Part Nineteen: These are my friends, this is who they have been for always

Last things first, if you don't own ...Is A Real Boy by Say Anything then you should probably go out and buy, borrow, download, whatever it. Right now. I'm not kidding. I'll wait.

...

Are you playing it now? You better be. I remember listening to that record on tour with Team Minus Scale in...2006? and we were just saying "Holy shit, this is amazing. We need to kick it up a dozen notches." I mean, it was mind blowing. Dissecting "Alive With The Glory of Love", thinking "This is a love song set in the Holocaust...brilliant!" This was before the Cult of Max Bemis was in full swing though people were kind of hung up on the fact that he's literally batshit crazy and that completely informs his songwriting. Not kidding, look it up. He was in a mental hospital either directly before or after that record was put out. Did TONS of drugs. Was a conflicted, atheist self-hating Jew ('cause you can be an atheist and still be Jewish. It's in the rule book, FYI. Only religion that does that.) though I hear now he's found Jesus. Go figure. But really, that album was like our Dark Side Of The Moon or Pet Sounds or something...just mind-blowingly brilliant in production, execution, melodies, lyrics; the complete package. And homeboy is younger than me. Makes me a little sad but it also makes me look at my own songs and rethink things. I can't overstate the importance of that album. For my own personal hierarchy of albums it's up there with Jimmy Eat World's Clarity or The Moon Is Down by Further Seems Forever or any of the other records that helped me growing up. Furthermore, it's one of the rare albums/bands that Kelley and I agree on. We've been listening to their latest, eponymous  record a bit more lately but it starts with ...Is A Real Boy. I'm kind of surprised Kelley likes them, they're not really her usual bag or at least what I consider her usual bag. I often tell people she has much better taste than I do because she's into hip current stuff and I'm usually stuck a few years behind the times. Some of the bands she's sweet on I know I should be into (Modest Mouse, Fitz and the Tantrums, The Fratellis, Vampire Weekend...) but it just doesn't strike me. We're both really into Alkaline Trio though, blissfully, and Hellogoodbye. Those are the big two. Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh yeah, the point: a super-important record that encapsulates a very specific and important part of my life crossed over into what I'd consider the next stage of my life. My two great loves joined by some sort of common ground. It's pretty rad. Funny though, I could never see getting a Say Anything tattoo and music tattoos are kind of my bag. Not tattoo worthy, you say? Oh I beg to differ. Some of the biggest and most important things in my life are directly or indirectly related to what I was listening to or writing at the time.

Quick side story: I was hanging out at Hold Fast Tattoo in Dover with some friends not too long ago and the subject of band tattoos came up and I mentioned that I have (technically) two Five Iron Frenzy tattoos and the friend I was talking to was really taken aback by that and gave me the very surprised "Really?!" like that was weird. Yeah dude, Five Iron is probably the most important band in my life. My left wrist has We Are Blessed, We Endure from the song "Car" off of the Electric Boogaloo record and the...second? Third? tattoo I got, on my left arm is script that reads The bravest thing I have is hope from the Five Iron side project Brave Saint Saturn. Both of those quotes are pretty profound to my life, especially these days.

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Today started a little off: woke up at 6 after only a few hours of sleep, had my modest breakfast of Life cereal and soy milk, and my tubes were causing nothing but problems. It was just a bad scene. I couldn't sit, lay down, get up, anything without enduring severe stabbing pains at my tube sites. It's getting to be a bit much, to be honest. The best way I can describe it is being stabbed, slowly, in the stomach with a really long needle. Then having the needle poked through the skin again, like a piercing. Then having that piercing ripped out. Yeah, that's about right. Now, imagine that every day of your life, and not just every day but near-constantly every day. Now you may get an idea of why I can't sleep or get comfortable in my own home or very literally my own skin.

