I spent four months in Austin, Texas. I spent a lot of my quiet time trying to figure out exactly how this had all happened. I remembered packing up all of my possessions, selling my drum set, and clambering into a tiny vehicle with a couple of my best friends. I was worried at the time that I was making a mistake, but I was also pretty excited. I was finally leaving Kentucky, possibly for good. I knew my living situation wasn't going to be permanent, but I imagined getting a job and saving money, making some friends and moving in with someone else sometime down the road.
Margaret wasn't the first online friend I'd met in person, but she was pretty close. Only a month or two beforehand, I'd met two friends I played League of Legends with. We hung out for a few days and it was actually a really cool experience. Maybe that's why I wasn't apprehensive about the situation. When I met her in person, there wasn't a great deal about her that surprised me. She seemed pretty much just like she portrayed herself to be online, aside from being a little grumpy from all the driving she'd done. They were in Illinois for a Harry Potter convention and that's where my friends Scott and Ben drove me to meet up with her and her friend Maya.
It was surreal climbing into their vehicle with all of the stuff I'd brought from home. How well did I know her? I was meeting her friend Maya for the first time and Margaret for the first time in person. It didn't feel weird, but part of me was filled with anxiety. What did she think of me? Was she repulsed by me now that she'd seen me in person? A bit of my self-loathing crept in, especially since she was being so quiet. I knew that they'd already been on the road for some time so it was natural for her to be under some stress due to fatigue.
Fortunately, Maya was super upbeat and put my mind at ease. We chatted about a few things. Apparently she was really into webcomics and had been to a few conventions where she'd met some artists. I thought that was really cool because I'd never gotten to do anything like that and would love to if I had the chance. She was really easy to talk to and gave me hope that I'd be able to make friends in Austin. Still, the drive was long and mostly uneventful, with only music from some Harry Potter musical and occasional conversation to break the silence.
One thing that I learned from the trip down there is that Arkansas is a really depressing state. Everything is oppressively flat and gray, and it seems like all the main roads in the state are incredibly bumpy. I could be entirely wrong but every time I've gone through it my mood has taken a nose dive. That whole state just gives off an aura of unease that I can't completely describe. The drive through Arkansas seemed to take longer than just about any other part of the trip, though we were actually in Texas for at least 6 hours before we made it to Austin itself.
Honestly, it would have been a lot scarier for me to just pick up and leave home like that if I felt like I had anything important to leave behind. A lot of my friends had moved away. Scott was leaving to go to school in Idaho, Josh had moved to Florida, and Ben... he was still relatively close, but far enough for a broke guy whose car no longer ran. As for my family... I didn't really get along with them. Especially in recent years, our relationship has been strained. It's more my fault than theirs. Being holed up and hopeless in your mother's home isn't exactly conducive to strengthening family relationships, at least not for me. I was ashamed of myself, and I didn't want them to know what I was going through.
I thought that running away was the solution. I thought that I'd feel much better about myself in a new place where I was surrounded by different kinds of people that didn't know me. I felt like I could make new first impressions and reinvent myself, becoming the kind of person I'd always wanted to be. As it turns out, things were never that simple. One's mood and outlook are on some level a product of their environment, but attitude is much more important. I'm the only person that can change me; I'm glad I'm finally learning that.
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