Living life on my own terms
Doing the day-to-day seemed to be simple
A common theme in my life is to take action after much self contemplation. The problem with that is that I forget to communicate my thoughts with those whom it affects the most. And that I forget to take into account whose lives I'll be jumping into after I take action. In hindsight things would've gone a lot smoother for me if I had let those whose lives I was important in know what my current thought processes were before I took action. It probably has something to do with the fact that I was an out of control little bugger, and no one really knew what I would do next, and yet everyone wanted to have a say in that. I was searching for my independence, so could you blame me for being a little devil-may-care?
I told my father that I was on a plane back from New Zealand, and I got in contact with my mother who picked me up from the airport. I spent a whole three days with her in which I learned that she was experiencing a major psychotic episode of paranoid delusion where she assumed that the 'Wiccan practitioners' were casting devilish curses and laughing at her through seemingly random symbolism that she was finding. I was quite distraught to see her in this state, and was thoroughly confused. I called my old time friend Sheldon and he told me to come over to his apartment that he was renting with the help of a friendly trolley driver. I did so by calling a taxi which cost me around $80(!). I learned there that Sheldon had been doing way too much cocaine and crack, two things which I don't personally do, but since he was my friend I decided I wasn't going to pass judgement. I left his place shortly after and found my way back to my father's house, for my brother Anthony's wedding.
The wedding was lovely, it was on Anna Maria right on the beach, with all of the friends whom I had known for a while growing up with Anthony. I stayed with my father for two weeks during this time. I was convinced by my father to buy a scooter, and got my old job back as a chef. I found an apartment through craigslist with decent rent that wasn't too far away from work, and lived there for a good three months. Then I found out the lease holder was a rapist (Sheldon got sexually assaulted one night he spent over) and I moved out as soon as I could find another place. Unfortunately that meant living in the heart of the ghetto in Bradenton, Florida. I lived there for only one month; there was a plethora of cockroaches, and the place smelled god-awful. I didn't judge while I was there but I did not like this place one bit. I'm not sure why my father let me live there. Was it through apathy? Or something entirely different?
Desperate, I went over to my fathers' once again to look for apartments and managed to find a very good place to live in the south part of the island, with a beach view. It was a communal living situation with four bedrooms sharing one bathroom and kitchen area. I lived there for the next seven months until finally there was a falling out at my job and the place shut down for an indefinite amount of time. I didn't have enough money to pay for rent to wait it out, so I decided I was going to travel once again, this time I bought a one-way ticket to Portland, Oregon, and had found a job being a door-to-door activist for an eco cause out there.
I wasn't sure where I was going to sleep and I made some friends on the bus who seemed to know more about the world than I, so I was more than willing to group up with them instead of trying to get a job where I would be miserable at. At first there were three and a dog but I quickly realized that the one with the dog was very very ignorant. I managed to hold myself back from physically attacking the guy from some of the nonsense that was coming out of his mouth, but the other man and I were on the same page when we were presented with an opportunity to ditch the guy. Turns out I was the only one who actually had the means to live, and this guy made me spend almost $200 on him while I naively agreed to it, in the form of food and hotel rooms when we weren't sleeping outside.
When I decided enough was enough was when I found out this guy was indebted to a drug dealer from the past and the dealer was forcing him to sell weak edibles playing them off as being good. I had moral objections to that so I sent him on his merry way with a backpack and even gave him some money. I just wanted to be done with him. I joined up with a new road-dog (travel buddy) who called himself Pippy and played the Ukelele. He showed me ways to get around in the world and made me feel safer than I ever had with these two other homebums. Already on my trip to Oregon I had been in Eugene twice and Portland once.
Pippy had a friend who knew a mushroom grower and we had a chemical experiment where we made some trippy lemonade out of some Amazonian Cubensis butts. Over a pound of them and about a gallon of lemon juice concentrate was used in some cheesecloth and we waited a whole three days while it extracted. The result was fabulous and we drove up to Portland with a mason jar of the tincture in our hands, and the knowledge that this was a gift from the heavens. We proceeded to dose the entirety of the Portland riverside hippy and dirty kid community with mushroom tincture that really knocked you on your ass. Just, so good. I met this group of five younger hippies who were trying to hop a train into southern Oregon.
I linked up with them and accidentally lost my road-dog, which was OK. I knew that he was safe and now I knew how to handle myself a little better as a homeless kid in the USA. So after a couple of nights of failed attempts at catching a train we finally caught one one night, only to discover that we had hopped on before the yard, where all the cops check the trains to make sure no one is doing what we were! We almost got caught, but thankfully we realized what was happening and ran for the road, and we were in the clear, though we hadn't gotten far. We decided the best course of action was going to be hitchhiking. We hitched all the way down the coast in a matter of a week, from Portland down to Ashland, Oregon. There one of the travelers had taken us to return a dog which was being held from this guy who wasn't responsible enough to take care of it, but now was seeming to have changed for the better.
To be continued...
Peace, Love, and Harmony
~Faaabs
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