"A Mind is A Terrible Thing to Waste"

There is a line near the conclusion of the James Bond flick Quantum of Solace where Camile Montes (Olga Kurylenko), a Bolivian agent, consoles to 007 that she wanted to love him, but "...your prison's in there", placing her hands on his head, notably, his mind. Bond knowingly realized his entire post-childhood life was a troubled one at best, from the tragic loss of his parents, having a step-brother who wanted nothing to do with him (see Spectre for reference), and being teased by the wealthy to-do followers when training to become a British agent. Them demons can fuck you up at any given moment.

I was waking up this morning, realizing that I will be entering life as a senior citizen in three months time. SHEESH!!! There's not a day in my own life that I don't reflect on the visual memories -good and bad, and down right fuck-worthy- that have morphed into the person who's blog you're reading right now. So many flashbacks in my head I have replayed them repeatedly in my head to pretend that whatever scenario can be corrected, reversed, or erased. When I am driving on the highway to Who-Knows-Where, my mind does stray away from watching the road ahead sometimes. Today's music is definitely NOT what it once was from the days of riding a bicycle in the park or spending a Sunday afternoon in the summertime out at Bradford Beach off Lincoln Memorial Drive, adjacent to Lake Michigan, with Milwaukee's skyline in the distance. 

July marked the 26th anniversary of living here in Rockford, IL. I was 28 when I relocated from Brew City. Like most people who move from a larger city to one of 148,000, I suffered with a case of culture shock. Going around the Forest City several times gave me the memory of a similar place in particular: Jackson,MS. Identical size, four-lane highways in the major streets, and a shit-load of urban decay and abandoned dreams. Rockford has yet to make great overall improvements that could benefit everyone for the long haul. What the fuck is wrong with Rockford's political shindig that keeps long-lasting eyesores all over town erected as equally common as the number of potholes that our cars continue to be threatened by?  

For almost 54 years I've paid no mind to making the right choice to benefit me in the long run. The vicissitudes resulted afterwards. I'm still haunted by making the choice to leave my Dad's house in Milwaukee for an unknown community in northern Illinois. Sure, my roommate Mariah has been the penultimate scapegoat tool that helped me "escape" living with Dad, knowing he realized that I had slowly made the choice NOT to live as his offspring. Imagine had I made the decision to transition at a younger age under his roof, the relationship between father and offspring would've possibly been as severed as poor John Wayne Bobbitt's manpiece. 

Why did I start making an attempt to re-connect with my just-deceased mother by wearing her short-synthetic wigs and lingerie? Or wearing her old nursing uniforms or muumuus? Without making a Psycho scene, I guess to this very day, it's a way of letting Mom know that she's always with me. A way of seeing Mom through me. Of course, I could always wonder if my Dad has passed away in 1979 instead of her, what kind of person would I be? Neither of them had any hormonal traits that would've made them behave more like the other gender. IT JUST HAPPENS!!! 

I could sit by my computer, as I am right now, routinely wondering how my life would've been had I done it differently. In this case, had I gotten my feet wet into doing drag shows (for example) while I was still in my latter 20s, would I be a well-known entertainer by now? Yeah, those possibilities would be endless! My mind is constantly bugging me of so many "what if's" over all these years. There'd be SO GODDAMN MANY SEQUELS  J.K. Rowling could've just said "fuck it". It would be a lifetime of cliffhangers with no conclusive answer whatsoever. A permanent "to be continued...". 

Y'all have no idea about the imaginations that cloud your head when we sleep. Seeing my mother's lifeless body as a 9-year-old in 1979 never left me. I thought for years about my final words to her has caused me haunting memories. My sister Annette later knew it was in the heat of the moment when I said it. I asked God to forgive me for saying those hateful words. It just reminded me, however, that I needed to control my tongue's wickedness.  

In my previous series of blogs, I mentioned about getting asked to run in a pageant in the new year. No divisive answer yet. Why? Simple. Too many reminders of what I did in 2018. Just like in April, a friend asked me to run in this local pageant. 24 hours later, I jumped at the chance of competing in my first pageant since 1998. Over the next year, I spend almost $900 on outfits,wigs, jewelry, and a now-gaudy evening dress. During the talent, I was so damn nervous I flubbed the first few lines of my song. I overcame that goof, but overall I was woefully overmatched by the other competitors when it came to the gowns, appearance and especially the hair. No wonder I evidently finished last, resulting in a bout with depression. The weeks leading up to that event had gotten me so hyped about my chances that I failed to realize I had no real chance in winning.  She needed an unlikely sucker. I took the bait. 

Memories of that night are just like it happened today. This pageant is several stages above the bar scene. I've avoided the pageants at BTAC because I didn't need to keep reminding myself of what I could possibly become, and why the memories of coming in last never faded away. What would make THIS time different from the past? My mind has become divided. Either by this time next year, I'll either regret not doing this pageant OR regret running in it, expecting another disappointing result. As mentioned before, my friends have GIVEN A GREEN LIGHT to me running when I mentioned this. I'm scared....