In Search of Self: Leaving Behind the Familiar, Embracing the Unknown

After graduating high school, I thought I had a plan, through at least college, to feel confident with who I was becoming. I enrolled at Northwest Vista College—a community college in San Antonio, Texas—and intended to work through the curriculum basics. Before applying to schools, it didn’t occur to me that the first two years of higher learning were yet again another extensive review of the same basics we had been learning and relearning for years (only now we got to pay for it); sometimes in greater detail and sometimes an exploration of something along the lines of, “Well, some of those things we taught you in primary school were not entirely true.” When I finally became aware, I spent more time delving into the failings of a needlessly redundant school system than focusing on my classes. I did [and still do] recognize the importance of higher education, nevertheless, I couldn’t help but think the system was remarkably inefficient and necessary for reform. With that said—because it’s too easy for people to come to the most simplistic surface-level conclusions—we are born helpless, we must be taught, whether directly or through observation, how to be human; how to learn and process knowledge, react consciously, and critically appraise unfolding situations, demands instruction. But I’ll explore that later, maybe.

On the one hand, I was eager for my life to get started. On the other hand, I struggled to find inspiration and interest in my future if my present reality, which happened to be the only cornerstone I knew of to begin with, was square one. I also didn’t leave home when I started college. Leaving home for college is ascribed to greater interdependence, self-reliance, social skills, higher career satisfaction, GPA, and graduation rates. I didn’t do that. The greatest gist when attending colleges and universities is aligned with but apart from the actual knowledge we’re offered. We experience an unconscious social and mental shift merely living away from home while attending university because we’re allotted time to experiment with who we inherently are. Higher education provides a period of trial-and-error corresponding with the indirect instruction of how to think for- and to educate oneself to sift through information rationally and with poise. And I didn’t quite do that either. Most of my friends went away to school. I wasn’t getting much guidance at home; I also didn’t know how to ask for or appear to need more guidance transitioning into adulthood.

          Heather was Sadie’s best friend before I ended things with Sadie, and after our breakup Heather continued to spend time with us minus Sadie, and less time with Sadie. Heather and Clayton started dating. After graduation, Clayton went to school in Lubbock. Heather was a year younger; she was a senior in high school. And because Heather and I were good friends, and our nearness allowed for it, I started spending more time with her and the people she was often surrounded by; some of whom were her [Heather’s] sister’s friends. That’s when Hannah entered the picture. Hannah and I started dating. Hannah was younger, and I never settled into that. I was never comfortable dating someone in high school after I had graduated. Regardless, I continued to date Hannah. Our relationship happened, but it wasn’t something I actively pursued; Hannah and my relationship, like so many things in my life, developed around me and I passively allowed it to happen. In many ways, I leaned toward keeping possession of my childhood. It was like having passed through a point in time, but it was close enough to watch the past close behind you, close enough still to reach through and grasp tightly at something and refuse to let go.

          I wanted to make an effort at Northwest Vista. I had bouts of inspiration that led to motivated labor in some areas of my life, but I was also defending behaviors that anchored me to other less worthwhile practices, and I felt lost. My bouts of inspiration never lasted long; my bad habits, which were in some way associated with a budding co-dependence, were more dominant than my intermittent motivation. I wanted to be loved and have support, so with every exhibited choice I was presented with, I strayed toward the possibility of affection. When that demanded little effort, I more or less became absorbed in the efforts of others. I rarely made active decisions myself. When I ended things with Hannah (months later than I should have, and I wasn’t coy about being honest about my reasons for ending things), my general behavior didn’t change. In addition, I continued to struggle with school. I could not find my motivation. In large part, because I was eager to pursue my passion, and while I discovered a passion in psychology, not a single class I needed to become a sophomore was a prerequisite for my psychology degree. Every one of my classes was in reviewing or reevaluating concepts I had spent the previous twelve years learning (much of which was also in review). Furthermore, whatever minor independent study I pursued regarding psychology left me yearning for my real passion: writing.