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"You're what keeps me believing the world's not gone dead. Strength in my bones, put the words in my head when they pour out to paper, it's all for you. 'Cause that's what you do."
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Spent last night among friends, or more appropriately "mi familia" as it were. Or is it "ma familia?" I don't really get the masculine/feminine bits of Spanish. By way of being a whole lot French Canadian I took French in high school because I thought it would be useful. Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose. And yes, even with a name as Irish as Padraig Murphy I'm all kinds of French Canadian on my mom's side. Funny because I've been to Quebec and cannot stand those people. Sorry, les Quebecois. And they all apparently learned how to drive in Massachusetts. Anyhow.

It's important to note that I'm one of those folks that can say I've kept the same core group of friends my entire life. Skip over this if I've written this before. Chris and I had the same class in first grade, I think John and I had the same class in second, and Andy may have also been in that class? Also his older brother was best friends with my older brother so we came together that way as well. Nick was thrown into the mix in middle school, I think. Wrote some of my first songs with him. Good times. Shawn came around in high school and we've all more or less stuck together since. Nick to a lesser extent lately (as in the past few years) but those bonds are still there. For our present intents and purposes it's Chris, John, Andy, Shawn and myself, and our respective ladies (John/Heather, Shawn/Nicci, Andy/Sabrina and of course the love of my life: Kelley Diana Harrington.), save for Chris who is the consummate gentleman bachelor. Seriously ladies, he's a catch and a sweetheart so someone get on that. Literally.

                          (from left to right, Abel, Shawn's son, Shawn, Chris, Andy, John, some guy.)
We typically get together once a month or so to break bread, watch movies, play video games, board games, whathaveyou. If you couldn't tell we're all pretty big dorks so running around with light sabers and Nerf guns is kind of par for the course. Abel is already on the road to geekdom and most definitely the upcoming additions of John and Heather's child and Andy and Sabrina's will add to the nerd quotient. Andy refers to his unborn as a Sith Lord. C'mon, that kid is fucked if it doesn't like that stuff.

Now, as this is the VH1 Behind The Music portion of the program it hasn't been all chocolate and lollipops for The Group as we once dubbed ourselves. Creative, eh?

I charted the start of my departure from things when I got serious about playing music, or more specifically when I got really serious about playing music after I was in a band with Andy. To be honest, despite how close we all are (and we're all brothers at this point. My mom is their mom. Especially Chris, but that's a set of stories for another time.) I always felt a slight...disconnect? I'm not a "dude" dude. I don't care about cars or motorcycles or sports or dude things and they all kind of do. That's not some earth-shattering difference but it's sizable when my main focus was art and my own creative pursuits. I very literally traded my old family for my new band families and it was hard to handle then and it's still tough to think about now. Example: for Andy's first marriage a number of years ago everyone was involved in the wedding but me. Kind of a kick in the dick but at that time I had very little contact with them, either by fate or circumstance or choice or whatever it was. I did attend the wedding though and had a great time. I was also drinking a good amount of Maker's Mark at the reception. Oh, old me. To my credit(?) I stayed reasonably sober whilst my companion got emotional drunk. Oy vey. From then it was again the off and on keeping in touch, hanging out from time to time but I was definitely not in the equation like everyone else. Cut to...dun dun dunnn! Sick time! The guys came to see me in the hospital and that was awesome and really touched me. At the time I didn't think too hard on the nitty gritty of everything and in hindsight I'm fairly certain they came to see me out of genuine concern and not guilt. It's come up a few times about how I can see into people's bullshit when it comes to me and my sickness and I don't think there is an ounce of being disingenuous on their collective parts. When one of us falters we all feel it, as it were. That would explain how now for the second time Andy is getting married (congratulations for the umpteenth time, and it's refreshing to see how in love you are buddy) and again I'm omitted from the festivities. Hell, I was absent for most everything leading up to this and I wouldn't involve me either. Have we finally reached the point where I can call it?

I was a fucking shitty friend. 

