Nebraska 1987

 

Downtown Omaha, 1980s

I have no idea if I've written about this before, but my post about a specific day in Rego Park, Queens in 1984 generated some high, anonymous praise. Just a few years later, in the summer of 1987, I bolted to Omaha Nebraska for 3 delirious months. I didn't bolt there from Queens, I bolted from Austin (again). I had moved to NYC from Austin upon college graduation in 1983, moved back to Austin in 1985, and by summer of '87 was in a bad spot with some bad habits and had to move away again. When I moved to NYC it was the actualization of a dream that I followed through with...but things did not work out the way I had hoped & I moved back to Austin to latch back onto my partying lifestyle with my hardcore scene that was still active here. I had 3 adorable apartments in the neighborhood I now live in again (very expensive, very quaint, near downtown), but my demons got the better of me, and I treated them with the only cure I knew at the time: running away.

I had met this awesome girl when I went to Ireland for the first time in the summer of 1984 (another dream realized), and we fell so hard in love with that tiny country that we stayed friends after the trip and talked every day on the phone and made plans to move to Ireland - it was my second really big dream (moving to NYC was the first one). She lived in Houston at that time and was from a big farm family from Nebraska. I moved back to Austin and she moved back to Nebraska after college in Houston. We wrote letters everyday and pined for Ireland and the boys we fell in love with there. We had a shared dream and it was intoxicating for us. I worked at boring, low end jobs and was partying a lot with my college buddies. I seemed to moving in the opposite direction of a young person who was forging forward with their life. (A side note: I am seeing lots of music right now during SXSW and seeing all these young kids play their hearts out in these bands and makes me reminisce about my youth and I feel such compassion for that lost girl. Also proud that I am sober and able to enjoy the music and the connections with people in a really delightful way.)

So after 3 years of intense partying and bumbling around dumb low wage jobs, I dumped my super sweet boyfriend and packed up my Toyota Corolla and moved to Omaha to live with Julie. Our plan was solid: save up $500 and move to Ireland - back when $500 was a fortune to me! The end result of that I'll get to at some point but the process of planning the drive, driving without gps or smart phone (seems unbelievable now!), being giddy with Julie through our letters (handwritten letters!) about our plans was intoxicating. Our plan was valid and real, but I was also "pulling a geographic", which in AA lingo means running away from your problems by moving across country...something I'm really good at and LOVE doing.

I pulled up to her house with my crumply sheet of handwritten instructions gripped into onto the steering wheel and we had a joyous reunion. I had a basement bedroom in an ancient house that was full of character and charm. Julie greeted me with a full bottle of vodka (my beverage of choice!) and we drank that and drove to the brick streeted downtown to hang out at the Irish bar there. I quickly found a Bagpipe band and joined them and bought a practice chanter and started teaching myself songs on that. I was going to join the Omaha Pipes & Drums! I met lots of cool people and got a job making sandwiches at the Irish pub during the day. The Irish lady there with dyed black hair hated me as all her regulars stared at me, this cute young, college educated girl who'd replaced some toothless old hag. She either fired me or I quit, and then I became a Merry Maid for a week or so, and that sucked so I went on to work in call center, which was really the suck. Omaha is full of these call centers, where people call 800 numbers late at night to order records COD over the phone. I've had so many crappy jobs like this, I should create a new blog called Marsha's Super Crappy Jobs. It would have many entries!

But those 3 months in Omaha were filled with magic too...it was the first time since those heady first years after meeting my bio-dad in 1979 in NYC that my life seemed filled with promise and I had dreams to look strive for...I can see now that I've had a lifetime pattern: find something I love and strive towards it, and if it doesn't work out or ends, then come back to Austin (or a mountain in Oregon) and just do regular life stuff until the next big dream pops up. It took a long time for the Antarctic dream to materialize, and now that that seems to be over, it's been tough coming up with something that I can be that excited about...but I really need something juicy that I can sink my teeth into dream wise. It has come at a great cost to be a dream chaser (no family, thin connections (or very deep brief ones), loneliness), but it has been a price I am willing to pay.

We were giddy about our Moving to Ireland dream. We only went to Irish bars, listened to Irish music, read Irish books...but I had met a guy in Austin before moving to Nebraska and he wanted be with me and was calling me every day and deep down I wasn't as brave as Julie about moving somewhere with no plan and so little money. I ended up moving back to Austin to be with the guy....and Julie moved...to Ireland.

I felt like a failure and a chump. I got a super boring job at UT and started reading A Course in Miracles just for something to latch onto. Julie wrote me letters and I sat in my windowless auditorium on campus, feeling like a loser reading about her adventures. I had my boyfriend, but was partying hard on the side and started hanging out with old punk rock friends and got back into the hard partying lifestyle. I was heading towards 30 years old and did not like the direction my life was taking...weekend blowouts with 24 hour vomiting hangovers and low self-esteem jobs that matched how I felt on the inside. My higher self knew I needed to change...and the 80's ended, and I got married in 91 and sober in 92. Divorced in 95 and then 9 years later I atone for my shame of not moving to Ireland by moving to Antarctica for the biggest and best dream ever that lasted over a decade.

There were 20 years that passed btwn my first trip to Ireland where I fell so hard in love with a country, and my first step onto the White Continent, which was the Real Dream materialized. And now I can afford  to do anything. I could easily moved to Ireland, I could move anywhere and do anything. Anything but the thing I would most like to do: return to the Ice. But all is good. The second tier dreams of world travel and free time I am most grateful for.