Am I free or just high on zyrtec?

   I woke up this morning free of my Texas baggage. Yes, indeed. Granted I could be hallucinating from the sinus infection. I have a killer headache. But for real, all the things that used to bother me about where I came from, the little eccentricities of Lubbock that opposed my general beliefs are no more. Let me walk you through it.

   I've been a tad melancholy lately. I know, we are all shocked. Me? Sad? Noooo. But I've felt lately that its the end of an era. I've been in contact with some of my oldest friends lately, ones that whose friendship I have tried to foster since we graduated. These are friends that know where I came from, who knew when i was an entirely different person. And friends that I really don't have that much to talk to about anymore. It made me sad that think that these mainstays, these wonderful were slipping from me. For so long they have been my dock lines, the ropes that tied me to the Texas port of my soul. Just by talking to them I was able to touch back with all the things I left. If I felt sorrowful that they were all getting married young, tying themselves to their high school sweethearts, I could sigh a superior sigh. I was so secure in the knowledge that they were making a mistake. I am still sure of that with a few. Nonetheless, i have always been in tune to where they at in their lives, in sync with what they were feeling. Now they just make me feel old and wizened.

   Sometimes I can't help looking at some of them, with their bright and shiny degrees, waiting to take the world by storm, and thinking that they are out of their minds. They still think everything will be so easy. It's utterly bizarre to me to think that the world is an ally when I try to fight it everyday. I'm so cynical and world weary now. And should that be the way you are when you are 22? Shouldn't you have a fair grasp of how the world works? But if there is one thing I know, living in Texas, especially West Texas, doesn't prepare you for the real world. It is not in any form or fashion the real world and I always feel just sick to my stomach for the people that want to spend their lives there.

   But is that it? Should my only feelings for most of my old compadres be pity? Should it be that most of the time when I think about Texas, it is now with a feeling removal and distance. I'm really not a Texan anymore. It makes me sad to say it. But even the ones I feel closest to seem so shallow, so completely out of touch with everything I value. What does it say about me that I'm just so over it? I've moved on so completely that now I feel adrift, cast out into a sea of yankees. Every time I go back now, I look at it like I would any place I traveled to. Temporary. Its just not home, not a place i want to associate with anymore.

   Thats not to say I don't value my old friends. It's just for the most part, they aren't a part of me anymore. Sometime I think every time I get close to someone, some part of me becomes devoted to them. I'm losing my Texas parts. I just don't understand them anymore. Texas has such a different mindset than Vegas, than anywhere. You have to talk to them, react in entirely different ways. Its like learning a different language and realizing that you have to address people of authority in a different way than you would a peer. I've lost the part of me that can communicate with them, the part that even wants to. Its all such bullshit.

   So i guess today is the end of an era. I'm not a Texan anymore.