Tomorrow is going to be radically different than today.
Not because I will be any different, mind you, but because this time tomorrow I will have finished something I swore I’d finish, a promise I made long before I got into the habit of actually doing everything I said I would.
Tomorrow I’m going to take the LSAT, and, while I won’t be in law school the day after, tomorrow will have been the start of a new road, and since tomorrow is the start of a new road, I guess today is the end of the old one. So I’m marking that by saying goodbye to a world that I will leave forever, not tomorrow, but when the fruits of tomorrow come to pass. I’m living in that world today, not as it is now, a part of my past and influences, but as it was when I entered it, against my will all those years ago, as a part of me, as my definition, as me.
The jacket I’m wearing is the same one I wore then. I could never throw it out, and I don’t think I ever will. The leather is rough in some places and surprisingly soft in others; were I more of a poet or less modest, I’d compare the jacket to me in some witty manner. The pockets all have holes in them; that never really mattered too much, I never had much to put in my pockets anyway. The lining is worn away in the back, and I’ve long since quit bothering to patch it with duct tape. I can pull on the flannel shirt I have tied around my waist if it gets too cold. That shirt is the same one I’ve always had, too. A bit more faded, perhaps, and the washing it got when I put it away in 2001 makes it cleaner than it’s ever been, but it, like me, is still the same even after you wash it. T-shirt and jeans and socks, not new but new to me, and the same old combat boots that cost a little up-front but pay you back with years of use, and I look just like I always have. Silver rings on all ten fingers. Five silver hoops in the left (a cross hangs from the lowest) ear and three in the right. Of course I haven’t shaved, and the time for a haircut was weeks ago, though you really can’t tell underneath the bandanna. I look just like I used to, and I look just like I still do in my dreams- I never really cleaned up there either.
I am sitting on a sidewalk in front of a school building, a few blocks up the same street from where I used to live. I am smoking a cigarette, cupped in my right hand, pinched between my thumb and forefinger with my pinky flared out, just the way I used to. I am sitting here, smoking my cigarette, on almost the exact spot where once I lay prone, one man’s knee in my back and another man’s knife at my throat, three blocks from where I used to live. I am four blocks away from another spot, where I was jumped by four people who came for my radio and stayed for the fun of kicking my ass. I am one block away from the first place I hit a man and he stayed down. I am less than ten blocks from four more stories just like those, sitting here in the middle of the world that was mine for seven years.
Dressed like this, sitting here, everything has such clarity. I don’t need to worry about my intense loathing for physical contact- who would touch me? I don’t need to worry about trying to be something I’m not- what I am is writ large, all across me, in what I wear. I don’t need to worry about letting anyone in and having them betray me- no one will come near me, and that saves a world of time and trouble. There is no hidden truth to me, nothing you might find out later, nothing you cannot tell about me just by looking. Here are my secrets. Here is everything I’ve hidden, here’s the dirty little monster in my closet, come out to play in the daylight. Here’s the failure. Here’s the wasted potential. Here’s the thug, the malcontent, the low-class loser with no prospects. Here he is.
The one question that comes to mind is: why?
Why? Because this is the moment that this kid, this ragged, unshaven, tired, hungry kid, worked for. The years of sleeping in basements were for this. The years of three jobs, they were for this. The sneaking into lunchrooms- that was for this. Hand-me-down clothes? Thrift shops? Leftovers? For this. And if anyone in this world deserves to turn his face to the sun and smile into tomorrow, it’s that kid. This kid. And nobody’s going to take that away from him. From me.
Smile, kid. It’s been a long time coming. And you’ve earned it.