaring at him. Every few minutes, I tried to make awkward conversation with friends.

Unfortunately, glaring and eye flirting look the same for people with Asperger’s. So the ex-fiance, buzzed, sat down and started talking to me in front of my little support group.

In my former life, I used to be one petty ass bitch. So I made sure to outline all of my accomplishments to him in detail.

The trouble? Sometimes I slur when drunk. So what came out sounded a lot like: And show I publushed another ar-ar-arcticals, and I got a shummer fellership lines dup.

The night hazed on, until finally the countdown began. A moment of truth for me. Was I going to kiss an ex I despised, just to prove I could?

My ex inched towards me on the couch. His alcohol breath radiated on my neck and cheeks. Was he putting a hand around me? Or was that just fantasy? Part of me almost gave in. But then I realized the pointlessness. We’d already broken up three times. Each time he’d “crawled back,” heroin to my ego, poison to my soul. If you believe in that kind of thing.

So with seconds left, I looked away. The ball dropped, and I just stared at the floor like I was going to stab it.

No kiss.

Everybody else hugged, made out, cheered, clinked glasses. I slapped my ex on the knee and said, “Have a nice life.” And I slinked off to my car to sleep off the booze. It remains one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

My car became a midnight meditation chamber. I wish I could say I watched the stars, but light pollution’s a bitch. My 20s were winding down, and I still hadn’t accomplished anything noteworthy. I’d spent my entire life in school, stitching together part-time jobs just to pay rent.

Some of my friends had already become lawyers and doctors and concert pianists.

Sure, I’d accomplished a lot. Publications. Awards. Glowing letters of recommendation from important people. But my investments in my future had yet to pay off. Until then, the hottest midnight kiss in the history of rom-coms wouldn’t save me.

The next morning, I nursed my hangover for a few minutes with half a bottle of water from my floorboard. Then I drove home to sit and think. I drank coffee and stared at my curtains.

At some point, I went for a walk.

For the first time, I didn’t fly off to the gym or spend half a day texting a new boy toy. I didn’t even start planning my syllabus. I let myself relax. I let myself feel the anxiety, dread, and uncertainty of my career choices. I learned that you can’t give in to pessimism. But you can’t pile it up in a closet, either.

You don’t have to spend Jan 1 pretending to be happy. You don’t have to start a marathon training program. You don’t need a new diet. Sure, do those things if they feel natural.

There’s only one rule for New Year’s Eve and the aftermath: be honest. Do what you really want. Not what you think you should. If you want to spend it in a strip club, then make sure to hit the ATM on your way. If you want to stay home and read cyberpunk novels, charge up your Kindle.