Dropping the NYE ball

It's the last day of 2015. The last time ever that any human will be alive in that year. Crazy to think about isn't it? With another pass around the sun comes another NYE. Another night to celebrate another year alive with good friends and merry cheer.

And yet...... I just don't want to.
I don't want to go out and party.
I don't want to celebrate and go get drunk.
This year, I found myself feeling not only hesitant to the idea of going out but actually a little irritated by it.
Which is kinda weird. Isn't it?  Shouldn't I want to spend this last night of a great year celebrating life? Spending time with interesting people, being joyous and all the rest? Isn't that the normal thing to do?
Well.... maybe that's the problem for me.
I don't like being told what to do. What to feel.

"This is how normal people feel today" 

"It's time to celebrate. Fun happens on this day."





Ya....no. It just doesn't ring true for me. Maybe it's my stubborn nature but for me, they can suck it.

I would rather party when I want to party. I would rather give friends gifts when I want to and not just because it's a certain day on the calendar. I've never liked expectations and with that I've always found myself resisting holidays. It just seems so canned and forced. If anything, it always made me feel like there was something wrong with me for not feeling like I was supposed to.
Hmmm. It's Tuesday. Why don't I feel like celebrating by painting eggs today? That's what I'm supposed to do. Shouldn't I want to cut down a tree and put it in the living room for a week? Put stuff on the front lawn? Put gifts in hanging socks? It's the 25th after all.

Clearly only a weirdo wouldn't see the appeal.


Well mark me a full till weirdo because I just don't see it. Especially for this one. I look at a day like NYE and think.....nope.

I don't care if there's shiny balls dropping or not.
The thought of going and fighting crowds to pay too much to go to some club, fighting for taxis, on something that isn't really any better than any regular night but we do it anyways because it's expected of us seems Jersey shore dumb to me. It's like fancy black friday but with booze and no deals. NYE is the premature champagne spray ejaculation of all the holidays. It's the one holiday that we all celebrate that has the most hype and the most let down. It's the M. Night Shyamalan of the events. Looks like it's going to be dope, everyone talks about it for weeks while making plans and then........all they get left with is a head ache and less money.
It's like that movie, Jupiter Ascending.
Which you didn't see.

So I'm going to skip the long cues for taxi's this year, the packed pretentious cover charge bars and the forced feelings. I will pass on the worry of making sure I have someone to kiss at 12 o'clock and the Ryan Seacrest countdown. I'm going to trade those plastic kazoo noisemakers and $16 Redbull vodkas for hot chocolate by the fireplace and comfy sweatpants that feel like a day long hug. Lastly, I'm not going to wake up tomorrow with a champagne hangover, glitter on my face and puke in my suit pocket where there used to be money.








Instead I will spend the night planning for better year ahead and I will wake up ready to make it happen. With no hangover no less.. I will spend the night imagining and visualizing a great 2016 that will further me into this beautiful world and make me a more knowledgeable thoughtful person. I will take advantage of these last few hours of this truly amazing year in my life to make sure the next one is even better, which might be hard to do because the last year was a serious high for me. Most of all, I will make sure that whatever I do, it's what makes me happy.......and not just something I'm supposed to do because the calendar tells me so.



But I should say; that's just me. That's just how I see it this particular evening and maybe I'm "dropping the new years eve ball." Maybe I'm being a party pooper.






Maybe I'll wake up tomo with FOMO and regret of a different kind then my hangover fuelled ones of years past....but I'm willing to chance it. That's just how I'm feeling and it doesn't mean you shouldn't go do your thing tonight. Go get cray cray if that's what you want to do. Light that shit up! I've had some great NYE parties.......at least I think I did judging by the pictures.
So go have your fun however you want. Just make sure it's what you want to do.
Much love to all of you guys. Thanks for being part of a great year. I'll see ya in the next one my friends.

Running for home

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

That's what's on my mind. Sitting with her on a Mexican beach, margarita in hand and looking out at the perfect, crystal blue waters. There's light breeze in the air as we both take it all in. My mood is as calm as the water. It's perfect..... and then she asks me the question.

“What are you running from?” she says.

Que the waves.

Now, this might seem to come out of nowhere, but it's not really. I know what she's alluding to. It's a question I've been asked before and I've known is likely coming my way again. There's nothing malicious in her asking. She just wants to understand.

But I also know this might be the beginning of the end for her and I. Sometimes.....this question is a beginning of an ending.

I know all this without having to think about it and before I say anything, my mind begins to wander to that old familiar place.....

As long as I keep running I'll be ok  I think to myself. I repeat this over and over in my head to try and calm my exploding heart. My bare feet, racing me into the unknown, through the streets of Verdun Montreal. It's sometime in the middle of the night and I'm running through an area you don't run in. Not this late at night anyways.
And especially not at nine years old.

