First

1
I was twenty-six when I realized that I was going nowhere. I am twenty-six, and I realize that I am going nowhere.
Growing up in a city like this, Tampa, is kind of like growing up a middle child for everyone here. Mediocrity is the standard, and to live outside of it can be bad business. The bums are spit upon and the tycoons are hissed at. Being perfectly average in every way will get you… nowhere.
I was never average in any way. I could start at the top and end up at up at the bottom and still never hit average in between. Lucky for me, average is not what I ever wanted to be.
2
How I got to this point is, you know how your mother told you to never do drugs? Well, listen to her. No matter the drug, be it huffing magic markers or smoking crack out of used medical glass in a condemned house in the scariest of ghettos, you should not do it. From the puff of the first joint, your life is forever changed. You have, at that point, become someone who is using drugs. Even if you never touch them again, if someone asks if you have ever done drugs, you cannot honestly tell them no, and the way they perceive you is changed.
My first was an innocent joint in an appropriately picturesque alleyway. Right then and there, my life would take a completely different direction. At the tender age of fourteen, I at once understood Pink Floyd, tie-dyed shirts, neon posters, primal hunger, and the basic principles of philosophy. Funny enough, I don’t recall actually getting stoned, but I doubt that would have mattered much. I could have been smoking a cat turd and the same revelations would have become apparent. The intention and acceptance is enough to fuck you up, right then and there.
The decision had been made a couple of weeks prior. See, the three years before, I had done pretty much nothing except grow my hair, learn guitar, smoke cigarettes, and listen to Nirvana. That was it. That was what I did and all I cared about. Matt and me would jam out some tunes in his small bedroom with no a/c, and those tunes were magical. They were three chord symphonies that I was sure would one day make me an icon for the damned, the teenagers of America.
That decision I made, you know, that decision to throw everything ever away (at least the first step of which), began because of a fucking rock star martyr. Worth it at the time, yeah, but in retrospect, how fucking dumb.