The Day

Last Night of My Twenties

It's tonight. 

What an extraordinary period that’s ending this evening. So much growth, so much understanding, so much improbable achievement has taken place over the course of the last decade, and in surveying that I find I can’t quite bring myself to mourn the years passed. Their beauty was in what they gave me, and those gifts were borne of struggle. It was a necessary struggle, and a fruitful one, but I am glad that many parts of it are now over.

I’m happy to stand where I do. I’m happy to welcome a new chapter, even as I bid fond farewell to an old one. I’m happy to move forward. I’m happy to embrace thirty, and I pray God will bless and guide me in this new age with the same constancy He did in the old one.

Ten Years

It's been a decade since the sunny spring afternoon in April 2008 when I wrote my very first post on Blogger. I was nineteen years old, bursting with creativity and angst and longing, hobbled by a difficult past, buoyed by hope, and newly possessed of the perfect medium through which to give voice to all the roiling emotions of late adolescence. Ten years have followed that day. Ten years that, as I approach my thirtieth birthday in several days' time, I now realize constitute one-third of my life. You've seen, I would argue, the best third. The third where I grew up, and moved from a boy to a man.

The journey for me, and for this blog, has been strange. I've zigzagged between righteous fury, audacious hope, cloying self-pity, drunken harangues, and, eventually, quiet reflection. Eventually, I hope, some kind of understanding.

You saw me when I was twenty and filled with that strange mix of rage and joy common to so many abuse survivors who make the first tentative moves towards normal life. You saw me in the long slide of blackness and nihilism that ended in a suicide attempt when I was twenty-five. You saw me taking disjointed steps in the fragile recovery that followed the suicide attempt and then, for a while in 2016, you didn't see me at all. For a while I needed to step away from the attention, step away from the rehashing and, in fairness, step away from my own narcissism, to evaluate my own choices. Being victimized, even legitimately, can predispose us to victimhood. In can make us cast a mold in which we trap ourselves and become our own abusers, all while justifying our misbehavior on the grounds of what was done to us.

When I was ready for you to see me again, at the opening of 2017, you saw me bearing hard-won achievements. And then you saw me head north, and learn important lessons on the tundra.

It has been an amazing privilege to be a member of this community for ten years. When we're young, so many of us just need someone to listen. And you did. I told my story, then kept telling as it changed. I've always been so thankful for that first chapter, but, ten years on, I find I no longer recognize its author. And that's a good thing.

I'm happy I can no longer empathize with that deeply troubled nineteen-year-old boy. I'm happy I've grown and learned and shifted. I'm happy I'm older. And, what's more, old enough to realize that I'm still young.

So for those of you who don't know, my name is BB, and I am a 29-year-old history teacher living in rural Alaska. Back on the East Coast, where I grew up and where all my family remain, are my father David and his new wife Robin; my adoptive mother Marie and her new boyfriend, Tall Man; my birth-mother, Anne; and my siblings: 28-year-old Powell; 22-year-old Thomas, who's finding his way and playing metal shows in the meantime; 14-year-old Pie, a high school freshman; and many assorted others, including colorful friends you've met or will meet yet.

The last year has been among the best of my life. This is how it went:

April 2017: I turn 29 years old.

May 2017: I am offered and accept a teaching position in Gori, Alaska for the 2017 - 2018 school year. I depart Alaska for Southern state.

June 2017: Summertime leisure gets a bit too leisurely, but there are at least friends along for the ride.

July 2017: I decide it's time to take a hiatus from the drinking. A good call.

August 2017: I return to Alaska and take up residence in Gori.

September 2017: The fall is a little bit difficult as I adjust to my first full school year in Alaska.

October 2017: Gori's first snowfall comes on October 18.

November 2017: When Thanksgiving arrives, there is a much to be thankful for.

December 2017: After some Christmastime excess, I forswear alcohol entirely. Wish me luck with this one, because it's ongoing.

January 2018: Everyone said the second semester in Gori would be easier. They were right.

February 2018: I learn that my position in Gori will be eliminated and that I will not be able to return following the conclusion of the school year.

March 2018: I secure a new job at Point Goldlace, north of Aurora City.

It's been a remarkable ten years. Here's to Year 11.