The past six months have been a wavering line of uncertainty, peaks and valleys that undulated through space and time, and soon (in less than one month) that line will end…

…and resume 1500 miles east of here.

After 14 years, I am moving back to the place of my birth, the city of Conroe, Texas. I have many feelings about this, similar to those that have warbled the line of my emotional existence these past many months. Let’s try, shall we, to refine some of the highlights.

I first arrived in San Diego on January 6th, 2003 with forty dollars in my pocket, a bulky, heavy-breathing desktop computer in the passenger seat, and a car that desperately needed to be put down after its exhausting journey, a la that terrifying scene in “True Grit”. For the first month or two things were amazing and terrifying; everything was so new and wonderful, my eyes drinking in the street names and burroughs and businesses that would be my haunts for years to come. I also struggled to find work, selling CDs and DVDs to sustain myself in the meantime, as well as the plasma from my blood. I got a job doing business-to-business sales, hawking an office supply delivery service, but I made one sale and felt so wracked with guilt about it that I quit the next day. I then got a job at Hollywood Video, shelving DVDs while becoming immersed in a film course syllabus of my own design. Shortly after that I started working at Borders Books & Music, and that kept me afloat for the next six years.

I spent my time in coffee shops, hyped up on caffeine, furiously scrawling my burning missives, melting the hours before me in a merciless heat of fiery anger and searing regret. I wrote letters to friends, I smoked cigarettes to scald my feelings and cauterize my hemorrhaging heart. I begged for that great change to find me, slowly dawning on the truth that I had traveled all this way to find it, myself, and to remain inert at that moment was to undermine all my bravery. I perused the cork-boards at the coffee shops looking for opportunities to express myself and found a casting call for spoken word poets for a limited-run stage show exploring the subculture of urban poverty. I made friends, found local haunts, performed before crowds, and felt alive. I had arrived.

Not one to rest idle, I found a rock band to front, called Moonshine Junkie. All of the band members were considerably older than me, and the disparate nature of influences helped to illustrate that fact. Despite that, we wrote good songs together and played shows to paying audiences. It was a good time. The band wasn’t a great fit, but it was a step in the right direction, and I had fun. After posting my own scathing review of a show wherein we performed rather poorly, I was ejected from the band. I didn’t weep.

I returned to the stage, finding a small black box theater near my neighborhood, and was cast in three one-acts after my first audition. I joined the unofficial ensemble cast, a group of talented broken souls who returned every three weeks to audition for the next round of shows, locked in an eternal pursuit of being someone, anyone, other than themselves. This went on for longer than it should have.

During this period I met a fellow with the same name as me who encouraged me to get back into the restaurant industry, make more money, and make people laugh. Then he died. I worked at both the bookstore and the restaurant until I ascended to management at the restaurant, left the bookstore, and the brick-and-mortar retail industry imploded. I was not directly responsible for that last part.

The theater folded, and the actors were sent bleary-eyed into the “real” world. We did not fare well, and soon began renting art spaces for weekends to produce our one-acts to small paying audiences, rehearsing in one another’s small apartments in preparation. It was an illusion, a fading projection on a threadbare scrim that inevitably washed to eggshell and dissipated entirely. I answered an ad for a metal band seeking a new frontman, and that’s when I met the members of Worth Every Scar. We were spurred on by the support of a wonderful man who would be our unofficial producer and release our first record. He, too, died. We recorded nine songs over two EPs, underwent one small tour, and I screamed a lot. It was wonderful. We did this for longer than we should’ve been allowed to, then disbanded when our guitarist moved to Arizona to get married and start a family.

I met the woman who would become my wife during that time, and we began co-habitation and building our social circle, for better or worse.* I began recording my own music at home but that is hardly worth exploring. I was hit by a car while riding a bicycle in 2009 and thanks to an insurance settlement bought her a ring that would’ve been otherwise unattainable. In 2011 we married and shortly after I re-connected with the drummer and bassist of Worth Every Scar and we formed a new band called Moosejaw. Things were great, and seemed to be heading into even greater eventualities.

Hey kids, this is what a rockstar looks like. I guess.

Then in 2013 I lost my mind. From this point, if you’ve read this blog, you know the rest of the story.

So now I’m headed back to Texas. Mer and I are ready to put down roots, and the soil here is just too damned expensive. The cost of living here is so high that, although we are afloat, it is a tentative buoyancy, at best, and its fragility creates a permeating anxiety that makes it nearly impossible to breathe much less enjoy America’s Finest City. The decision is a sensible one, and good things will come of it.

But… America’s Finest City? What about that? What about everything I haven’t done? Sure, I performed my poetry, sang in three bands, performed in countless stage productions, wrote and directed and produced several of said productions, wrote a book, made a feature length film, published a short story. Met people, dated people, lost people, got married, found a career, and found myself. San Diego has been exceptionally good to me, while being hard on me the whole while. It’s made me work hard, made me malleable and adaptable and unbreakable. It’s forced me to be a stronger, smarter, undefiable person; yet also gentler and kinder. It’s opened my mind, sharpened my opinions, informed my heart and soul. I love it here. I don’t want to go.

And now begins the intrinsically human juggling act of

“Of course I want this.”

“I don’t want this.”

“It’s for the best.”

“It’s going to be great.”

And, hey, you know what? It’s going to be great. To be back “home”, folded into the loving arms of my family, my community, the place where I was born. To return after all these years with the improvements of my pilgrimage. To add to the family my beautiful wife of whom I am eternally proud and grateful to have found. To bring my talents to the workforce of that region and spread the knowledge I have acquired. To dig my feet and soul into the soil and feel a connection, a groundedness, a sense of permanence. To be Home.

And yet, interspersed throughout the day is the refrain: “I do not want this”

It feels like a failure. Like we’re retreating. Like we’ve been conquered. Running, screaming and crying and bleeding back to the tiny encampment from which we launched this attack. And that’s what this was: Meredith and I came here to punch the world in the feelings and make sure it knew who the fuck we were. To be noticed. To be the best versions of ourselves. We left our comfortable nests, lined with the fat feedings of our parents and support structures, and set out to this hostile, alien land with no safety net to grab it by the balls and lead it around to our own choreography. But we failed.

I know this isn’t true, but this is what it feels like sometimes. Blame it on the physiology of my (clearly) malformed brain. I don’t want to feel this way but I do.

“I change by not changing at all / small town predicts my fate / perhaps that’s what no one wants to see.”

* – “for better or worse” pertains to the social circle, not the wife. That part worked out fine.