Apprehension and revealation

Well, tomorrow I get to go into NYC to be a human lab rat for the day. I've got a full schedule at NY Presbyterian- bloodwork at 11:30, CT at 1:30, and an MRI at 4. This means that I will get needles jabbed into me three times- fun fun fun. Not to mention the fact that I'll have to fast for te CT. Nothing like having a few idle hours in Manhattan and not being able to enjoy the food.

Sometimes I wonder why I am going through all of this? I'm not a religious person, so I don't think god is testing me or I'm being punished for something I did in a previous life. All I know is that these experiences have helped me to determine who I am. Five years ago, I was living in Wilmington, NC, completely miserable. I was unemployed, broke, and hundreds of miles away from any sort of skiing. I remember watching the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and just saying to myself "Fuck this. I'm going home." I realized that living near the mountains was important to me, and that one of the things that I was was that I was a skier. And skiers just don't live in the south.

Despite all of the hardships I am currently enduring, I am actually happier now than I have ever been at any point in my life since childhood. And a big part of that was this self discovery. For a lot of my life I was trying to be someone else. And a lot of the time it was someone else's vision of what you are supposed to be that I was trying to conform to. This often led to a bunch of bad decisions. A lot of the time, I thought I could change myself by being around people who I thought I wanted to be like. I tried to emulate them, instead of following my own way. Usually, it meant hanging out with people who I had very little in common with, and making myself believe that they were my friends. Of course they weren't. Sure, they were who I was hanging out with, spending my time with, but they sure as hell weren't my friends. Of the hundreds of people I have met in the ten years after I graduated high school, very few of them I would consider to be my friends.

It was this weekend that really brought this point home to me. I was in Vermont skiing. Saturday night we were just hanging out at the house, drinking beers and stuff. And everyone there but me was very successful. Young professionals, mostly Manhattanites, with high paying jobs. Than there was me, the 31 year old who a lot of people might think of as having his entire adult life be one big junk show. Hell, I usually think my life's is a junk show. But not these folks. They know me, and know that just because I don't quite conform within the limits of everyday society, I shouldn't be written off. And I realized that this is what I was missing all along- people who were not so quick to judge. That's a rare quality amongst the general populace, and something that I will admit to being guilty of far more than I would like to be.

As more beers were consumed and late Saturday night turned into early Sunday morning, a woman in her mid twenties started to get upset and tell me how much of a junk show her own life was. Having called many of my freinds late at night in the same situation, I knew how to react, and got her to calm down and feel better about her not-so-terrible life. I reminded her that I was broke, sick, and had no idea about what I was doing with my life. She than looked right at me and simply said "You're a skier."