A Story About Jil

Something a little different: I was thinking about this last night, and decided it would be worthwhile sharing; kind of a "get to know your blogger" post.

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When I graduated from college, there was only one thing I was certain of: That I was going to be rich, successful, and have everything life could offer. I had no idea how... but I was really certain. I was 24 years old, and knew it all.

The first thing I did upon graduating from college was to head south, to a large city in the southern United States. I arrived without much money, but I bought a beat up car, found a shared apartment in the suburbs, made some friends, and got a job as an assistant manager at a restaurant.

Soon, I came up with what I thought was a great idea. With all great ideas, it takes some work before it yields results. With a little bit of savings, I left my job as the assistant manager, and went to work on my idea. When my savings ran out, I relied on the charity and credit of my friends. Soon the engine on my car went, and my friends started to drift away, tired of helping me. I still clung to my idea.

Eventually, I had to admit that my idea was not a good idea after all. In fact, it was quite the opposite. It turned out to be a monstrous mistake. Burned out, bummed out, I retreated to my room in my apartment and sat there for about a week, fantasizing that all was well, and another shot at success was right around the corner.

The guy that I was living with eventually came and said, "I let you go rent free when I thought that this idea of yours might work out. That's not the case anymore, so it's time we say goodbye." Another friend, the last friend I had, the one person who would still do me a favor, came and picked me up, and with 2 cardboard boxes filled with my belongings, he gave me a ride to the center of the city and dropped me off in front of the YMCA, and drove off never to be heard from again. I had $8.

The cheapest room at the YMCA was $15 per night, but the people at the front counter offered it to me for $8, knowing that was what I had. I turned them down, thinking that my $8 would be better spent on food. Out the door I went.

People say that boot camp or jail is a great learning experience... where you really discover the strength of your soul, or the content of your character. I've done both, and I've got a better one: Try being alone, hungry, broke, without a single clue of where to go, what is going to happen, or even what the next hour of your life (forget about the next day, week, or year) is going to be like. You learn a lot about yourself in a moment like that.

Anyway, it was about 8 hours later... about 3:00 in the morning... that I found myself — more tired than I ever had been before in my life, after having dragged 40 pounds of cardboard boxes about 4 miles, not having eaten in 3 days — in front of a 30-bed church-run homeless shelter.

I don't know why, but when I was a kid, and to this day, whenever I hurt myself by doing something stupid, I kind of embraced the pain I was experiencing as a sort of self-inflicted punishment... a reminder of my stupidity. After falling off my bicycle, I would hold my sore wrist at the most painful point, grimacing, and reminded myself that this was what happened to stupid people who didn't secure the ramp properly before jumping off of it. I maximized my suffering in order to ensure that I learned from the mistake that had caused it.

That is what I did at this point in my life. I embraced the situation I found myself in as punishment for my stupidity in my ill-planned idea, my mistaken belief in my infallibility, and errors in judgment that brought me to this point. I could have improved my situation at any point, taken my brains and skills and college degree and somehow struggled my way back up to a job, home, car, and bank account, but instead I stayed at that homeless shelter for a year, pumping gas at a nearby gas station for minimum wage as penance.

In the end, it ruined me financially: My student loans, credit cards, car payments, taxes, and personal obligations all were wrecked, my drivers license was expired, and I was basically about as S.O.L. as a person in America could get, and to this day I'm still recovering from it. But, at the same time, I gained a lot of important experiences and knowledge that I really needed. I learned the value of things, what is important and what isn't; I learned how to stand up for myself, and how to empathize with others. I got to know criminals and pastors and gangsters and fags and some of the biggest assholes and cheats and losers the world has to offer in that shelter, and how to deal with them. I got to see how luck and fate play a big part in life, and how none of us are immune from it. I learned to forgive myself for the mistakes I had made, and how to get past them. I could say that I grew up, but that would be a lie: There were still mistakes to come and lessons to be learned. However, I did learn that I wasn't bullet-proof; that I was human, vulnerable to mistakes, and beset with limitations.

Definitely for me, the first step to starting to live in reality was to experience the harshest reality of them all.