I hope to one day look back on this weekend while sitting around a fire with a pipe in hand and be able to say, “Kids, I had indigestion for weeks, but it was totally worth it.” Aside from the sheer amount of pain killers and antacids I ingested this weekend, the actual spotlight was not on any physical intake. Sure, the beer, steak, and vodka helped help move things along a bit – but the real star this weekend was the roller coaster emotional adventure that I could barely keep up with.

But I guess I prefer it that way…no wait, I don’t guess…I know I prefer it that way. I say “I guess” because I’d like to refrain from being so incredibly forceful with my decision making words, especially when it comes to my own behavior – but I know for fact at this point that I would rather have extreme ups and downs than just a steady plateau of nothingness. That was not always the case, but that’s a story for another time.

Here is a succinct list of the emotions/descriptive words I felt this weekend, just for some reference: extreme happiness followed by extreme sadness, joy, genuine surprise, self pride, soul stripping anxiety, refreshingly enamored, a sudden and over dramatic emptiness, real live mental exercise euphoria, and suffocating fear. Kind of all over the spectrum, and only 5 of them were surface emotions. As for the rest of them, they all happened while everyone else was none the wiser, which is the way I usually enjoy living life. If someone needs to be shared it will. I don’t have the mental capacity to keep everything trivial down and I definitely don’t have the capacity to keep the extreme spectrum emotions in check anymore – which in reality is a good thing, except that I hate it, but having to deal with it seems to be healthier than the way I did before…which was not at all.

The backdrop for all of this was a party at which I started drinking very early in the day. Early enough in fact that my hangover happened at 12pm, went away at 2am, and I woke up feeling a bit sluggish but other than that absolutely fine. Originally it was supposed to be 8 to 10 people showing up. Through events unknown to me more people found out and came, which did not end up being terrible – in fact that was most of my surprise factor. Not surprised that it happened, because this is in fact a common occurrence, but surprised that I wasn’t angry that it happened. I was actually happy to be surrounded by that many people, which if you know me at all is extraordinarily out of my comfort zone.

If I am subscribing to that learn something new every day philosophy still, which I believe that I am, it is that I have to start meeting new people again. I love my friends beyond measure but my comfort zone is getting smaller and smaller. I need to shock the system. That’s what this weekend was; a surprise system shock designed to shake me to the core so hard that change fell out of my pockets. Next step is learning to pick that change back up and follow through, I guess. No wait…

I know.