Back Again

I'm back in Houston. LA was...well.

I remembered how much fun I had when I lived there. It was dangerous living, to be sure - I was constantly scraping for cash, and we lived in kind of a questionable neighborhood, but I never felt bad about it. I thought that, if you had to be poor, the best time for it would be when you're young, right? It was pretty romantic. Even when it wasn't romantic, I was thinking in the back of my mind about how I would phrase these stories for people with cushy lives who were inevitably jealous of me and my "maturity". I looked down on them. I looked down on them because I used to be one of them, and I knew how pathetic their lives were. They were like fat little mice, mindlessly dragging from one worthless pleasure to the next (worthless because they were so plentiful), never experiencing the loss that makes gain so sweet.
Where's the excitement in always knowing where your next meal is going to come from?

I wore the same clothes every day; I wore them to shreds. I wore holes in the bottom of my shoes. I had one cheap beer if I went out - just enough to notice that suddenly I was the only person with a warm drink because I didn't want to finish before everyone else and be left with empty hands while my editor/producer/designer friends sloshed theirs all over the floor.

And now I'm one of them again. I'm a pudgy, mindless animal, too. I don't have to think and dance to stay on my feet; now I'm one of the class who bullies to stay upright. My access to sweet treats is limitless - now I feel righteous by denying myself things I would enjoy. It's sick, how fast I've made this turn: one minute I'm indulging to feel good, and five hours later, I'm in the next time zone and I punish myself to feel good now.

The rich and the poor are animals. We are brutish and blind and cruel. And the more I strive to use my mind, the clearer it is to me that I'm one of the only people doing so, and that I have very far to go yet.