On December 25th, 2005, when the decade switched from my teens and let me go roarin' into my 20's, this was me. Cross eyed, badly flat-ironed hair, and wearing a shirt that was probably a little too small for me. No idea how to be cool, no idea what I wanted in life, just thankful the phase of me wearing "guy liner" had come to an end. I was so excited to not be a teenager anymore. 19 was a bum year that didn't entail much other than me working full-time so I could pay off the utterly massive credit card debt I'd amassed a few short months after high school ended.
I write somewhat frequently about being able to look back on things and analyze the ways I've changed and grown since they occurred. It's a little bit different when you are summing up a decade of life. I'll try to leave out the details of location changes because that's the obvious answer to "what changed??" and instead I'll stick to the personal stuff. You all like that better anyway, I'm sure.
I don't remember much about turning 20. There was a lot of excitement for leaving 19 behind, I know that, but it was one of those filler years where it didn't mean much else. I was working full-time at Express and enjoying the benefits that came with actually making some real money for the first time in my life. I was starting to pay my debt off and making new friends outside of those from high school, but... that was about it.
A year later and a fair amount thinner. Glory me! I still look at that as a baby face though, mostly because I was still shaving with a razor because I thought I needed to as an adult. I hadn't turned into the wookie I am now. From what I can recall 21 was a decent year. I'd never been the kind of person to underage drink, I think I only did so a handful of times (like... three times) before I was a legal age, and I think that was a good indicator of what I'd be like from then on out. I've never been much of a drinker.
Don't get me wrong, I can hold my liquor very (annoyingly) well, I just don't partake. I'd rather come home after a hard day at work and drink a milkshake than have a cocktail, but none of you should be surprised about that. Former fatty, right here!
Relationship wise, I wasn't in one. I hadn't been in one for a few years, actually, because for whatever reason any time I started dating, I got sick of the person. Which was so dumb and juvenile but the truth. Midway through the year I met Evan and it became my first relationship that a) lasted more than a couple months and b) I didn't end out of boredom. I ended it because it just wasn't right.
You know you're growing up when you can identify something. I was ready for love, it just wasn't with Evan.
I'd left Express for a while and had gone to Aldo, then subsequently back to Express. With no idea at all of who I was or what the hell I was doing. I did buy an XBox that year though... so that was something?
Being 22 was important due to two singular things. Firstly, I became a manager at Express and that kicked off my career in retail. I'd been in retail for a few years already but only in lower-level positions. It was a long learning curve, to be sure, and I really didn't learn much until a great guy named Steve eventually came along and showed me how to do my job. Props to Steve! But that was a few years later.
The other reason was that I met Ken in 2008 and started a tumultuous relationship that was filled with great highs and incredible lows, but for the moment was grand. 22 was a year filled with firsts of all sorts, but mostly they were just experiences. Tubing down a river, falling in love, my family accepting my boyfriend, staying in love, getting a fancy camera and learning how to badly photoshop my wrinkles out.
I mean... no, I don't do that. I of course have no wrinkles.
There was a continuous theme of coloring my hair dark at the end of every year, so I love looking at these and seeing how it seems like I naturally had the same hair color as my brother. Nope! That'd be a box of Revlon hard at work. If 22 had been important for the two things aforementioned, 23 was even bigger because it was the year I moved out of my parent's house.
Ken and I were doing great and in February moved in with each other in Appleton. For a long time it was pretty great. I finally felt like an adult because I could host parties and dinners and Christmas, not having to just come downstairs to greet people but instead having to open the door and welcome them inside my place. Relationships with my best friends were still growing and changing but they were getting stronger all the while.
2009 was good for that.
I was still at Express and still enjoying it. The store had a way of having a good year for me and then having a shit year, and this was one of the better years. I worked with a group of people that I truly enjoyed and many of them are still in my life because of it. Life was essentially easy, it had been for a long while, and I assumed I'd be able to continue coasting along unscathed.
There was no way of knowing I was a couple months away from having my world shattered with a series of affairs that would make me question everything I'd come to know as safe in my life. I made a mistake with Ken that February, not knowing he was and would continue making a much larger mistake at the same time.
When the truth came out it was heartbreaking. For both of us, to be fair, because I was not innocent and it wouldn't be right to pretend I was. "Innocent-er" is the phrase I'll use instead, but really, once you step in shit it's hard to clean it off without soapy water. We decided to stay together under certain conditions and then made the move to a new home in Wrightstown, citing our Appleton home as cursed (the address was 1666 (Devil speak!)) and a fresh start was what we needed.
