3. The Transfiguration in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

The entire time I’ve been going through this dark spiral I’ve been afraid. Now this isn’t really that unusual because I’ve come to discover that nearly everything I do is in response to some fear or another. I cannot pretend that I am one of those people without fear. I have very clear fears, some of which hold iron grips over aspects of my life.

I have spent these last several years without the mindset that my life is my own. I went back and read some of my old entries dating back to 2009, and I knew going into this education situation that my life would essentially be put on hold. I’ve noticed that other people tend to look at college as a transition period, from one type of life to the next, but that’s not how I looked at it. I viewed college as a pause from my life. The idea being that I would have more options awaiting me on the other side.

I have never been displeased with most of the choices I’d made, but when I made the decision to go back to school, in November 2008, it was because I had some very precise concerns about my life. I had the amazing opportunity to stay in my favorite apartment in Hollywood, at a discount, and pursue the stardom that I was well on my way to achieving. However, from the moment I’d moved to LA in 2006, i wanted to go back to college.

I tried balancing both lives while I was in Chicago, performing and attending Columbia simultaneously, but it was simply impossible. I had come to the conclusion that I had to suspend whatever I was doing to rewrite my history. The only thing I wanted was to travel abroad teaching. That was the only plan I had in mind.

This college period has changed me, that is for certain. Through it I got to exorcise a lot of the demons left over from my youth, some with which I am still dealing, and force myself to reestablish abandoned pathways. I had no inclination toward French culture at all. I was morbidly terrified of Islam. I was still, seven years later, mourning the death of my first love and intent on living my life as a widower.

Everything about me has changed while I have paused my life and my ambitions. The friends I made during this period are wonderful, but nearly all of them are expendable. I know that is not very kind, but it is a conscious choice. I had forgotten that and one of my old entries reminded me.

“Every day my values are going to be challenged and I’m going to create new ways of thinking about things I already know. My old friends can’t follow me down this path because for many of them it is like going backward. For the friends I make during the journey, when it is over they will no longer be my friends either for when I come back, it will be like I have leapt forward.” - The Manifesto of My Mind from Aug. 3, 2008.

Even if Edgar and I had managed to survive, we would not be able to withstand this. The entire background of my life will be ripped away in a matter of weeks and the only things that are truly left intact are the things which existed in first place (my little brothers and family) or things that have become burned into my flesh (those friends and life from Paris).

The merging of those two halves of ideals will guide me into something completely new, something that is substantially altered from the way it used to be. Even if I were to go back to Sacramento and attempt to resume life the way I lived it, it would not be possible.

I do have some place to go when school is over. It was my biggest fear. I shall be returning to a posh suburb of Sacramento in March. I will be a nanny. It will give me a roof over my head, access to a car and time to figure out what my life will morph into post-undergrad.

But the metamorphosis won’t be simply based on chance, I now have the time and freedom to sculpt my future as I see fit, which is all I’ve ever really wanted.