Life calling from the depths…

For the first five years of my 20’s, I worked as the manager of a mall information booth in Austin. I had a handful of employees and a random list of duties that changed depending on who was managing me. I reported to the Marketing Director of the mall and they reported to the Mall Manager. It was a strange job, most months were incredibly boring and tedious, but summers were busy and the Christmas season was insane. Without an education, it was a dead-end job, but I made a pretty decent paycheck for someone my age and I was good at it. I also enjoyed being in the middle of a bustling space with foot traffic and lots of different people to look at.

Somewhere around my third year on the job, I got a boss who was fond of micro-managing and decided to crack the whip on my unfettered moments. We were also getting “secret-shopped” at that time and it was considered poor customer service to be looking at a computer, so my boss took my internet surfing privileges away from me. This was a gift because I began reading books voraciously again and the world began to open up for me in ways that it hadn’t in years. I was very angry at that boss at the time, but in hindsight, I believe that I have her to thank for the life that I have today.

I was 23 years old. It was 2003. I loved the internet, emo music, unavailable people, and was beginning to really enjoy drinking alone. I fancied myself a writer, so I’d bring my journal and my best intentions with me everywhere. Inevitably, I would spend most evenings at Spider House in Austin. I loved the large Live Oak in the backyard and how cool I felt spending my evenings there. Sometimes a friend would join me, sometimes I’d go alone. I’d eat chips and salsa, drink my Lonestar beer, and smoke cigarettes like it was my job. I remember feeling like everything was a mess and yet incredibly beautiful at the same time. Yes, I was drinking too much, smoking too much, and looking for love everywhere except within myself. Yet I was also shedding baggage from my extremely sheltered upbringing, letting go of old opinions, opening my mind to new belief systems, and trying to be a better person. We were living in a post 9/11 world, George W. Bush was President, most of my best friends were gay, and I was slowly beginning to understand that freedom and liberty, as they’d been sold to me as a child, were really just gifts bestowed upon straight, white men.

I turned 24 and shortly after, another Christmas passed at the mall. I was feeling desperation that felt like being trapped in a small room. Working in the same shopping mall for seven years and having a boss that doesn’t understand you will do that. But then again, so will the beginnings of alcoholism and addiction. It would be years before I’d understand that component of my struggles, but it must have certainly contributed to my despair.

Somewhere around this time, I started reading The Austin Chronicle from front to back. After browsing “Shot in the Dark” in hopes of finding one written for me. “You: reading Tropic of Cancer, sipping Lone Star. Me: dark hair, tattoos. Want to start a book club?” I’d thumb through the pages of the incredible free journalism that we were gifted every Thursday, and do my best to learn a bit more about the city that I inhabited, and also the planet that I was living on.

One day, I discovered Michael Ventura’s column, Letters at 3 am. I remember that I was sitting at my information desk, trying not to look as hungover as I was. It was January, the kids were back in school, and the mall looked like my future felt - devoid of all hope. I found his column, titled The light changed (the soul: part 3.) and “My soul cohered with my life. Just like that.”

And didn’t it? I remember looking up from the paper with tears in my eyes, feeling emotions I didn’t have names for (must have been awe, maybe inspiration), and doing my best to take it all in without letting all my emotions out. After all, I was at work. I kept it together that day. But I only spent one more Christmas at that mall.

I thought that I would die there, or was certain that my soul would. It didn’t. It came alive.

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Nearly 18 years have passed since I read that column. I read it religiously every other Thursday for the next few years. Many of his letters were rants directed at the far-right in relation to the Bush administration. Some were about music and other artistic musings, but many were environmentally conscious, anti-capitalist, anti-war manifestos that felt beyond the realm of my understanding. I just knew they lit me up. I’d mostly forgotten about Michael Ventura and his letters, until yesterday, when I glanced at my bookshelf and randomly decided to avoid my homework and read one of his letters instead. Instantly I learned that there is so much there that still resonates with me today. Maybe even more than it did all those years ago.

I was sad to discover that Michael Ventura stopped writing his column in 2014. I would have loved to read his polemics relating to the Trump administration or anything inspiring that he might have said as well. For now, I’m enjoying reading this collection of his Letters.

Books have always been portals to other places for me, which is why I love having a personal library. Even if I don’t pick a book off the shelf for 15 years, it can still take me back to a place I’d forgotten all about. Just as this book did for me yesterday. I got to take a fun little trip down memory lane to remind me of the person that I used to be, a person who I like to think would be very proud of the person who writes this today.

I am not perfect. I am still learning.

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One thing that will never stop wowing me is the way that art and books can mean so much to you at one time in your life for a specific reason — and then 15 years later, you can come upon that art again and discover that it means something entirely different and maybe even more.

I was so far detached from the reality of my life and my trauma when I discovered the words of Michael Ventura. I did not know that I was a survivor of any sort of abuse — rather, I did not know that I would ever find the words to say that I was a survivor. I don’t even know if I was sober when I read his words in his book for the first time, but I am today. And I was yesterday. And if all goes as planned, I will be tomorrow.

I don’t know if I was sober when I read these words, whenever I read them. Truthfully, I have no idea when I became the owner of this book. But these words mean a lot to me today, just as they must have when I highlighted them.

“We have learned that our dreams are important not because they come true, but because they take you places you would never have otherwise gone, and teach you what you never guessed there was to learn.”

All those years ago, I was looking for a way out of that mall, Michael’s words told me that all I needed to do was look within. Thank you for the reminder, Michael.