Running into the dark, I can remember the fear. The fear of the unknown. The fear that I'm on my own now. Alone. Lost in the streets, cold, no shoes, and knowing that everything has changed. Knowing that it won't just go back to the way it was. 

Knowing that my mom and I won't survive this. 

I remember this as the moment I realized that my mom won't be there for me in my life. The day that I lost hope in that. It was when I realized I can't depend on her anymore. That I can't count on her to be my mom anymore.
To try and say how we got there isn't easy. The story of my mothers unravelling is a long one that goes back past my father and her, to her upbringing and even her mom before that. My mother had a hard life and with it came demons, demons that seemed to rear their head when I was about five. Before that, she was by all accounts a great mother. Caring and attentive, happy and loving. 

But that changed and for whatever reason, my mom began to unwind. To fall apart........ as things tend to do. The drinking started. Heavy drinking that changed her. Made her mean, unstable and abusive. Then the loser boyfriends. Then the parties. Then the drugs.

Over the next ten years I watched her slowly fall apart. I watched her become a stranger. 

I watched my mom who was my best friend and who I connected with more than anyone turn into the biggest source of pain I would ever know. But I stayed by her side. She was still my mom and I loved her as much as I could love anyone. We had always had a special connection that meant the world to me. Before the unravelling, we would tell stories and laugh about how we didn't fit into the world. How we were different. We would dance in the living room, listening to records and stay up late talking about life. We would put the couch cushions out on her old rickety balcony and lay there late into the night, watching the moon. She used to tell me that I was “wise beyond my years” and that I had an “old soul” as I would stay with her on the weekends and listen to her talk of her problems. She would tell me everything, asking me what she should do and what I thought. I desperately tried to convince her to stop drinking. To stop doing drugs. I begged her to leave the drug dealing boyfriend and get herself together again. 

I was trying to save my mom. I thought I could fix it.

I was eight years old.

Later in my life, I would have a counsellor tell me that this was too much responsibility for a child to bare. That it wasn't a fair responsibility. At the time however, I thought it was my duty. I was proud to be able to be there for my mom and help her as she struggled. The problem was, things didn't get better. Each weekend I visited, I watched her slowly get worse, her paranoia and depression pulling her away from the real world. Pulling her away from me. Incapacitating her. Destroying her.

Then one day things got worse.

When I was nine, I came out of my room one night to find that the loser boyfriend had finally overdosed on heroin. I remember standing there, looking down at him dead on the floor. Someone who I knew. Who I spent a lot of time with. Who I had just talked to that very night; lying there. No longer alive. Just an empty body. Right in front of me. I just stood there, taking it in, all the while it being eerily silent in the crowded room of strangers.... before my ears realized my mothers horrible screaming. That screaming was the scariest part of that night.

It seemed, the party had finally ended.

Looking back, I can see now what I didn't see then; that that was the turning point for my mom. She was never the same from that moment on. Sure, she went through the motions as my mother but the feeling was gone. She had always had a spark in her eye, but after that....... it just kind of faded away. 

We all have a breaking point. That was hers. But it wasn't mine.

Mine came later.

Mine was that cold memory that began this story. That night I ran barefoot though the streets of Verdun. That thought of .... As long as I keep running I'll be ok. Propelled by a newly born realization of being on my own. It's a feeling that has never fully left me after that night. 

To say why I ran away that particular night I don't really know. Sure, I had every reason... but I had had every reason many times before and stayed anyways. It wasn't safe for me to be with my mom anymore and it hadn't been for a long while. She couldn't take care of herself anymore, let alone take care of me. She was no longer my mom.......but I had always stayed anyways.
Until that night that is. That nights screaming fest, that nights rage, that nights complete breakdown of what is ok as a parent, was the night I finally figured it out. That was the night I hit MY breaking point. Looking into her eyes to try and find that old spark but seeing nothing there anymore. Nothing but hate. 

And so I ran. I ran into the night and kept running until the sun rose again ....and until she had long since passed out.

And yet, much like my mom, I still went through the motions after all this.... but in my heart, I knew it was over. She was gone. 
Soon enough, we had moved across the country, following my dad's work and now I traded our weekends together for nights listening to her drunk ramblings on the phone. Listening to her feel sorry for herself. Nights wondering if tonight would be the night she would finally make due on the threats and kill herself.... but it never happened. Instead it went on for years. Five long, angry years, before one day, I hung up the phone and stopped picking it up.

I finally gave up.

There was a lot of angry years after that moment and many years more before I finally talked to someone about it.
That same counsellor who told me that it was too much responsibility for a young child to bare also later told me that I likely blamed myself for my mother failure. That I blamed myself for not being able to save her. Worse still, that I was convinced I wasn't a good person for giving up on her when she needed me most. That I hated myself for leaving her. For running away. 

