In May the final analysis was: Not going with the head, going with the gut, so then:

I’m not doing the smart thing, I’m doing the brave thing. And I did,

and it was good.

As the month rolled over, I said to my sister: You and I were the ones most broken by all that childhood shit. Then I floated that theory around and it was received let’s say civilly and a little coldly. It was as if there was another explanation that I was overlooking, like: maybe she and I were just a little lazier, or lacking in character or something.

Maybe both versions are partly true.

As we’ve gotten ready to leave the Atlantic shore, and the conversational intensity has ramped up, I’m receiving another vision of things.

Maybe, for reasons of brokenness or slackery or something else, we were just the ones most inclined to reject the canonical wisdom of the Hunterly Patriarch.

The wisdom that says: always do the smart thing.

Always do the smart thing and work real hard, and the System will reward you magnificently.

Rejecting it with fresh hybrid vigor, I say, Fuck the Canon. Fuck doing the smart thing. Fuck your shitty System.

Man it feels good.

What he provided and what they took as an afterthought birthright was–Education means degrees. Degrees mean respectable handsomely compensated jobs. Those jobs are the real wealth, in raw financial terms and in acceptance by the Machine.

There were so many reasons to think he was right, back then. But I never did.

I believe it far less and more firmly now.

I’m not broken.

I always landed on my feet, even when it was waking inside a soaked-through sleeping bag under the dripping leaves of a public park in the second-largest city in the Pacific Northwest.

The landing was not always graceful by a long shot, but it was always true.

When I raise my finger now it doesn’t shake with fear any more. If it shakes at all it’s only with age.

I’m my more better self now than I’ve ever even been. Before.