Not just to my brothers here, to most people. I was a fucking terrible mess. It sickens me to think about, really. I single-handedly dismantled every friendship that I had built over the years and am in the process of patching up old wounds and rebuilding burnt bridges. It's trying because there are some people I've reached out to that want nothing to do with me and that hurts, especially considering I know I'm not a scumbag. I've been a raging prick to some people but at my core I'm not a bad dude and they know that. That's the heartbreaking piece of this little puzzle: I know my friends new and old know that I've got a good heart and I'm not a complete fuckup but dig knives into people long enough and they get sick of it. Can't blame them, at all. It's kind of like that step in AA where you're supposed to apologize to everyone for things you did when you were drinking. It's not even just that thing of "Hey, I'm still alive so let's start over again." It's having a clear head and knowing who and what is important to you. Even now I feel a little alienated from everyone but that's part of paying dues and getting back into the fold. Plus it's kind of weird sometimes because Kelley and I are such a unit and she's very, very different from them. It's two completely different sensibilities converging at the same time and not just because she's a little younger than the rest of us. Plus it's intimidating to come into a group of friends that have been together more or less their whole lives; I've had the same experience with some of Kelley's friends. Shit, it's evident sometimes when we're with her parents even because for whatever reason my filter just shuts off and I'll talk and talk about God knows what or why. By nature (if you couldn't tell by this blogthing yet) I'm pretty verbose anyway but for some reason with them I just feel like I have to fill up space? Or seem interesting? I know her parents dig me despite my many faults but I think in my subconscious somewhere I still feel like I need to impress them. Maybe it's also because our parents are so drastically different...they've met via the hospital a small number of times now but they've yet to sit down and really have a go. We've been interested to make that happen for a time now and maybe this will be the year. As long as we don't talk about politics or religion, even though that would be HILARIOUS. Mother, Father, Kelley's rents (sorry, it weirds me out to say Jeff and Jackie) we need to do this. Eat. Drink. Be merry. Mazel tov!

"Ha ha ha, show me what you've got."
So let's see here, what's the moral of today's set of stories? Hmmm.
Cherish your friendships? Learn to adapt? Everyone grows apart but that doesn't mean it has to end anything? Nope. No no no. I'm going with Neil Gaiman on this one:

"Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." or "Everything changes and nothing is truly lost."

Yup. That sums things up.

Part Eighteen: I can't stop laughing

I always kind of wished my school held Sadie Hawkins Dances when I was a lad because it'd be interesting to A. be asked in the first place and B. see who'd be doing the asking. A friend out of pity? A legit romantic interest? A gal who was looking for whomever she could so she wouldn't be embarrassed going alone? The mind races with possibilities, especially considering the unique position I held in that I was an unabashed geek/nerd/whathaveyou and my core friends were much the same, although we all had our own interests and things going on but came together on some major things like Star Wars, comic books and video games. (Anyone remember playing GoldenEye multiplayer, The Facility using proximity mines? HELL YES.) and despite this geekery I was somewhat of a notable figure in high school. Not like captain of the football team or prom king or something; we didn't even have a football team. No, I was notable in the fact that more or less everyone knew who I was and that was really pretty bizarre to me. Part of it may have been that I had cultivated friendships with kids all over the place and in different groups or cliques or whatever you call them where you're from. Also, most of my best friends were girls and that befuddled many of my guy friends and some would ask me stuff like "Hey, how do you do it? How do you talk to girls?" and I never had a concrete answer because I didn't know it was a thing. Mostly I think the key is just listening. Listening, not waiting for your turn to talk. Big difference. That skill (?) helped me greatly in the world of bands and playing shows and being on tour because you have to talk with strangers every day and your livelihood literally depends on it. Want gas or food money? Go out there and sell some merch, kid. That's why I could never buy the idea of the mythical unattainable rock star: how are you getting money to buy a meal in Mishawaka, Indiana if you're by yourself, brooding and not talking to anyone? Yeah, I could talk to people and get smiles and laughs and such and I'd get questions as to how that was possible and I'm still not sure. There definitely wasn't a whole lot of confidence there, at least when it came to talking to the ladies, but I managed to do it anyway. For awhile I'd bring my guitar EVERYWHERE and play in the halls before school, during lunch, after school, and at times people would approach and ask what I was playing and that seemed to be a nice ice breaker. Hmm, maybe that's how I got to be "that guy" in school, I suppose that'd be a topic of conversation for school kids: "Hey, who's that guy that sings songs all day long? Oh him? That's Paddy Murphy." "Ahh..." One time our health/gym teacher Mr. Averill was asking what I was playing at lunch one day and my friends and I told him "Oh, the Ataris, Get Up Kids, Jimmy Eat World..." and he was writing it down to check out later. Took a few minutes to make him realize the name of the band was Jimmy EAT World, not Jimmy Eats World, or Jimmy Eats The World, or Jimmy Eat Worlds, etc. He was a funny guy, Ave. From there you can extrapolate going from talking about songs I was playing or writing and getting into different bits to talk about. It was senior year when it hit me that people who I didn't know knew who I was and as I said before, that seemed really bizarre to me. On a grander scale the same thing happens from being in bands. The best/creepiest example I can think of happened in 2010, I believe, at the local library here in Dover. Kelley and I were in line to check out some books and these two kids come up the stairs to the main lobby, take a look at us and start whispering "Oh my God, that's Paddy..." and various other bits. Now, by 2010 I had been out of the game for about two years which made this even more crazy but it's not the first time that has happened, be it at the library, the grocery store, the mall, shows, bars, etc. Having strangers  know my name and think they know something about me is very, very bizarre.

