I am writing this post after commenting on a Facebook post about growing up in Connecticut. In truth, I miss my home state, but the cost far outweighs the benefit of living there. And since today is my birthday, I will take this chance to explain why I left and why it was the best decision of my life.
For starter's, Connecticut was the source of most of my life's troubles.
My failed education at the hands of the Stratford School system, the corrupt government that killed my non-profit, the crap-tastic tax system designed to prop up the rich at the expense of the poor, and the defacto-segregation that makes white Connecticut wealthy while black Connecticut gets poorer and poorer.
If that wasn't enough reason to want to make anywhere else my home, let me explain further.
In 2013,after my non-profit was killed in the most corrupt and illegal manner possible, I was quite distraught. I wanted payback in the worst way but found myself without options. I enrolled in therapy to try and get to the bottom of my angst.
I started going to Al Anon meetings and seeing a psychiatrist. She said that if I didn't go to Al Anon meetings, she would not be my therapist and as such, I capitulated. The meetings taught me a lot about the many wounds I needed to be healed.
My alcoholic parents, my toxic relationship with my sister and the fact that many of those around me were dropping dead thanks to drugs and alcohol, there wasn't much reason for me to stay. Couple that with the aforementioned ills the nutmeg state boasts with pride, the reasons to leave far outweighed reasons to stay.
The only thing that kept me in Connecticut was my Mom, which I was living with much of the time and taking care of full-time thanks to the fact that my sister was a self-centered twat and had dis-associated with both of us. We had no reason to stay and 99 reasons to go.
At the urging of my therapist, who I think had realized I was just this side of crazy, I went to see a psychologist. I had been having visions of doing terrible things to a certain public official and in lieu of acting on those thoughts, I thought I should get some real strong drugs.
Much to my surprise, the doctor said I wasn't crazy. He said if I hopped out of the car in traffic and started bashing windshields, then I might be crazy, but just thinking about it didn't make me any more nuts than the rest of America. He said I didn't need drugs, I just needed to move.
That was November 2013 and with the fall migration of birds and old people, I wandered down to Maryland where I bought a boat. Well, buy is a strong word for that P.O.S., I really just took it over.
And while I was sitting in the bar at Solomon's Island, Maryland, I met an old couple who cruised full-time in a cement sailboat that was anchored in the harbor. The lady looked me up and down and wondered aloud why I was there alone. I didn't have a good answer so instead I said, because I hadn't met Mrs. Right quite yet.
She apparently heard this excuse before and explained to me that I wouldn't ever find my wife sitting in a bar in Maryland. She said, and I'll never forget this, "You need to go where you want to be to find the woman who wants to be there too."
It reminded me of a little Bible verse about looking for the living among the dead, "And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?"
The words hit me like a ton of bricks and I almost fell off my bar stool. I thanked the old couple and wished them fair winds and following seas, and wandered out of the bar into the night. And somewhere that night, I decided I wanted to get better.
I convinced my Mom to move to North Carolina, got a job, a house and a girlfriend and soon enough, found myself with a ring on my finger. That lead to an ADHD diagnosis and a new career as a journalist soon began.
So leaving Connecticut, while with great reason, it was not necessarily because of the high taxes or the corruption of the State Government. Nor was it because I was mentally ill.
I think the good Lord told me to leave Connecticut because it was only by heading to that little town on the ocean in North Carolina, and meeting the woman I now call my wife, that I could ever happen upon the new me that now stands before you.
I am now on my 48th birthday, and I am better. If I had stayed in that little state with great lobster rolls, lousy traffic and tax-strapped assholes, I would be just another one of those poor souls. And while I do miss good pizza, cool October mornings and The BIG E, there aren't many reasons for me to return to Connecticut.
But instead, I have now seen the sun rise in the desert, witnessed the green flash, sailed the East Coast and experienced life as a "working man". And it is that life that makes me one hell of a good storyteller and a right and proper journalist. And as the song goes, "It's some kind of sin, to live your whole life on a might have been."
Thanks for reading this.
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