          The following year, Clayton transferred from Texas Tech to Texas A&M and Heather was accepted to A&M. I can’t recall exactly, but I think Heather lived on campus; Clayton found an apartment off campus and needed a roommate. I saw this as an opportunity I couldn’t produce myself and rode their wave, transferring to Blinn Community College. Texas A&M University is in College Station, Texas, and Blinn [Community] College is in Bryan, Texas, a suburb of College Station. Besides our apartment, I remember almost nothing about living in College Station. I remember Eric and I trying to surprise Clayton by assembling a piece of furniture for our apartment before he got home. We were meant to pick Clayton and Heather up from campus but assembling this furniture proved to be more complicated than the time we allotted. The result of two teenage perfectionists with a hair’s-breadth of OCD putting furniture together contributed to a stranded Clayton and Heather on campus, for hours. I felt bad about that for a while. After the move, very little changed for me. The distractions of being back home didn’t follow me but I remained stuck. It was like I was fumbling around in the dark looking for an essential switch my brain needed to maneuver through adulthood, while everyone else had not only found their switch but was already settling in nicely.

          I lived in College Station for eight months. I cannot recall what motivated me to move back home. It’s possible I failed out of Blinn because I was barely attending my classes. I don’t remember my decision to leave College Station,  move out of our apartment, or move home. Now that I think about it, it’s possible too that the school year merely ended, and when Clayton went back to College Station the following year I didn’t go. Regardless, I moved back home and started working full-time at Little Caesars. I made pizza commercially and even slipped into the position of delivering the pizzas to the local schools for lunch. Delivering pizzas to the schools left me almost as uncomfortable as my relationship with Hannah. I was supposed to be on a path heading away from there and yet it seemed I was being pulled backward. The manager and assistant manager of Little Caesars, my bosses, were Tom and Mindy, and they were dating; they were also looking for a roommate. Living with my bosses, the people responsible for my hours and pay seemed like a good idea at the time, even though I had a muted crush on Mindy. I moved in with Tom and Mindy and very quickly regretted it.

          Throughout these couple of years, I thought a lot about how my inability to “come out of my shell” was influencing my relationships—and so, indirectly and consequently—I started valuing my alone time a lot more. And in part, because I was seriously struggling with the internal conflicts of dating Hannah, the uncertainties of my aimless life, and not knowing how to crawl out of my childhood skin and present myself to the world as a mature adult. So, I suppose, needless to say, nothing I was processing helped to ease my new and uncomfortable living arrangements. Mindy used to leave notes around the apartment criticizing things I did and didn’t do. I worked with the two of them all day and wasn’t particularly eager to spend time with them outside of work, especially when many of our conversations were centered around work. There’s only so much you can say when the topic is pizza. Meanwhile, Eric was going to the University of Texas at San Antonio. He was local and though I saw him occasionally I didn’t spend as much time with him as I should have liked. Eric and his brother were getting into Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art made popular by workers or slaves who developed martial arts techniques to look like dancing so they could practice without arousing suspicions. Eric asked me to come along many times, and I refused—I wish I hadn’t. To have had something like that to direct my focus would have been ideal.

          As the holidays approached, I was eager to try something new, again like always. Borders Books, Music, and Café were hiring seasonally to help with the heightened business, and I was offered the job. Despite it being seasonal work, I left Little Caesars. I lived with Tom and Mindy for another few weeks but eventually moved back home. I loved working at Borders. After the holidays the company asked me to stay full-time and put me in charge of the fiction/literature section. I discovered an atmosphere at Borders that seemed to resemble or reflect something inside of me that needed help to surface. There was a manager there named James who took me under his wing and became a mentor, which was something I didn’t know how much I needed. The importance of having a mentor at that age, in general, is profound, something so seemingly simple can make a lifelong difference for a person. James encouraged me to be a better employee and person, and his mentorship extended beyond the aisles. James helped me unlock my curiosity for reflection—both self-reflection and objective, critical thought. We talked about politics, behavior, music, and books. I also met Tony and Paige at Borders. I was never close with either of them (I wanted to be closer to Paige), but both of them, especially Tony, influenced me considerably.