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Yesterday marked one of my rare established, non-emergency related visits to Lahey and more specifically to see Dr. Marcello. Ah, Pete, you old sea dog, you. As is not often the case Kelley had the day off so we made the trek together, ruing her faulty tape player/adapter for sounding like someone gargling broken glass because we're old fashioned and use the tape thing to listen to the iPod in the car and not one of the fancy FM transmitters. Those things are expensive, people, and we like our years-old technology. I tend to feel guilty when anyone comes to visit me when I'm a guest at the Lahey Clinic because it's so damn expensive to  both get down and stay down there. First there's the toll in Hampton on I-95, that's $2 both ways, then the parking in the garage at the hospital which is tiered as such:

$2 for one hour.
$5 for 2-5 hours.
$8 for a day pass.
Or it's $5 for 2-3 hours and $8 from then on. Either way, it adds up.

And let's not forget the gas (who can't, at these prices lately amIright?) which gets used at 120 miles round trip and can also get expensive if the car doesn't have terribly good mileage. Kelley's car gets probably 30 mpg on the highway but her parents or my parents both have SUV's and that can get a bit on the pricey side. Hell, one of my friends just came into a HUGE Toyota SUV (I'm blanking on the name) that gets on average 15 mpg. That's disgusting. That's about what we got driving a 15 passenger van with a 12-foot packed trailer in the old days. Sheesh. Back to the task at hand:

We get to the hospital more or less right on time and make it up to Dr. Marcello's office. There's a bit of a line so Kelley and I wait patiently for our turn and (I didn't see this but she swears it's true) an older woman in line ahead of us turns, gives her, or us, a look down and does the "hmmph" thing, as in: "Oh dear, those TATTOOED people." I'm a fairly accepting person and I've long-accepted that I've done/said things or look like someone that puts people off but seriously? In this day and age? I say this with the utmost sincerity:

Fuck off you old cooz.

My lady is beautiful and yes, she's got some pretty pictures on her skin. I can TOTALLY see how that offends you. Bitch. That kind of thing makes me hope these people fall into an open elevator shaft. I truly wish I would have noticed or Kelley would have pointed it out to me at the time because I absolutely would have said something. My personal best/worst/funniest/best again experience with someone like that was way back when I was 19 or 20 working at Ace Hardware and a woman that I was helping told me that I was going to going to Hell for having tattoos and piercings. Now, being on the clock I had to bite my tongue a bit but I did say "Well ma'am, God and I understand each other and he's ok with it so thanks but no thanks for your concern." The nerve or some people.
After a bit of a wait I was called into one of the examination rooms and I got a little confused because what lay in front of me looked like either some strange tubed camera machine or a suction machine. Dr. Marcello's usual bag is colon/rectal surgery so I was taken aback. Just then Dr. Keri walked by and said "Hey! How's it going?" Immediately I looked at her, looked at the machine and asked "What the FUCK is that thing?" She looks at it and says "Oh that? Don't worry, it's always in here." See, I love that I can talk like a complete rude asshole to my doctors and they just know it's how I am. Not to say that I'm an asshole, though I'm sure some people would say I am, but being frank and normal with people is a good thing. Finally Dr. Marcello came in and we had a quick "how's it going?" I told him that my tubes have really been bothering me and I haven't been on the feeds for a few weeks, hoping that he'd finally pull them. Alas, that was not the case. He wanted to wait a bit longer before pulling them because putting them back in if necessary would be a lot bigger deal than just leaving them in longer. Begrudgingly I agreed but damnit, Jim, I'm not a doctor, I'm a sufferer!

