Through the Tunnel

Chapter 1: The Highest Climber

I hate inspirational and encouraging quotes. Correction: I love picking them apart and proving that they are actually complete and utter bullshit.

But that's just me I suppose. I have conflicting likes and dislikes. A great example would be how I can be completely superstitious and I believe in Karma, good luck, bad luck and all that voodoo hippie shit, but then at the same time I believe that everything happens for a reason. So basically my beliefs contradict each other. But like I said, that's just me.

Going back to the encouraging quotes, well... I say 'encouraging' but they don't really work like that for me.

Once, my mum had all these problems with the credit card company and was getting stressed out about it and then one day it all just resolved itself, and I remember, after she got that last call to say that everything is back on track again, she turned to me and said: "There's always a light at the end of the tunnel" and that's when I realised that what she was saying just wasn't that encouraging, in fact it was giving people false hope, and that's the worst kind of hope, in my opinion.

Saying that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, implies that everyone actually makes it through. Me, for instance, I myself are not making it through the tunnel, and that's okay. Do you know why that's okay? Because I don't want to make it through, because the few people who do, turn into complete arseholes.

I used to know a man named Frank. Now, Frank was 31 when I was 15, which would make him 33 now. The reason I had to work that out is because Frank turned into a complete arsehole. Right after he left his slut-dropping whore of a girlfriend (who we used to bitch about, like all the freaking time) he was finally happy and basically started actually enjoying life. This was when he became the arsehole he (probably) is still today.

But I haven't actually spoken to him in two years, he used to buy me vodka and we'd go drinking every weekend. But then Frank decided he wanted to 'sober up' and 'turn his life around'. And I was left vodka-less, friend-less and irrationally pissed off. But the moral to this story is that when you do in fact find this so called 'light' at the end of this so called 'tunnel' you turn into an arsehole and go around thinking the world is your oyster. Which by the way it is not, because you actually have to share this oyster with the rest of the world. However you can determine how much of the oyster is actually yours.

There are a lot of sayings like that I would happily analyse for you but quite frankly I have more important things on my mind.

For one, I have to try and explain to my parents that I won't be here this summer. And I should probably do so before I actually leave for our road trip.

Not much planning has been done leading up to this 'once in a lifetime' trip. At least that's what they're calling it. I wasn't really that excited about it until recently. Sure, we are going to be seeing the world without even knowing where we're heading until the day we leave and I'll be with some pretty amazing people but when I first agreed to it, there was one particular person I was looking forward to going with. Jackson, who I now refer to as that son of a bitch of a boyfriend. Well EX-boyfriend now, but you get my point.

Anyway, it was originally going to be:

Anne-Marie with her girlfriend Frankie but as it turns out, Frankie is a whore so she's not invited and Anne-Marie will be spending the trip drinking away her problems (in all fairness, two freaking years is a long freaking time so I don't blame her for feeling hurt) and I'll be joining her, so it kind of works out for both of us.

We were also taking Jason but he decided he would rather stay with his girlfriend who apparently doesn't like long car journeys. But honestly, not many people like Jason so I think it worked out in our favour.