Having had time to think for a while about my next blog I think I am ready to continue on this journey. I have all week long written a paragraph and deleted it. Not knowing where I am going with this I am not sure what to write. I don't want to over think it. I have so far been able to write honestly and openly and somewhat fearlessly about myself and how I am accepting change. I want to continue on that path. I like it most when I write my blog and get lost in it, only later to go back and read and say.... hmmmm....that is so real.
OK, so where was I? The last time I was in this place I was talking about Pete and his death. Maybe I needed this break from doing this to so I could process it. Anyway.
I had already started living a "party" lifestyle before he passed and so it was just the natural thing to do afterwards. I was in the midst of meeting people and going places I had never been to before. I was in and out of dance clubs. Parties where I didn't feel like the elephant in the room. I was social and the girls I stomped around with were WILD. Like I have never seen in my life. I was shocked by the carefree nature in which they did and said almost everything. Being around them empowered me. Made me feel beautiful and on top of the world. We were trouble with a capital T. The three of us spent almost every waking hour together. I was working at Wal-Mart at the time and trying to finish beauty school. Which was a joke, I spent the last few months of school sleeping. I think they felt sorry for me and put up with a lot. I would go weeks at a time without even showing up for school. I managed to party every night.
What seemed to me at the time like harmless was festering into a big problem to come. It did not take long for my girlfriends to introduce me to Austin, Texas. It was 1991, I was 21 and grunge had just hit the scene. Nirvana was up and running. The music was crazy and the music scene in Austin was out of control.
I am getting ahead of myself here. I didn't know a thing at the time about music or grunge or how to manage in a city that size. I was very clingy and awestruck most of the time. We would head up on the weekends and meet up with some of there friends who were from our hometown. They were in a band. Split was there name. I most likely looked like a deer in the headlights. The people were weird looking. Dreadlocks and torn clothes. Colored hair and mo hawks were things that I saw almost everywhere I went. I remember being especially intrigued by these people. What did they have that I didn't that made them so bold and daring and just what seemed to me at the time, proud of their individuality. I wanted to be that. I could feel it in my bones. I loved this town. I could be myself. Nobody knew you or your past. It goes without saying that I was on drugs through all of this and drinking regularly. Mostly pot at the time. I had no real connections at the time other than my good old buddies from younger days that still allowed me to mooch off of them.
Cindy and I decided that we needed to move to Austin. It was the coolest place to be and we were too cool for our Podunk town. I finished school and decided I was going to cut hair in Austin . I wanted to do hair for punk rock people. That was my dream at that minute. We loaded up, borrowed money from our parents, found an all bills paid apartment on Riverside. One exit from 6th street. Woohoo.
Moving day came and we were out of this world excited. Apartment on Town Lake. Funny looking back at how we were able to make a bad situation look sooo good. We could not see the poverty around us. We didn't notice or care about the broken security gate. The badly managed grounds. We had stars in our eyes. There was no stopping us we were on our own for the first time and had plans. This was the place. We had to be here. At this moment in time. Everyone was so full of life and music and love. The hippies were all over the place. Glass beads and hemp necklaces. Patchouli...can't forget the patchouli. Eeyore's birthday party. We didn't need to worry about the apartment and it's filthy exterior we weren't going to be home much anyway. It was hard to soak it all in . All the festivals and swimming holes hidden in the woods. Seemed like a perfect vacation to me. That is daytime in Austin. That was Cindy she was all about being a hippy and shopping for beads watching the free shows. What I hadn't figured out is that I would be a nightwalker. These two lifestyles were sure to clash.
Both of us were in a daze. What could go wrong? Right?
It is 5 and time to go home I will come back tomorrow.