Just before the move we took in two little balls of fur that were only a week old. I didn't want them, I admit it, but they were gonna fix us somehow and I did want that. Enter stage left, Paolo and Sophia Parker.
It was a year of constantly feeling my heart drop into my stomach, feeling sick over what happened, accusing Ken of anything and everything I could, and snooping so much that it turned me into a crazy person. Couples therapy led to us deciding we should buy a house together (...) in Green Bay.
I don't know. Let's chalk it up to me being 24 and a fuckin' idiot.
You get through some bad stuff and feel like you've weathered a storm. I like to look at this picture of me hitting 25 and know now that the storm was just a rain shower. I was heading into a hurricane in two months and this time I wasn't going to get out of it so easily.
Ken and I broke up in March on the day we signed the loan for our house. Saying I was devastated would not be doing it justice. My world being "shattered" wouldn't do it justice. I think the accurate words to describe me in April of 2011 would be "completely and utterly pulverized, destroyed, burnt, and left to drown." To me, at the time, there was no way out of who I had become.
After the final affair became apparent, after he moved out, and after I discovered allllllll the rest of the lies that had been running rampant throughout our entire relationship, I was a shell of a person. A shell at 25, glory me!
I got promoted at work but with the cost of being transferred unwillingly to Green Bay. I had to swallow my pride and move back in with my parents, something I considered an absolute failure on my part as an adult. I had to watch as one best friend started a new relationship and quickly fell in love while another got engaged and started building the pieces to her happily ever after.
I know, boo hoo me, right? But even now five years later I can't help but look back on this with clear eyes and see how hard I took it all. Moving home could have been therapeutic in the sense that I was moving back to the house we'd been in for 14 years as a family, but even that was changing. My parents had finished renovating Parker Manor (as I named it) and after a month of living with them we moved again.
I kept the cats after the breakup, though Sophia was really more of Ken's cat, and it took most of the year for her to warm up to me. But gradually she did, and gradually the pain slipped away. I was able to turn the focus back onto myself, something I hadn't done in a really long time, and try to change for the better. My job still sucked, sure, but I was making money and starting to thirst for something great in my life.
Just in time for a golden birthday.
The moment captured above was at my surprise birthday party for when I turned 26. 26 years old on the 26th of December marked it as my "golden birthday," and I was surrounded by my family and friends. I gave a very short speech that night, broke down into tears, and sat down to eat dinner. Then I gave it another shot after the meal, telling each person that was there why they were important to me and how they had helped me. Surrounded by my bests (no longer best friends, they were just "the bests") and my family. It was an incredibly emotional night but it capped off the end of a terribly emotional year. I was ready to fix it... to fix me, and I did.
2012, also known as the year of "26 Golden Things." I decided in January that I was going to do 26 new and exciting things throughout the year and that I'd blog about each of them as they happened. And then I decided "fuck it, I'll video the whole thing too." So I did.
The movie is available to watch if you'd like to, I always said it would be free to anyone that needed it. There were of course pros and cons to making "26 Golden Things," seeing as every single thing I set out to do I managed to nail to the proverbial wall. I pitched it as "the best memories are those you make yourself," and that still stands true.
You are only the victim for as long as you want to be. The keys to your happiness lie in your own hands and you cannot rely on anyone or anything to change it for you. I learned this, and I'm glad I did, because it made me a better person. I was able to use my golden year to take the reigns of life back in my hands and find some sort of purpose. Like the back of the DVD case for the movie says, "get inspired." I still look back and feel inspiration from what I managed to achieve, not just on my own but with the help and participation of my friends and family.
I'd love to do it again someday... to one-up myself with a new "best year ever," but the times have changed so much that I don't know how. Maybe I'll figure it out and maybe I won't, but I like to at least think that I will. For now I know that I'll never look back on 26 with a frown.
27 started with big changes. I was happily employed at Pottery Barn and putting my feelers out on a new relationship. The relationship didn't exactly flourish before it ended on June first, but I learned from it and moved on. That spring I lost my grandfather, the final grandparent to my siblings and I, in the same week that I busted my ankle and moved out on my own.
It was a difficult week to deal with all of that but I suppose it was like ripping a band-aid off; just get it done and let the healing begin.
I loved living alone. I think that was how I knew it'd never last with Ken, I always thought "someday when I live alone," and that's not the right mentality going into a relationship. But whatever. I had a great year being 27, not the best ever but it was really a year of doing things my way and how I wanted. Taking trips, walking around my home without pants on, and getting to expand my skills in cooking. Not simultaneously. I inducted a new best into the fold as well, Miss T. Dressed up as a GUY for halloween, once again colored my hair dark in the fall, and also decided to grow it out and not cut it off right away as I usually did.
