nouvelle date

Well, the date is set. Officially. I leave here September 11.

Great day for flying, I know... but at least the price is right?

Went to the consulate in Chicago with my mom Monday for my appointment on Tuesday, which went much more easily than I thought it would. I suppose I really don't know what I was expecting, but my double/triple/quadruple checking of all of my documents and surplus of copies helped. I basically just turned in the papers, had a picture taken and was on my merry way.

Chicago was cool too... never been there before. Similar in ways to New York, but much cleaner and a lot more open. Having the river through the city proper also makes a big difference, and kind of reminded me of Paris and the Senne. Although not quite as lovely.

So, here I sit a month away from departure. No job, about 100 dollars in the bank. (I drained my account and gave it to my mom for safe keeping) and still no improvement on the social homefront. In fact, if anything I seem to have distanced myself even further from my remaining friends, which I didn't think was possible. It's impossible to live in this town after being socially blacklisted. Everyone knows everyone, or at least someone that knows everyone else so it just ends up being a huge gossip fueled clusterfuck game of telephone while in circle jerk formation- egos stroked accordingly with the putting down of other people acting as the new social lubricant.

I don't like playing that role anymore. It's degrading. However, it has lent itself to some pretty serious introspection which has resulted in me coming to terms with the fact that in addition to my very public displays of insanity and or general imbalance, another factor in this whole outcast thing has everything to do with the friends I have chosen.

I mean, you want to give people the benefit of the doubt. And being the kind of person that I am, even if hordes of people shun a specific individual, that fact never really deterred me from giving them that benefit- choosing to see the good in them, however minimal it may have been when compared to their overwhelming flaws. Also, these people to whom I gave this consideration seemed to do the same for me and therefore provided me with some sort of validation, however base it may have been.

Well this just isn't good enough for me anymore. You are the company you keep, or so I have been told- And I have kept really, really questionable company.

It's not that these people are inherently BAD, just as I am not inherently BAD... they're just not upstanding citizens. I mean, I wasn't for a very long time... but more recently I have been actively trying to change this. Thus, settling for the company that only fortifies your bottom dweller status because they accept you just... won't do anymore. I'd rather have no friends than shitty friends, who in many respects weren't every really friends to begin with.

They say that the common element in every blunder or mistake or bad relationship is you. That's very true. But what happens if you change, and that person that was a participant in all of those past gaffs doesn't exist anymore? I suppose that's a rhetorical question since, I don't have the patience nor the desire to try to, in the last month I have here try to prove to anyone that I'm different, or that my highlight reel far outshines my list (albiet lengthy) of failures. It's just not worth it, and in any case, had any of those people that I associated with before I lost it had actually been real friends, they'd still be around.

So, this next month I am going to devote to the tying of loose ends. The building of a solid jump off point. The quest of self improvement. And perhaps most importantly, the shedding of the last of the unfortunate skin that remains, obscuring, as the French would call, la belle vérité.

T minus 34 days until I leave you Cleveland! I WILL NOT MISS YOU.