Becoming Whole Again Or How to Grow Old Gracefully

So here we are, at the end of our childhoods. We ostensibly lay out our portfolios on the ground for our peers to see. "Witness here, the marvelous upward mobility of my diversified shares. Notice the upswing towards the end of the 1990's. Be humbled at the dramatic drop things took a few years ago, when they told us we lost everything."

"I can't sit here and lie to you guys, it's been a rough climb. I don't know if I'll ever truly break out of this. But somewhere inside, the rebuilding started, and it spread around, and gained momentum here, and lost ground over there, but on its way it created a life of it's own. And now that I look back, I see this new person, constructed out of pain. Constructed out of the will to carry on, when everything around me was breaking down. Of course, I took some time off. I watched TV in the dark. I let the bright green shake of the Twin Peaks graphic overshadow my living room as I listened to the imitation fireplace grind on, as my roommate shagged his girlfriend in the next room."

"I accepted failure as my dietary staple. I obsessed about negative outcomes, burning bridges. I drove over potholes, after dreaming about how I would die in one. I vacuumed up emotion from the carpet and stuffed it inside my brain to fester."

"I outwardly told myself I wouldn't make it, i wrote my own ending to my own Shakespearean tragedy. I set up writes of passage, goals not to meet. I failed in a glorious smoldering of my former self."

"I came out of this funk, and peered around at the carnage, junked up cars would hurl themselves at me, revenge for staying inside the oven too long. I realized how much catch-up I had to play."

Josiah reached over and poured himself another Styrofoam cup full of coffee. The oak floors whispered intently as he stealthfully slinked across the floor. He cleared his throat, coughed and continued. The rest of the group sat quietly intently awaiting each word as If it were a manifestation of their own destiny. They had all visited the places Josiah had. They had all experienced the mind numb brain death after a serious let down. After the economy crashed, and the military took over. After they rooted out the dissenters through the media. When on a cold Portland morning you could hear the shots fired in the public outhouses. Reflecting back the implosive corrosion of justice. When anyone who had ever shouted loud enough hunkered down and began the slow process of dumbing thoughts down, sedating oneself into submission, lying in the dark on the couch, seeping up the shit and detritus of a culture. Midnight movies whirred in their brains, feverishly concocting the literature for the next generation.

Josiah continued, although he sensed the resentment for his success in the air. They knew what he had achieved. They knew how to achieve it. They just still felt castrated by the machine.

"When I looked around at how scared everyone was, the main point to my life that had been missing for so long came back to me all of a sudden. Not as some sort of divine intervention, or any kind of light, or anything, but a stark realization, a fulfillment in the back of your brain, as it floats over all outcomes, and they become more positive, the outcomes. Like you can envision a better world. Then you start fighting you fight with yourself, because the battle is all in there"

He points at his head at this point, while the others attempt to cheer but are held back by their own fear. Yelps can be heard under the surface of closed mouth, and denied esophageal passages.

"Being a free-thinking, self sufficient, sentient being isn't the liberating thing it used to be" "People don't want you to be that way, they want to perpetually keep you a victim, to keep buying, keep consuming, and never be satisfied, no matter what the brand name is, If you don't believe in your self, you'll keep on shoving that shit down your throat." "Throw it all away, throw it up, you don't need it, your stronger than that, there is a way out."

A few hands sheepishly went up, after the roaring treble of faint handclaps faded to the back of the room, soaked into the oak wood.

With the close of the book, Josiah convened the meeting, inspiring everyone to leave out the large door into the inviting foyer of the hall. Weeks would go by before they would meet again, in secret, on this the 12th night of the 11th month of the year that we cannot say.