One thing I will say about having to go to Burlington: it gives us the chance to taste some of the exotic cuisine denied to us up here in the Great White North of New Hampshire. Things like Chik-Fil-A, Spike's Hot Dogs, Pizzeria Regina, Five Guys...oh the tasty treats denied to us 603 Philistines.

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Ok, last unrelated story for the day. This entry has taken me three days to write or something.

Over the past few days I've actually gotten to hang out with friends and get out of the house. BRILLIANT! (as they say in the world of Harry Potter.) Reconnecting with Angel has been one of the best things...I know I've mentioned him here before and if I haven't, one of these days I'll run through the People's History of Angel Smith (or Ahn-heil, as they pronounce it in some circles.) There are a handful of people that I've met in my lifetime that I know I was supposed to meet. Just genuinely good people that have had a profound affect on me. He is one of them. I made the analogy to Kelley's parents last night that if I were bleeding on the floor and needed to go to the hospital and Kelley wasn't around, he'd be the first person I'd call. One of the most selfless people I've ever met and would do anything for a real friend. I am honored and fortunate to call myself as such. Plus he knows Dave Martin from Top Chef season one and it'd be rad to hang out with that dude sometime.

Also, yesterday I got to spend a little time with Ryan (former singer of Team Minus Scale) and his dear sweet wife Enslin. That's another entry in itself, the Story of Ryan, Enslin, and Team Minus Scale. She's having some issues of her own and has had to have some blood work done and apparently she has an irrational fear of IV's so she was telling me horror stories of having to have blood taken, IV contrast for CT scans, etc. That's a far cry from my experiences so it was nice and different to hear the other side of the coin, though it's unfortunate that she has to go through that business. We had to drive her to her car because the experience of having IV work done freaks her out enough that she can't drive afterwards. What a nice hubby that Ryan Levasseur is. After the Enslin-delivery mission we headed to Portsmouth to go to Bull Moose where we ran into Derek again. Ryan did quite a bit of vinyl-shopping and Derek and I got to chat for a bit. See, being who we are we can get...playful at times. Ryan mentioned something about teaching kids Defeater songs (he's a guitar teacher, mind you.) and I took that as a cue to put on my pseudo-asshole hat and say in my best radio/interviewer voice "So, Derek, how does it feel to be the mouthpiece of the 'thinking man's hardcore band', Defeater?" and he gave me the most priceless, precious "fuck you, asshole" look. He knows I kid and I have the utmost respect for that band.

During our Portsmouth trek Ryan and I had a bite to eat and we got to talking about band things, old times, etc. and the subject of being in touch with old band friends came up and he said something profoundly true that I either forgot or never really dawned on me in the first place: were they ever really friends, in the true sense, or just acquaintances that we hung out with from time to time? Sure, I made very real friendships with different people in other bands but he's right. Yeah, we were friendly with lots of people but if we weren't talking shop what was there really to talk about? I think about this as I reconnect with people, especially if and when they find out I'm sick. My bullshit filter is usually on high gear and I can tell if people are actually concerned and care of if they just ask because they feel guilty. Ryan also put it this way, it's kind of like a one-upper in conversation because really, how do you top "yeah...I almost died. A few times. What's up with you?" Now, it is not my intention to wear it as some sort of badge of honor or "hey, feel sorry for me" conversation piece but I worry that it's perceived as such. I lived through something fairly traumatic that I still don't really wrap my head around. Kind of fucks you up a bit, to be honest. Maybe that's what freaks people out, if that's even the right way to look at it. I've been through something that most people will never go through and really, how do you talk about that if you have no frame of reference? Ah, the joys of life-altering circumstances.

