Diagnostics.

The Long 15's never liked me. Something about this city, this state and the one I found myself in, feels like it's been forcing me out. The weather doesn't help either- popular music promised me that it never rains in Southern California, but surely someone lied to Albert Hammond Jr., too.

Where we find ourselves at an impasse is that there isn't anywhere to go- things aren't going poorly, per-se, in fact this might actually be a banner year in terms of personal accomplishments... but why do I  always feel like it isn't enough? I've sometimes felt that I was an inherently sad person, just one turn from spiraling out at any time- the kind that can get blue because it's too sunny outside, or that you care too much about the people you're with. That can't be normal, can it? In having a conversation with a dear friend who will know who he is as soon as I mention this, he informed me that when he was younger he was the only person he knew having thoughts of sadness and depression at an early age. I'm not saying I was/ am depressed, but I know that before I learned enough about the language to parse out what I was feeling (as I'm doing right now) I would just keep it to myself, because I was the problem and not them. It's funny, I always felt like I wasn't alone in this matter, but knowing that I wasn't hasn't really helped- in fact it just gives me a new concern that my mood/ severity is more unstable or volatile than everyone else's. No one's cross to bear will ever be as hard as your own.

Back to the Long 15- the last few months haven't been the easiest, ironically starting on my birthday weekend, but the fact of the matter is that life hits and it don't stop hitting, and some days it gets harder to convince yourself you've got the gut and grit for that last punch, that one that you know is coming, even when it's just pouring blows. With my car breakdown it spiraled into a series of troubles, whether it be having to arrange a lift to work to not being able to afford a tow to a series of ever-expanding bad days that get drowned out in the sound of bourbon in a glass, and that's not even to mention the crux of the matter, the eponymous “girls, dawg” whose affection and approval and companionship I seemingly need more than anything in the world. The Long 15 doesn't care about any of that and it let me know that, as the entire world passed me by while I sat in the backseat of my own car and sweltered about what the fuck I was going to do now. I had time to think, seemingly the first time in ages, and it came to me.

I would persevere. I didn't know how I would, or even where the first steps towards this would be, but I knew that just like the asphalt and the concrete that I was cursing left and right, I would continue into the horizon. The Long 15 isn't out to get you, or us, or anyone- it simply conveys you and your vessel from the point you're at to where you're meaning to be. While furious at my breakdown, I realized this isn't life doing this to me- I could have had my radiator checked sooner, gotten tune-ups and conversely I started to think of all the things I could not have done- could not have had the money to call a tow company, could not have had someone to give me a ride to work, could not have had the fortitude to continue on.

I'm not here to tell you that life is a highway, and I assure you I don't want to ride it all night long- that song is garbage and fuck that. What I'm here to tell myself is that life mirrors the Long 15, but worrying where this route is going will close you off to other avenues- as of late I've been making many changes internally, many I've known I needed to make, and these alternates are the ones you don't think about when you're coasting- call it personal velocitation. It closes you off, keeps you on the idea that you take the same road every day for a reason, until the day you break down on it and you never want to see those fucking overhead signs ever again.

It isn't California or the city of San Diego or the Long 15 that was trying to keep me out- it was me, looking at my map and not knowing where to even jump on. But now I've got my directions.