Wild and Crazy

I was never that wild and crazy. "Wild" meant wilderness and woods. "Crazy" meant trying something I hadn't done before with people who were just as excited as I was. Drum circles under moonlight, climbing a tree taller than the tallest building on North Campus. Gallivanting off to heaven-knows-where to find things that were possibly unfindable, seeking new friends and new sensations and sights and sounds and seemings. Exploring the depths of the imagination.Creating characters to pursue thought and dream and concept. Calling out to the wild air and listening for the answers.Finding beauty in the growing moss and feeling the cool embrace of the old growth redwood.

But parties? No. Those were for the uninitiated, the unenlightened, those who sought illumination through the bottom of an opaque red Solo cup, those whose idea of entertainment was a drunken brawl, gyrating to deafening sounds less cohesive than the backfiring of a car engine with the hopes of attracting the "right" kind of attention. Blurring reality with inebriation to dull the knowledge that they are incomplete in some way, convincing themselves that this is all there is, this youth shall last forever, no consequence is regrettable. "You're so dull," they told me, "spending all your time in the woods. You should come to the party. It'll be a blast." I spend the entire night hovering over an underaged girl who was drunk by the time I got there, keeping her hair back as she passes out puking, lying her on her side so she doesn't asphyxiate, shoving off a drunk man five years her senior who wants to take advantage of her.

A blast.

That life. That was worlds away from me.

Now I sit alone in my room, sewing a bit of cloth back together, knowing the value of each pull of thread as I seek to repair the old to save myself the cost of something new. Lists are made and tasks scribbled down, each needing its time, each needing to be done. Counting down the hours before school begins and a new chapter unfolds. It's not yet 10PM and I'm in my pajamas, soft melodies of an excited nature tripping without words from the digital lips of my computer, counting out paces of measurement that have no name... ticking down until the next task must be done. Each one measured. Each given weight. Forward I press. Each thing is done because it must be done, preparing, maintaining, progressing. Each thing to ease my path forward to my goals. And such goals as to believe that I could caress a tiger, they sit nebulous yet within my brain and still are so bright and vivid that I can see their faces as though in dreaming.

What would they say to me? That I'm dull? Boring? Why, then, do I have better prospects, a brighter future, and more accomplishments than they? The piece of paper declaring my graduation bearing the signature of celebrity-turned-celebrity smiles back at me. It pushes me on. "You can do this," it whispers in a voice as raspy as dry pulp. "'Perseverance furthers'."

What care have I whether they thought I was dull? In a short time, dedication will pay off. It already is. Truly loved, truly matched, with health that my seventeen-year-old-self could struggle to match. I struggle, but damn it, I am afloat. I drift on the sea, alive, breathing by my own power and volition. They struggle against the tide. I shall set sail. The bright flash of the glittering lights and thunderous music, the blur of the rum and gin and beer, the sticky touches of strangers groping for something they can't identify... these will not weather the hurricane. No, I was not their brand of "wild and crazy".

I am crazy as the wild is crazy, I am wild as the crazed is wild.

Place your back paws where your front paws tread.