It was the year 2000, and I was just going through the motions of what I thought I was supposed to be doing: settling down, having a family, etc. Strangely, it didn’t occur to me at the time that I was not ready for that.

Where was my brain?

It was me giving up on myself, believing that I’d never find someone who wanted me. I was fresh off of becoming 30 and I still had a twenty-something mindset that told me I was old, and was losing my looks, so I’d better settle down now before it gets worse.

So there it is.

The whole thing was me trying to be something else, trying to accept the lie that I could be happy in settling for something I didn’t really want deep down. But it wasn’t to be…not then, not with her.

What a shame.

Kind of reminds me of the lyrics to A Murder of One by Counting Crows. Except I was in the position that the girl referenced in the song was.

It’s amazing how much you can mature in just a few years. I have never changed as much as I have in the last five years. I’m actually unrecognizable to myself when I think back to who I was in 2000. Most of the changes are for the better, but not all.

Yet, now more than ever, I feel like I am coming to grips with who I really am and not who I’m supposed to be; you know, that model of what we’re supposed to be like according to that idealistic, Utopian vision that certain societal influences get us all to fall for.

Even friends and family contribute to those kind of expectations. There’s often so much pressure from family or friends to comply with what they’ve accepted as ‘normal.’ And maybe that works fine for many people, but we all can’t fit the same mold.

Certainly not me.

I’m very much my own man. I make my own rules, and I don’t care if anyone doesn’t like it. That kind of thing is really frowned upon by many people, which really couldn’t matter less to me. As long as I’m not hurting anyone, that’s what I’m gonna do. I just can’t blindly follow the beaten path just because it’s what we’re supposed to do.

No way.

I’d rather die; and so I often stand out because of it. But it is what it is.

Jimi Hendrix once sang, “I’m the one who has to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to” in the song If 6 Was 9, and that’s what I’m screaming from the top of my lungs to all the sheep out there: Listen to your gut, follow your heart.

Let the lemmings live a cookie cutter life man.

I don’t want it.