Jonah: Swallowed by a Giant Plane

It's late Monday night. I should be sleeping; I will take my little brother to camp for the penultimate time (at least for a long time) tomorrow morning. It occurs to me that I am going to miss him. A lot. I should sleep so that I can be fully rested and enjoy what little time I have left with him.

I'm too excited to sleep though. I cannot wait to find myself in Texas, and there is something so endlessly strange about that, being excited about Texas. My thirteen-year-old self would be appalled and furious if it weren't already preoccupied with gaping at me in utter disbelief.

"Texas?? But we HATE Texas," it is protesting. "Let a black hole swallow the entire state! Nothing good comes from Texas!" I grew up with a very big "thing" against Texas. Blame it on Bush, I suppose.

When I was about fifteen or sixteen, my best friend, on whom I had depended a very great deal, decided that they absolutely hated my very guts in that way only fifteen- or sixteen-year-olds can. It was one of the most painful losses I have ever experienced. It sucked. I was miserable.

In the midst of my grief, anger, pain, and swirl of incomprehensible emotions, my iPod played a song I had never heard before. There's a long, logical explanation for how it ended up on there, but in retrospect, I think I was just supposed to hear it. To use only a little hyperbole, it changed my life.

Imagine my horror when I found out the person who wrote that live-saving song, Bryce Avary (The Rocket Summer), was from Texas. It was a bit of an existential crisis. How could someone who seemed so nice, who wrote things to which I related so well, who clearly cared about the world, be from Texas??? It was impossible to comprehend. I knew the answer, but I didn't like it. I frantically fled from the suggestion that Texas might not be simply a hell-hole of pure evil.

Going to Texas feels like finally submitting to something that has been calling to me for the past four to five years. I feel like Jonah: I have been running and running from Texas, determined that nothing in Texas could possibly be good, and at last I will be swallowed by a plane which will, after three hours in its belly, spew me out in the very capital of Texas.

A few months ago, when I finally made my decision to go to Texas, I was mostly just terrified. I had already known for a couple years that I would have to face my (irrational) fear of Texas at some point, but it didn't make it any less scary. I lost plenty of sleep being afraid and nervous.

Tonight, I am sleepless with excitement. It feels so right to be rocking out to The Rocket Summer right now. "Let the revival rattle me and open my eyes, open my eyes!" I cannot wait to be rattled. I cannot wait to have my eyes opened. Texas, here I come.