Alright, that's enough for now. I feel kind of sweaty and need to change and Kelley's downstairs probably watching Arrested Development. Toodles, kiddos.

Part Sixteen: Pt. 2: Electric Boogaloo

(Very quickly: I realize that my brilliant numbering scheme has failed me and Part Sixteen doesn't in fact exist. For those of you keeping score at home I apologize for this malfeasance.)

I'm going on my umpteenth straight day of very little, unrestful and altogether unpleasant "sleep" if you can possibly call it that. Growing up I had a pretty tenuous relationship with Little Nemo and his cohorts in Slumberland, take that to my years in bands sleeping on random floors, cut to all my hospital time where I've found it nigh-impossible to get more than an hour of sleep at a time, to now that I'm home and getting relatively comfortable I either don't get tired or I'll manage to fall asleep but end up jostled awake by pains, batshit dreams, or just general discomfort. It's especially grating on Kelley because I know she thinks there's something wrong or I don't want to sleep when she does but that's not the case at all. Love, nothing would give me more joy at the end of the day than being able to fall asleep with you like a normal person but that's just not how things work with me I guess. Hell, for a time I kept waking up because I was having extremely vivid and lucid Scrabble dreams where I'd just anagram crazy stuff and that's not really conducive to restful slumber. My old chum Andy reminded me not too long ago that when I was a younger dude I could get 20 or 30 minutes of sleep in a 24-hour period and operate fine, if not better than most people on real sleep. My brain has a hard time shutting off, it seems. Fortunately the wee sleepless hours are when productivity looms its head a lot of the time; most of my current and past 18 months of songwriting have gone on when I should be sleeping and I've got to tell you, it's very, VERY freeing to finally get some of the things bouncing around in my domepiece out in song form. When I was younger (18 to 24, especially) I was a highly prolific songwriter and would rattle off at least a song or two a day. They weren't exactly masterpieces, mind you, but there were some good bits in there. Again, turning to Andy here, during New Year's celebrating this year (last year? How does that work? 2011 into 2012: there.) said something like I've probably forgotten how to play more songs than most people learn. That's incredibly cliché and pompous but it's also kind of true...I used to know a TON of songs, both other people's creations and my own and it's really bothersome that now I'll sit down with a guitar or at a piano or something and I can't remember most of what I used to know, be it lyrics, melodies, chord progressions, whathaveyou. When I was a teenager it wouldn't phase me to learn entire abums-worth of songs and play them ad nauseum. In hindsight I'm sure my friends, family, schoolmates, teachers, etc. wished I would just shut the hell up but I would not be deterred! Great training for later endeavors, I will say, having such a broad palette to paint from: everything from jazz standards to classic rock, 60's pop, punk rock, ska, metal...it served me well being a semi-professional performer. Consequently, being a semi-professional performer might have led to the events that gave me pancreatitis in the first place, so perhaps it's all kind of a grey area of awesome.


On the subject of my time as a band guy I had a happy bit of happenstance just recently: as I've written before, one of my old cohorts and friends Derek Archambault is the vocalist for the amazing hardcore band Defeater and the time he spent in The Minus Scale was my favorite in that band. The five of us were amazing. The chemistry worked, it was fun as hell, and some of the best memories of my life came about from those days. For whatever reasons we lost touch for a bit (as it happens with just about everyone and me, especially when I was drinking all the time. God, I was such a fuck-up.) and while Kelley and I were in Portsmouth to watch the dismantling of the Memorial Bridge we decided to take a walk indoors to get warm and ended up at the jewel of Portsmouth record stores, Bull Moose Music. After a moment of getting acclimated I heard "Oh my God, Paddy Murphy." and lo and behold, Derek happened to be working. We chatted for a bit and he told me that he in fact knew about what happened to me. This was a bit of a surprise because for most of the past year I had tried to get in touch with him but the wheels just didn't align. What happened was a mutual friend of ours had called him while he was on tour and let him know that I was in really rough shape. Since I had changed my number since we had last spoken on the phone and I lost his number in the process we couldn't get in touch ourselves so it was messages relayed between friends. One of the reasons why I still love this guy is since I got sick I can tell when people are disingenous when asking about me but he actually gives a shit because he's not a lame scumbag who feels guilty about not asking how the sick kid is doing. It's all in the eyes, people. It was a relief to me because I had no idea if he knew what happened or how bad it was and one of the things I've been trying to get done is get back in the fold with the people that I love.

