There is this perceived notion that life goes something like this: Birth, adolescence, drivers license, car, cigarettes, beer, college, career, marriage, house, children, mid-life crisis, senior discounts, medication dispenser, triple bypass heart surgery and death by teacup. (Give or take a life event or two.) For me personally, I have noted that my life has mirrored a pinball striking events randomly and rather unexpectedly throughout the course of an ultimately difficult but meaningful existence.

Here I am 32 years into a life cycle and for the past 12 years I have been in a proverbial limbo. It is a very unforgiving and oddly attractive space between reality and my own perception of reality. To this day I remain steadfast that from the age of 20 to 26 I was merely aimlessly wandering around blown out of my mind on booze, drugs and yeah, more drugs. Call it, self denial, an excuse, a phase or whatever you may; however, I call it, the truth. During this period of time that I call "Woodstock era", one thing remained a constant, my ability to make really bad decisions on a daily basis. To be clear, "bad" is the equivalent of an eye-gouging sumo frak fest then having my fingertips dipped in acid while having to listen to Pee Wee Herman's rendition of I Feel Pretty!

Star Date: 6434-01. After traveling many years in our phone booth pimped out with a rather far out and excellent umbrella, we found ourselves in an era of "Self Discovery" or as I like to call it, my Sith versus Jedi era. Soon after I had my epiphany, I laid down one condition for myself. This stipulation was that I would never compromise who I was or what I wanted for anyone, ever!! In order for me to have a fruitful, meaningful and happy life span, I would only need myself, as is. If anyone, under any circumstance were to hinder, question or attempt to change so much as a lock of hair, they were immediately shunned and placed accordingly in the pit of despair where their screams would echo against aged stone and fall upon deaf ears. A little much? Perhaps but I had, for so long, suppressed, foolishly hidden and ignored who I was and I at this point had absolutely no tolerance for anyone that could not accept my abnormalities.

As you can imagine, this thought process made any attempt at dating futile. My desire to have some of the aforementioned life events, was completely absent and honestly, revolting. The whole idea of dating, marriage, love or even someone laying their filthy hands on me, made me nauseous. I found myself time and time again debating how love was merely an ideology created by weak individuals in their desperate attempt to fulfill a need for companionship because standing on their own two feet was a daunting task. What a fraking joke these drones were.

(Now, I sit here smiling at the very thought of just how wrong I was; at how I had taken something so pure and defined it as an imperial mind frak created to convert the weak-minded into mindless Sith drones.)

(Bare with me folks; I tend to take the scenic route.)

Ultimately, I found dating to be quite the chore. I literally avoided men at all costs. When I did at least suck it up and try to date, it was the equivalent of being exposed to flesh-eating bacteria. The way a man looks at you when you try to articulate your very valid points that there was no way Han made that run in under 12 parsecs as clearly, parsecs are not measured in time---is priceless. Can you say, check please?

After awhile I just became uncomfortable with dating altogether. What was the fraking point? For the first time in my life, I was genuinely happy. I really understood who I was, what I wanted and had no desire to change any of that or add any extra stress to my life just to adhere to some outdated ideology of what we should do with our lives. I clawed and fought my way through Mordor and I would be damned if anyone or anything was going to take what was most precious to me, away.

The Age of Men surely came to an end. I essentially found myself moving forward, accomplishing goals and evolved as an individual. My anger or perhaps resentment towards men was unfounded but even upon this realization, I found that I still had no desire to share my life or time with anyone but my children. My focus remained on me and my boys and this I found comfort, security and solace in. I lived a very stress-free and goal-oriented life and the amazing thing was that I never lost sight of who I was and I was able to completely focus on the things I wanted for myself; hence my conquest to conquer Middle Earth.

Funny how things come to pass in life, one day you are trying to kick a Carpathians ass and the next you find you are hopelessly falling in love with not only a great friend but a man, who through the years has seen the good, bad and the ugly; a man who not only accepted all my faults and eccentricities but was actually attracted to them; a man who had the opportunity to get to know the real me; a man that my real world collided with after meeting him nearly 5 years ago on this very site.

The whole experience in hind-sight has been a journey of growth and one in which I have no regrets. I learned that you should never settle. You should never feel embarrassed or awkward about who you are regardless of what anyone might think. Embrace who you are, exploit it and be proud of it. Never compromise your happiness for a notion that if you do, you may find love because at the end of the day, if you have to suppress any part of you, then you are doing a disservice to yourself. The reality is that if you compromise all the things that collectively make you happy, you can truly never be happy with anyone else.

In conclusion, my story is one of hope. Through this experience, the most important thing I can share is that beyond the outer rim, there is someone made from the same slab of carbonite. Somewhere, at some point in time, your path will cross with that of Neo and you will be given a choice, either to take the blue pill or throw caution to the wind, embrace fate and take the red one.

Thanks for reading--Geek!