Hitting the Ground.

Hitting the Ground
June 15, 2005

I've been to Las Vegas once. It was a fucking weird experience. Maria and I drove there, we stayed at Circus Circus and ended up spending the weekend with a couple of dudes who were in town for a upper management of McDonalds conference. I had a lot of fun, really I did, but what I remember about it now was being sleep deprived and waiting for a dude I knew in California to call me. He never called and heart was broken. If I would have been thinking rationally, I would have gotten hammered and made some really awesome decisions. But as it was, I didn't drink much back then and I suffered through my trauma without my now trusted friend, Pabst Blue Ribbon. I felt hungover the entire trip, which was the worst part.

It wasn't a conventional sort of hangover. It was those terrible mental hangovers when things that you thought were stable just come crashing down all around you. I'd built this complete fantasy in my brain and it had years to construct. Within the span of a few days, it was completely gone. That's a hangover, when fantasy hits reality.

Anyway, I've always thought this picture symbolized that moment in that trip. I was hanging out in the lobby of the Mandalay Bay by myself in my pretty dress, a gift from Emily several months earlier. I loved that dress. It was my "little black dress" even though it was purple. (In fact, it became a favorite dress to wear when I would take pictures of myself at 5 in the morning. Two of my favorites. Man, my room in college was awesome.)

The good news is those hangovers don't last nearly as long as they feel like they will. Quicker than you can imagine, they go away. All it took was a few weeks at a gym and some of that PBR and I felt completely right. That summer was the biggest 180 I've been able to turn. Probably because it really all was just in my head.

It almost always is just in my head. And it always gets better. I need to remember that more.

(Taken with a Sony DSC-P32 and this is is freaking PhotoSHOPPED. I did it years and years ago, but I can tell there's a motion blur and some major color adjustment. A little red goes a long way. Original is here.)