The journey of a thousand miles (or some such crap).

The hardest part about doing anything right is starting it correctly. Given the clouds of smoke in the room and the Blue Oyster Cult blaring, I'd say we're off to a bad start, but here we go anyway! Where to begin...

Well, me and my family lived in Indian Head for a little while. A little shit town straight down the highway from the place where everything went down. Maryland is a really unique place in that even one-horse-towns somehow manage to have two horses. Everyone at least knows someone who knows everyone else. It just so happened that I knew two people extremely well; Santiago and River. A short latino fellow and a short brunette girl make for a strange two-thirds of a trio that was completed by a tall, slouching, dork with weird hair and a strange personality (me, of course), but due to the randomness of it all we had a great group dynamic. My two best friends, and each in turn, their two best friends. At least, thats how it seemed until alcohol, lust, and hazy details ruined a pretty good thing. Sure, there'd be the usual drama that went with any group of weirdos, but by and large it was a pretty solid gang. Not anymore and never again. Pulled in two different directions by completely differing stories of what had happened that drunken night, I began starting to break. Just a little mind you, it wasn't until nearly a year later that I ended up in the hospital with panic attacks and depression, but this, I think even moreso than the death of my grandmother, the loss of our house, and the looming fact that my family and I would have to go different ways was what started down that path. I had to pick a side in a fight where, for perhaps the first time in my life, I wanted to be impartial.

I chose the wrong side.

He had helped me countless times. He'd helped my best friend countless times. She was always known for exaggeration and overreaction. They were both drunk and one thing led to another, right? It seemed academic so, still somehow managing to maintain a friendship with River, I sided with Santiago and took up his cause. I'd never heard someone so desperate to make right a mistake. How could I not?

After several stressful and dramatic weeks, my father, brother, and I decided that we were unable to keep living together due to finances just not being what they had to. In hindsight, we were all at each other's throats and this was the single, defining event in my life which really caused me to grow up. So anyways, I was beginning to panic as it seemed like the only choice for me was to end up in River's family's basement. A kind offer, to be sure but one that I knew was destined for disaster in so many ways that I can't even get into them here. Just as everything seemed hopeless, Santiago, who'd been hanging out with me more and more, offered to allow me to come and stay with his family. I'd never really had too many dealings with his parents but I'd heard stories that made me cringe just a tad. "Oh well," I thought, "I know how to play the game. Whats the worst that could happen? Most parents usually end up liking me." So I took his offer, much to River's chagrin and derision and figured it could be a liberating experience. But what about the cost? At my job, I'm not exactly pulling in six figures a year, so I'd told Rick (his given name wasn't Santiago) that I couldn't afford much in the way of rent, but I'd absolutely do everything I could including cleaning, cooking, and any other services they'd ask in addition to the rent money. He promised me a fair price and we sealed the deal, It ended up being in the area of $300.00 dollars a month. Not much at all to rent a room, but I guess I felt a little taken advantage of, seeing as how I'd thought this would largely be a friend's family doing me a solid for a few months. Three hundred bucks really was expensive given my meager paychecks, but whatever. A nice big room, a bed, cable TV and internet, who could ask for more?

I packed up my things, moved them into Santiago's house, and prepared for my new life. FOr all I knew, it'd be cool to have a roommate. To eat or starve based solely on myself. It was like growing up! It was a large house and mostly empty. Santiago, his mom, and his dad. They had a younger son but he was away at juvenile hall. I'd never known him too much, but he talked with an ignorant mushmouth and tried to be the epitome of everything wrong with American society. Oh well. He wouldn't be around. My first night at my new home gave me the chance to sleep in an honest-to-god BED! No more air mattresses. Everything seemed calm and right. Funny though, that I'd moved in and hasn't spoken a word to his parents. They knew, so why didn't they make a point of talking to me? It seemed weird. It was....

Returning to that dark place...

Its amazing what writer's block, a healthy dose of familial death, and even the surprise "final showdown" that I can use as the end of this tale will do to delay it's progress. When I first wrote the previous entry, I'd intended my musings and journal to be a weekly affair or so, the first attempts I'd ever had in my life of getting my ideas, memories, and feelings spread out on the floor so I could take inventory of it all.

Yeah, stuff doesn't always work out. It's interesting though, that as I've grown in the (god damn... really?) almost-year since I wrote the intro, my thoughts and feelings on my Fort Washington experience have changed. Some elements brought into focus, others lost or distorted through what seems like a different pair of eyes. This past year I've gone on a sort of, er, mental pilgrimage. Kind of like a personal renaissance where I opened up my former culture-bubble, landlocked, ignorant mind to a whole new world of ideas, arts, and viewpoints that are as foreign and interesting to me as anything I've ever dreamed of. What I mean to say more specifically is that I hope that this new perspective can improve the project as a whole.

Now now, I know, I know. I'm trying to go all artsy and professional with this when everyone really knows that all it is is a chance to openly trash people in a somewhat public forum. Meh.. pretty much...

But still, this blog is more than that to me. It's like throwing up some poisonous element you've digested or finally being able to exhale an old, stale breath that you've taken and held for a bit too long. It's my own way of moving on and accepting (if not understanding) just how weird, disloyal, and uniquely bizarre people can be. I'm going to work hard on it and move fast and, when I finish this project I can finally leave Fort Washington.

My name is James Musgrove, and for a little while, I lived inside my own head...