Memories Remain

So I may have thought that I made a mistake, going to graduate school overseas almost a year ago. Bilkent Üniversitesi, in Ankara, Turkey, was my choice that I accepted and then declined after three months. And it's been a painful year of reminiscing about it...

... the arrival as a stranger in a strange land, barely knowing enough Turkish to tell the cabbie to take me to the university... the lonely days, lonely nights, taking the bus to Çankaya by myself, walking around, buying cheap, spicy köfte (see picture) wrapped in flatbread with fresh-squeezed portakal suyu (that would be orange juice)... talking with friends I made over there but never really getting anywhere, helping my Korean dorm-mate Kim with his English, traipsing through the city with my German friend Christian, drinking Danish beer and smoking the nargile with my Kazakh friend Zhar and my Croatian friend Vjeran in the Turkish equivalent of a bar and grill, working up a sweat in the fitness center that was only open until 7:00 PM... tossing and turning in a fitful sleep in the spartan dorm bunks, classes that progressed so slowly, loneliness setting in with studying constantly, all work and no play makes Ramon a dull boy, no women to pursue and slake my lust and loneliness, seeing the blue truck of the Jandarma patrol the University roads every night, walking those same University roads and listening to Michael Jackson or the NESkimos or the Damned or Nomeansno on an mp3 CD, depression setting in and debilitating me, the decision made upon a simple night's walk that I was depressed as fuck and needed to get out of that stifling atmosphere as soon as possible, the plane ticket, the flight home...

But I'll be damned if I let my painful memories rule my life and my interpretation of the past.

The good and the bad are remembered, but also I must always remember that it was a decision, not a failure. And I'm probably better for my whole experience, even if I could not bring myself to stick around for my whole graduate program.

I've spent my life for so long believing that I'm worthless, believing it when other people said or implied in any way that I mean nothing, and I'm sick and tired of it. It's time that their opinions don't matter, and that my negative self opinion doesn't matter.

I'm here, I'm alive, and I'm preparing to go to graduate school again... stateside, here in New Mexico, at the eponymous New Mexico State University, a scant three hours from my new hometown of Albuquerque, in a little city somewhat near the Mexican border called Las Cruces.

Building one's self esteem from the rubble left over and not sorted out since adolescence is not something that can and will happen overnight, but I'm working on it. Very slowly. And with noticeable progress.

So let's give this established joke that is life a shove, eh? Together we run to the highest prop, tearing it down and letting the fucker drop!*

Not bad for a first entry, I say.
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* With much apologies to the late Darby Crash for my pilfering of his lyrics, in these two sentences and in the very title of my blog itself :P