I thought it was my fault.

Time however, is a powerful thing and twenty years later I've come a long way from those days full of hate. I've learned a lot on my adventures through this beautiful world. This journey of travel and self discovery has helped me make sense of me and my days with my mom but like they say, old habits die hard. Life has shown me that a habit can be a hard thing to break. Whether it be a habit of drinking. A habit of hating yourself.

Or a habit of running to feel safe.

Running for home.

I think about all of this sitting there on that tranquil, waveless beach.....when she asks me again
“What are you running from?”

Nothing dear. Absolutely nothing.

Original artwork by Elicia Edijanto

And so it goes

The autumn leaves leave their trees in golden fall and I watch it all race by through the fogged bus window.
My eyes dip as I watch. I'm tired. But that's not new. I've been tired for a while now.
When I look back at the last year of my life I can see why. Even for me, a guy who travels a lot, this has been ambitious to say the least.
If not to say almost foolish.
This bus however is taking me to my last stop. Not that there is such a thing. 

It just will be my last stop in Europe and Im actually a bit relieved, because like I said;
I'm tired.
I see it in the heavy bags that need to be lifted once again and in the bags looking back at me in the mirror. I feel it when I yet again I can't sleep at night, lying on another random bed as I dream up tomorrow. I see it in my passport that's starting to look like that guy you know who can't stop getting tattoo's.

I hear it in that little voice that's beginning to say "maybe it's time......"

Maybe...but not just yet my friend.

There's still some gas in the tank.

And I plan on riding this thing until it's dry.

For now, I would rather be tired from a hard work of seeing the world......than from a hard world of seeing work.

But enough philosophical pandering.

I wrote a whole piece detailing every adventure and journey that came with this trek. Just writing it was a journey in itself. I drove out into the middle of the woods in Northern Czech Republic, away from everything and anyone and just wrote for hours, as I listened to the leaves fall.
But once it was done and I looked back at it, I saw something interesting. So much of what stood out to me on this trip, was the meetings with the valued friends who I had connected with on a previous trip from another time. Friends who I had been missing, and when we finally sat down and talked; it was some heavy shit.
Deep, emotional conversations. The kind that make you feel alive and nowhere else but where you are. Right then and there in the moment. Talks where nothing is off limits and you bare your soul. I guess I've never been the kind of guy you talk to about the weather... and I'm pretty ok with that. When I meet with someone I value, I want to know what makes them tic and how they feel about their lives. What they think about the world. Not how work is going and if I've watched the latest season of "Suits".
I haven't by the way.

So when I would finally meet up with my different friends along the way, we had very raw, heart to heart talks. Talks which interestingly mirrored each other. It seems, we're all fighting the same battles and worrying about the same stuff.
Most of which boil down to just two things:

Love 

and 

Loss

Now I could go off on a tangent (like I usually do) about this particular topic but I'll leave that for another day and get to the point:
This trip wasn't about landmarks and history for me. Nor was it for parties, beaches, babes or beers. It was instead about those deep, soul to soul conversations where people opened up to me and I to them. Where we trusted each other with our fears, hopes and private lives. Putting it out there not to be judge but understood. For me, more than anything, it was those talks that were what this trip was about. Connecting again. 

Because that's everything to me.

It isn't where I'm going to but who I'm going with. 

Sure there are lots of other stories from this packed trip that would be worth telling,
but I'm going to keep those in my pocket for the next time I see you in person.... and likely we won't have time to get to them anyways because we will be too busy talking about something really important to you. 

Which is just the way I like it.

Because we sure as hell aren't going to talk about the weather.

So...

To the people I missed along the way (Princess Pola from Poland this means you),  I'll have to look for you in the maybe of tomorrow. 

And to the people who took the time to meet up and show me around the beautiful cities you live in: Thank you. Thank you for indulging me and letting me into your lives
Josefine, Alice and Fernanda in Paris
Victoria, Patrick, Tobias and Julia in Hamburg
Eva, Sabrina and Christian in Munich
Eva, Alex Natalie and Matt in London
Kirsten, Lauren, Curtis and Jessica in LA
Elena and Dorothy in Hungary
Martina in Prague

And to the people who opened their homes to me and gave me a place to lay my head, if only for a little while, thank you kindly. It won't soon be forgotten and one day I hope to do the same to you.
Kevin, Stephane, Anthony and Tamara in Paris
Marc, Gabi, Corina, Dave and Marina in Germany
Tom, Gemma and Natalie in England
Laura and Luiza in LA
Theo in Milano and Klaudia in Slovakia.
Thank you all for making me at home no matter where I go. 

I'll find you on the road my friends....
and I'll miss you until then.