Into the White

There’s a Pixies lyric from their song “Into the White” that goes, “there ain’t no day and there ain’t no night.” That’s how my last year of high school felt. All of the days and nights blended together.

Looking back, it seems like it had a trajectory. But really, I was just struggling to keep my head above water and then took on water.  It was simple; I couldn’t handle anything anymore and just gave up going to school altogether. At first, missing a class. Then a day. Next, weeks in bed. And when my mom threw water on me to wake me up, I would pretend to go to school and then go home when my mom left for the breakfast shift at the coffee shop she waited tables at.

It wasn’t a conscious decision to let it all go. Rather, It was like a slow fall off the longest cliff ever into the shallow water below.

At some point, I realized I was not going to graduate. But, I didn’t care. I had sabotaged my dreams of attending college at Claremont McKenna. It had worked far better than I ever hoped. I dropped out my senior year of high school, second semester, five units short of a high school diploma. And took my GED which I passed (during the GED test, which seemed so easy, I remembered taking my PSATs, and my language/reading comprehension score in the 99th percentile).

I didn’t cry until I saw my twin sister Jackie and my best friend Tracy walking at graduation and I had to watch them from under the bleachers. Tears falling on my cigarette. I think I used my Sex Pistols t-shirt to wipe my smeared eyeliner. And suddenly, I didn’t feel cool anymore. I felt like an utter loser and as if my life was over.

But, the funny thing is my life was just beginning. It’s common knowledge that I had a fine second act and I would go on to have great times and accomplish more than I ever imagined, while still remaining true to my punk rock self.

Yet, I’ve started having those feelings again. As if my life is over. Forty something, barren, and so much damn sadness all around me, I have to keep reminding myself, through my writing, that my third act is still to come.

And, I know through experience that life always appears the most bleak and then, the sun peeks out from behind the clouds and lights everything up.

Into the white. From dark to light.