Reflection

In the teen years your own identity was a consolidation of various characters that made up your peer. Nothing matter more than earning the acceptance of these people, the same folks that you'd forget in ten years.

In your twenties you had just graduated from college and all you wanted to do was fit in with the culture of your new job, and you were too busy kissing your boss' ass to notice the number they assigned to your new identity. Outside of work you dated often, had occassional one-night stands, and then prayed that you didn't inherit a veneral disease while you waited in the clinic for the test result. You had sworn to use a condom from then on, until the next time the vodka tonic convinced you that this was THE woman, the one "forever." Until, that is, you didn't call her back. As your twenties came to an end, you were lucky to not have been entirely sodomized by the boss or be on a super-cocktail of pharmaceuticals to control some exotic genital herpes. A congratulations was in order, and it's the reason they celebrate the big 3-0 so vigorously.

In your 30s you are a little more yourself, not in that emerging-from-a-drunk stupor, but mostly from the fact that you are more at peace with whom you've become. You are confident with yourself enough to tell the world to go screw itself, and you're skilled and marketable enough to tell your boss to go fuck himself. Of course, you don't. Because you now have a wife for whom to care and a mortgage to pay and you prefer not to introduce instability into your life.

And so you continue to work for The Man, putting in the manual and menial hours to pay for a life that you've built while burying the dreams that you once had, a little deeper each year. It's not a novel story, but one of millions. And in this you find comfort, along with a glass of whisky with two ice cubes.

How in the world did this beautiful woman become your wife and how in the world did you come to own all that you do? A three-bedroom home, a fancy car, three bikes, a motorcycle and a dog. A room full of books, half read and mostly forgotten, and a flat-screen television that's constantly on but nothing to watch. A leather couch and a coffee table on which you put your domestic lives, and a dining-room set that never gets used.