Drugstore

I used to love to drive. Just get in my car and blare whatever music I was in the mood for, it was fucking great. With my car all fucked up and with the staggering gas prices it is almost an impossibility. I borrowed my moms car to do it for a little bit today. She needed gas so I put in $15 and went out into the afternoon.

I forget sometimes what a love/hate relationship I have with winter. Driving around town today I was reminded of that very thing. Everything feels so dead in the winter. Even people seem dead. Partly because of the snow, but mostly because the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun. Away from the life giver. Looking around at the snow covered ground and at the lifeless trees fills me with a desolate feeling that I love. The same is true for looking at peoples vacant faces. There is never much conversation in the winter either. Mostly people make some comment about how cold it is and move on. I never much cared for having some pointless smalltalk conversation with people, and winter time saves me this inconveniences. Most times when people make their weather comments I don't even answer them. I love feeling confined even to the point of suffocation.

There are certain kinds of music that go along with winter in my mind as well. Industrial is perfect for the gray sunless days of winter. There is an almost winter like sound to industrial. Nine Inch Nails, Stabbing Westward, and Otep are the sound of winter to me, dark enough to match the season, and loud enough to fill its void. Driving much too fast down streets I know don't have stop signs throwing up a cloud of salt behind me I took it all in all the sights of winter all at once. A barrage of dead, depressing, and invigorating wonder. It was beautiful.

I of course had the heat off and the window down so I could chain smoke, and and blast the quiet neighborhoods with and assault of the hideously beautiful sounds of Stabbing Westward. Fueled by caffeine and nicotine I was Thinking out everything that happened in the past few years. Getting married twice to the same girl, Vegas, Mexico, the things that made life worth living I thought about all the bad too the apartment, the band, and being broke. I finally cleared my head. I have been on the verge of a nervous breakdown for a little over a year now. I thought either I would break, or I would have to go to a doctor and medicate my feeling away and a vacant winter person all the time. I don't like that option at all. It would give me nothing to look forward to the winter. Instead I am going to drive more. No matter the cost it couldn't cost more than a doctor even at 3 bucks a gallon.

I rediscovered my love of winter, and thought my way out of a nervous breakdown with just an hour long drive. Who needs doctors?