06/19/2010
Wednesday, June 9th of 2010 was the day that everything changed. The previous week was my last living in my parent’s second home of Citrus Heights. I had lived in that house for more than 12 years. That whole week and a half I spent completing all the final tasks I needed done before my move to So Cal. I lengthened the stay one day after another, saying that I had to finish the list of important to-do's. Which was true, but in reality, it wasn’t the real reason I stayed for another two days. I stayed, because I was finally feeling the severity of what moving really meant. I was saying goodbye to everything I had ever known, loved, hated, and even been apathetic to.
Though my
lifetime dream was to move to LA and pursue a career in film, it wasn’t
tangible and concrete like my life in Nor Cal. Though everything had fallen
into place in a miraculous, unconceivable fashion to ensure my path to LA, the
vision of a new life was nothing compared to the 21 year, real memory in Sac. I
am a Thinker; a hesitant, level-headed, patient yet unassertive man of ideas. I
have a habit to cut myself short of progress; …a fail-safe to be nothing more
than mediocre. Mediocre, exactly what I swore [as a child standing before my
parents] not to be. I am like a turtle, a hermit, a groundhog. I prefer the
safety and stability of my shell or cave, but when it comes time to come out in
the light and find a new abode, I remain back. While others advance onto the
dance floor of life, I’ve stayed at the sidelines, bench lined by my own fear
and anticipation. Risk, though a favorite hallmark board-game of mine, is not
my game. Though staying in one place can
come with its own share of difficulties, challenges, and hardships, you can’t
really ever get anywhere else from there. …Unless you move, but that requires
risk, and, well, I’ve always preferred the safe zone. I’ve always looked off to
the horizon and fantasized about the grand, magnificent possibilities, but I am
not the jock, wiz, or talent that has the confidence and skill to advance. And
yet, fear of what waited for me beyond the horizon was not what held me back.
No, it was the thoughts of all the possibilities that I had missed behind me.
This
hesitation wasn’t reminiscing… I wasn’t regretting things that had happened. I
was regretting what things would and could not happen with my leaving. All the
friends and people and family that I’ve known for so long, the Life of Matthew
Lengyel in Nor Cal was not a future. It was an alternate reality, a timeline
severed from the real. It was a life that did not and could not exist; it was
but a dream. And so, my future was no longer just two roads dividing, but two
dreams, two paths that no longer had any unyielding, concrete facts. And there
was no turning back; only my ultimate tool… hesitation. That is why I stayed…
…But only
for a moment. I only stayed long enough to say goodbye to the things that truly
mattered to me. They weren’t the endings I would have wanted; they weren’t the
picture perfect farewells and finales that I would have dreamed up. They were
short, quick, and drained; moments that weren’t celebrations or even mere
hangouts. They felt like numb, unspoken eulogies, where we all pretended that
nothing really was happening or changing. They were untimely, ill-placed
epilogues. “This will be the rest of your life” felt like the end of it. It
felt like I had been writing a long novel, and I had created dozens of side
plots, all twisting and turning, leading to an epic finale!… but then my
Publisher came and told me I only had two weeks to write the ending. And now
that the ending is finished, I feel like I missed something. It’s like when
George Lucas made Star Wars Episode III, and it got to 1 hr and 11 minutes into
the script, and he forgot everything he had ever been leading up to. That’s
what people like to call an: EPIC FAIL. But I digress… :P
Despite my
hesitation, despite my worries, despite my melancholy, I knew something that
never before had I known. For all my life, living in Los Angeles was just a
dream of mine. It was a fantasy that I never thought would or could possibly be
real. But now, I knew; it was not just my dream anymore. I knew that even if I stayed in Nor Cal,
things would still change. Things always do. This season in my life, no matter
whatever I did, everything would never be the same. I knew that the day
I turned 21. I’m no longer a kid, no longer a teenager. This was the time for
Me to change with the change, because you’re either riding the wave, or
crashing under it. I love to think, I love to dream, but sometimes, most of the
time, you’ve just got to act, or else life will pass you by. And so, even
though I wish I could have stayed, though I wish the alternate reality could
have been real, we all have a certain amount of fate we must follow. Fate is
what happens to us, but Destiny is the path we can choose to have.
No comments:
Post a Comment