Paige’s personality was stoic and raw, she had tactile conviction that was magnetic. She introduced me to the music of Robert Pollard, in a very condescending way. Nevertheless, I became a fan and continue to be to this day. Paige wasn’t a friendly person: she was remarkably judgmental, which, had I been comfortable with myself and my worldview I would have hated and never would have given her a second thought. Because I wasn’t comfortable with myself, Paige was the most stimulating woman I’d ever met. She had a quality I’d admired; she nurtured that quality a little too much, the presentation of which wasn’t great, nevertheless, I could recognize her subtle, admirable quality. Tony was opinionated, sharp-witted, and politically overinvolved. I remember he came to work one day with a new, script-tattoo that read, “Indifference is the root of all evil.” I’ve remembered that my entire life. Until then, I wasn’t very familiar with “Indifference.” I quietly idolized Tony. Today I know that indifference, depending on the context, can inspire immorality; allowing indifference to overstimulate your ideological lust develops and nurtures biases that are far more harmful than, I don’t know, perhaps being indifferent toward ideological lust, for example. While working at Borders I started piecing together qualities and behaviors that people maintain and how those qualities influence our perspectives. Working at Borders made me want to go back to school.

          I enrolled in the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) where I made a real effort to play the role of the college student, hoping that whatever motivation or inspiration I still lacked would be replaced with routine. I enjoyed being on campus. I didn’t live on campus, but being on campus gave me some purpose and I started budding. Meanwhile, at Borders, nearly the entire café crew had quit, and I spent more time covering shifts in the café. I enjoyed the work at first, it provided a contrast to my days, but then I was scheduled in the café for entire shifts. When working in the café, I worked alone, making coffee, and tea, and heating a small variety of foodstuff. There was a lot of downtime so I always had backups of everything pre-made, everything was clean (and when I say clean, I mean spotless), so I would sit in the back and write. One afternoon, I was helping a customer and heard someone rummaging around in the kitchen at the back of the café. As I was making the guest’s coffee we started chatting. She said, “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Bruce Willis?” I paused, thinking, although no one’s ever told me I look like Bruce Willis. And I don’t look anything like Bruce Willis, I chuckled and said “No,” shaking my head. “I’m just kidding, but you do look like Johnny Depp.” Secret Window had just come out and I had long, dirty blonde hair, glasses, and a hairless square jaw. There were some similarities, and I’d heard that before.

After the guest left, I walked into the kitchen to find my writings missing. A short time later I knocked on the store manager’s office and asked about it. James was there with our general manager, Susan. While I was making a drink for our café guest Susan was in the kitchen, for some reason, and she found my writing. Susan then decided to take it and read it, and then read it aloud to us in the office. I was livid. I asked Susan why she felt she had the right to take a piece of writing that didn’t belong to her and read it. She ignored my question and instead shared how personal some of what I was writing was. I was so mad at that moment I couldn’t speak. I had tears in my eyes and my voice shook. I stood, grabbed my writing, left her office, grabbed my things, and walked out. I never went back. I never spoke to James, Paige, Tony, or Susan again. Fortunately for me—I suppose—Starbucks was opening a new store nearby and I had some café experience.

          Opening Starbucks was a lot of fun. The crew was great, except for the general manager, and I met yet another person who had a considerable impact on me and my life. Rachel worked at a different, nearby Starbucks, and before our store opened, we trained and worked in various cafes throughout the greater San Antonio area. My first interaction with Rachel involved a good-sized knife. I was walking through the kitchen with a knife and thinking back on it now I’m not sure I remember why Starbucks even had knives. Nevertheless, Rachel was standing at the three-compartment sink and I walked in and put the knife in the sink. I can’t recall exactly what Rachel said, but it was something along the lines of, “Be careful you fucking idiot!” I later took Rachel aside and apologized for being a “fucking idiot;” we were essentially best friends from that moment on. I don’t think her boyfriend cared too much for that, but he was human trash (one person's opinion), so I didn’t care. I knew her boyfriend. Rachel was homeschooled but Josh, her boyfriend, and I went to high school together. Rach and I endeavored dozens, maybe even hundreds of bizarre and incredible experiences; she helped sear into me the reality that life needed desperate and rugged exploration. Rachel was the most important person to me, there were so many different ways our relationship could have unfolded. Life with Rachel was always an occasion. There’s so much I could say I could dedicate an entire post to even just the highlights of our friendship, but I’m not going to.