2014 was a fairly uneventful year when it came to me but eventful for everyone else it seemed.
Aside from the fact that I published my first novel, The Onyxus Chronicles: Episode I. One mustn't forget that!
Everyone was either moving or getting engaged or getting hitched in 2014. My bests, specifically. @markstyleme got engaged, @caitlinclaire got engaged AND married, and then @klreynol put our rock solid friendship to the test by moving away to Arizona with her growing family. I stayed where I was, single, ready to mingle, but otherwise motionless.
To be fair, getting the book ready occupied most of my time. When I wasn't working on the first book, I was working diligently on the second. And when I wasn't working on that, I was working on putting my halloween costume together (Dr. Frankenfurter) and planning for Christmas. You'd be as surprised as I was when a tall, skinny but muscular (you're welcome, pinkie) guy showed up at my (term used loosely) Starbucks one day.
I suppose love happens when you just aren't looking? It did for me at least, and that was how I wrapped up 28.
I don't know what to say about 29. Started it with long hair and didn't cut it for 9 more months? Yes. Started it almost 2,000 miles from where I'll end it? Yes. Started it at one job and will end it at a third? Yes.
2015 was a year of changes for me this time and less for everybody else. I tried my best to soak up everything I could before the biggest change came along, that of moving to Texas, but of course there were things left behind that I would have liked to revisit for one last go. People I wanted to see, faces I wanted to slap, y'know... important stuff. Having the love and support of Derek through it has made a world of difference and made it much easier as well, but 29 was just a filler year for the most part. It was the big drawing of air that would lead to the change of a decade.
I feel like being here now, I can finally exhale and let all of the hot air and silly wind out. There's nothing left to wonder about or hold any sort of fear over... every big event that was supposed to happen this year has now happened, and because of it I can breath just a bit easier. You'll have to wait for "a new resolution" in a few days to hear any more on the subject. So, without further ado...
That brings us to now. Me, Sean S. Parker; a 30 year old, two-times published author, father of two cats, partner to one amazing guy, living in Austin, TX and working for west elm. You write goals down at one point in time and as said time progresses these things have a way of coming to fruition. Or at least so I've found.
As I've gotten older birthdays have made me sad. I don't think it's a sadness in terms of "woe is me, I'm getting older," but more of a sense of time now gone. Time I won't ever get back. The advantage to that feeling is how it pushes me to do more and more, faster and faster, bigger and better. I know 30 is not old by any means, and if anything it just takes me out of the category of "oh you're still in your 20's, you're so young." I don't feel young anymore, and I'm okay with that. It's like a passing of the torch.
But it makes me sad in that I want more and more time with people. My parents, my siblings, my friends... it's just that I can't be everywhere all the time and those moments still need to be shared. If I could have everyone in my life live on the same city block, that'd be fantastic. But I can't.
It's funny how your priorities change as you get older. That what was once so important to you is now just a fleeting memory. I never knew who or what I was going to be in the future, I just lived each day in the moment and kept moving forward. At 20 I was so worried about my mountains of debt, and at 30 I'm worried about how I'll pay for a wedding that will eventually be on the horizon or buying a house (which is potentially a closer idea, all things considered). I'm worried about when I'll get to see my family or my friends again in person, and how soon I can do so.
I also look back and wish I could warn myself about a few things...
Give certain people a chance. Don't take certain promotions. Actually plan ahead when they tell you "hey, plan ahead." Start saving money. Don't buy a new car, get a used one, and outside of that 2012 will be worth every penny spent. You can't make people like you. You can't make people love you. You can't make people stay when they just don't want to anymore. If you get cheated on, sever ties immediately and make it a clean break. You will have your bubble popped more times than you can count, but just let it happen; you will learn so much more that way. Never second-guess if it's the right time to publish, just do it. Enjoy. Your. Life.
I ended 2012 with the following quote and it still stands true today. I think this, more than any of that other stuff, is what I would say to that dumbshit riding a rocking horse at the top of this page.
"As you grow up, you will learn even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let you down probably will. You will have your heart broken more than once and it gets harder every time; you'll break hearts, too, so remember how it felt when yours was shattered. You'll fight with your best friend. You'll blame a new love for the things an old one did. You'll cry because time is passing by too fast and you'll eventually lose someone you love more than anything else. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you've never been hurt because every 60 seconds you spend upset is another minute of happiness you'll never get back. Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin."
That's all for now, gang. I'll let you know how 30 goes as time progresses. Until then, I need to get busy on another project. I'm still toying with "30, flirty, and thriving" as a movie title...
Toodles (c;
No comments:
Post a Comment