A similar situation happened this morning whilst talking to an old bud, Mr. Mikey Mirando. Or The Mikey Scale as I affectionately refer(red) to him. Anyway, he and I talk on a semi-regular basis via the interwebs,
generally about music and the like (we're both very, very big Alkaline Trio fans among other things) and today he asked specifically what happened, how I got sick, etc. After going through the usual "pancreatitis, colostomy, losing this or that organ" I brought up my weeks in a coma and some of the dreams I had which surprised him because he didn't know you dream in a coma. Oh yeah, you dream. It was kind of nice to talk about it because it brought back things that I forgot, like how it felt to know I was dying. Now, I don't say that for shock value or anything, in fact I laugh about it now because it would probably break my brain if I actually sat and thought about it. Seriously though, and I'm sure I've written about it before, but I distinctly remember having an internal battle with myself to keep myself alive. I was more or less on a cliff or something and there was me and utter, all-consuming eternal blackness. Part of me was saying "Dude, just let go and take off...it'll be way easier. Wouldn't it be nice to rest?" and the other side of me was saying "Uh, dude, you're not ready for this yet...take a step back." I did and I'm still here. I'm not really superstitious and I'm most certainly not religious but I know that I was on the cusp of the end there. A few times. It's kind of impossible to really articulate and maybe someday I'll write about it in physical, non-blog form. That's something of a shock to some of the folks that I've told that story to; there was no bright light, no angels singing, no loved ones ushering me with open arms...just inescapable and infinite blackness. Sorry afterlife believers, that was not my experience.

It's funny, I was raised in a Christian household, was saved at 14 and my favorite band of all time is a very overtly Christian band (Five Iron Frenzy, for those concerned.) yet I don't consider myself a Christian. I believe in God, or at least something bigger than myself keeping tabs in the universe but I just can't get behind a lot of things in the bible. I had a youth pastor tell me once that if you don't believe everything in the bible then you don't believe any of it. At the time I thought that was bullshit and I very much think it's bullshit now. For the record, there's lots of things in the bible that contradict other things so that argument can't even be made. This isn't the part where I go into a religious tirade, merely where I reconcile what I've always been taught with what I believe to be true, given my experiences. Yes, by all rights I should be dead right now but the thing is this isn't the first time I've faced the end and came back ok. When I was...20? I was in a fairly major car accident and at the scene the EMT's commented on how I shouldn't have lived and at the ER the attending doctor said "Someone up there must like you because people don't usually survive this kind of thing, especially like this." See, my car slid off the road and when I came back onto the highway I was perpendicular to it and a semi-truck hit me on my side, about six inches behind the driver seat. My car was essentially torn in half, all the windows blown out, my face and head full of glass and my glasses somewhere on the highway. I couldn't see both from my lack of eyewear and I was bleeding pretty heavily from all the glass cuts. I used a bottle of water to wash my face off and the driver of the truck rushed to my car and told me the paramedics were on their way. Oh, he also said "I think your car cracked my radiator..." Ok dude, I could be dying from internal injuries and you're worried about your truck? Sweet. Anyway, after I got to the hospital and they checked me out it turned out that I had not sustained any real injuries. I had a number of cuts from the glass in my face and head as well as a bruised ribcage from the steering wheel but I walked, or rather hobbled, away ok. Sure, because of my ribs I could barely walk for a week but I was ok.
So either it's all an incredible set of circumstances or there's a reason I'm still breathing. I'm not really on either side of this fence but I'm open to ideas.

Ok, I think this post got away from me. Lost my focus for a bit and I'm supposed to have lunch with a friend so I'll cut the chord. More to come. Cheers.