          I was becoming disillusioned by school again, and again. In total, I had spent five semesters trying to get my shit together. I realized how bad things had gotten one morning when I thought it would be fun to take Heather—a senior in high school still—to a lecture for one of my psychology courses. Heather and I walked into the building and within the threshold was my TA, he was handing out test packets. I had no idea there was a test that morning. I looked at Heather and told the TA, “I don’t have a…uh pencil. I need to get my pencil. I’ll be… uh, I’ll be right back.” I never went back. Shortly before that, I was sitting in my microeconomics class and the professor was orientating us about his syllabus. He tells the class that aside from the required textbook we would also be required to buy a copy of a second book, one written by that professor. It pissed me off that he was leveraging his role as an educator to sell copies of his book. As far as I was concerned, that was the end for me. Whatever answers I was looking for and whoever I was going to be, I wouldn’t discover that person in the classroom.

          At Starbucks, I didn’t hold a position of authority. I was a barista, I made drinks; I was an opener, so I had to be at work at either 4:00 AM or 4:30 AM, I can’t remember. But because I wasn’t a keyholder I was at the whim of the keyholder to clock in on time, and the AM keyholder wasn’t punctual. Two or three of us were consistently a few minutes late almost daily. The general manager, Stephanie, was among the worst managers I’ve worked for. We didn’t like each other. I had no qualms about expressing my frustrations and concerns to my supervisors about her or to her about her. Stephanie was new to the company; she had previously managed TJ MAX. One morning, I got to work early, and no one was there. While waiting, I fell asleep in my car, and when I woke up Stephanie’s car was parked right next to mine, and there was another employee's car in the lot. I asked Stephanie if she had tried to wake me up on her way in and she only shrugged. That morning, she requested that Starbucks corporate fire me. And after that shift, I was burnt out.

The morning of my next shift my alarm went off around three and I hit the snooze. My alarm continued to go off at first every fifteen minutes but then every five, and when I pressed to snooze and fell back asleep at the same time that I was supposed to be clocking in that morning I knew I was done. I eventually went to work that morning, although I was at least two hours late. Stephanie had called that morning and told the shift supervisor to fire me, it was a coincidence that I was late. And in point of fact, that was only the second shift I had actually been late for. The shift supervisor that morning told me to leave without explaining why I was fired. I called Stephanie, but she didn’t answer. I called Starbucks Corporation and talked with someone for a while, they asked me to write and send an email citing my concerns, and three weeks later Stephanie was fired. I never technically worked for Starbucks again. Starbucks Corporate explained that Stephanie cited more than a dozen tardies as her reason to fire me. I was 19 years old, and I had recently dropped out of college, walked out of my favorite job, was fired from a job for bad reasons, had my firing manager fired for firing me for dishonest reasons (among other reasons), and I had no idea what was next for me.

          It was becoming clearer to me that whatever I was missing, I wasn’t finding it here where I was the most comfortable and familiar. I needed to get away. So, I decided to leave. My last day in Texas was spent with Eric and Rick. Eric met a girl he was interested in and wanted us to meet her later that evening. Rachel worked that morning and early afternoon, we agreed to meet up later. In the meantime, the three of us were going through my things, playing guitar and banjo, and reminiscing. Rick made a batch of ‘magic brownies,’ we decided to get into them later that afternoon and then go to the movies. Eric didn’t eat a brownie. The brownies were so potent I couldn’t function. I don’t remember anything about the film. Eric didn’t want his girlfriend to meet us in that condition, so I lost the opportunity to meet her. That has been a great regret of my life because Eric married her and they have at least one child, a daughter. After the movie, I went home to get some rest and maybe sleep off the effects of the brownies. I woke up very early that morning and met Rachel at Denny’s. We talked and said our goodbyes and I got in my car and drove away. I wouldn’t know this for years, but when my parents went over to the guest house where I lived, they walked into the space completely flooded, there was at least a couple of inches of water covering the entire space and there was a cat that they didn’t even know I had—it had belonged to Rachel, but she had to get rid of it and so offered to take it—standing inches deep in the flood lapping the water up with its tongue. 

          As I drove away from Texas, I knew I was escaping the stagnation that had held me back. The journey ahead would be fraught with unknowns, but I had finally found the courage to forge my path. The lessons of those formative years—Hannah introducing me to shame, Rachel's unwavering spirit, James's mentorship, my utter lack of direction, and my resilience—would stay with me and guide me toward a life of intention and purpose. This was the conclusion of the only life I’d ever known and the beginning of a life that seemed to have little or no purpose.