I guess I had the epiphany that I was looking for.

I am still trying to process all of this. At one point an alum came up to me and said "Weren't those the best years of your life? Those were the best years of MY life." To which I thought, "Sorry to hear about the last twenty then. Bummer." Couldn't say it. I'm in Seattle. We don't say it here.

There were a lot of poisoned people. And some pleasant surprises. I heard a lot of people going on and on talking about what they've done, trying to make managing the Red Robin sound sexy and cutting edge. And trying to convince themselves that they were happy. Now, I could just be projecting this but to me, it didn't seem like they were very happy.

I felt like Michelle and Shawn and I (my two closest friends from grade school on up) danced through their worlds like bright shining lights, like lighting bugs, flickering and glimmering, and then dancing out of reach, disappearing into the night. That's what I felt like while I was around them.

The Pacific Northwest to me is a toxic place. Some people, like my freind Michelle, have been able to wrestle this place to the ground and make it their own. They embrace the beautiful things about this place but I'm telling you, as I drove through the rain, I felt smothered and claustrophobic, and lacking in energy and I felt like I had never left and for a brief moment, I was okay with that. I felt like I could move into the back of my grandma's house and give up any aspirations that I had ever had and get a car and go back to working at Starbucks and go back on my zoloft/Wellbutrin cocktail and stop feeling and just exist, miserably. . .like the first 32 years of my life. And then I saw a plane, leaving the airport, cutting through the clouds and I would've given my fucking arms to be on that thing getting the fuck out.

But that happens Wednesday.

I realized there is no reason to second guess any of my decisions ever again.

this sounds corny. but I speak the truth through cliche and platitudes.

I could tell you about the freaks that showed up and the ex-cheerleader that has now become a psychotic housewive who got busy with a former classmate in the parking lot after night #1, and the other ex-cheerleader that was trying to look all "sex-in-the-city" but ended up looking like a Hollywood hooker. Or the class valedictorian that finally came out of the closet and who works on capitol hill as a legislative assistant to a California senator but was prospecting one of his classmate's 17 year-old sons as a potential date. Or the group of jocks that have had some kind of co-joined surgery and have never left each other's side SINCE high school and for whom the reunion was not a reunion but only a change of venue. And how on the night that their wives weren't present, they gave a lot of gropey hugs ("Oh It's SO GREAT TO SEE YOU! Give me a hug. No not like that, that's not a hug. I mean a real hug. Like this." -- oof, shudder.) And I could tell you about the high percentage of people that have succumbed to addiction, some of whom were present and some who weren't, either because they've dropped out or overdosed.

But all of that was really the circus sideshow backdrop to my wrestling match with internal ghosts that no longer exist. I went back and assesed the damage. I won whatever battle I was fighting so luckily no one will have to hear about this particular neurosis ever again.

Thanks for listening.