September 1st: A New Beginning

And so I walked away. After 15 years of owning a messenger service - 15 years of defining myself professionally, spiritually, and in every way that matters as a messenger service owner – I left the Flash office after putting in a final full day’s work. It’s hard to describe what the experience of being a hands-on courier service boss in a major metropolitan area is like unless you’ve been in the business. Try to imagine that you’re a college sports coach, a NYSE floor trader, a psychologist, and a carnival conman all rolled up into one ball – that would be close. You could probably throw ghetto mother in there for good measure. It’s very intense: the emotional highs are very high, the lows are very low, the legal exposure is very real, and the money can be very good…. or not there at all. It’s above all stressful, and the chemicals produced in the human body by stress have been medically shown to be addictive.

Maybe that’s what’s happening to me right now. I’m detoxing.

As has long been my habit I pushed myself as hard as I could until almost the last moment, in all ways I acting exactly as if I’d be back in the saddle the next business day. In retrospect it was both comical and tragic. I would like to think that this tragicomic behavior came from a deep sense of professional ethics, but in reality I just don’t think I knew what else to do. I’ve pulled the plow so long I don’t know how to act without a harness strapped to my back. I’m not feeling sorry for myself; it’s just a fact. Two days out of the harness and I already feel directionless from lack of pulling.

Dominic threw a small party for me in the final hour. Many of Flash’s messengers came to wish me well; it was genuinely very touching. There was good pizza, excellent beer, and a lot of good cheer had by all. Dom and I said or professional (but not personal) goodbyes in a solemn manner, hugged, and I walked out the door never again to be Flash’s owner. Tina and I went downstairs to the Montgomery Street motorcycle parking lot, got our gear in order, and paused so that I could cry like a baby. What can I tell you? I had honestly thought that leaving Flash would be like having an enormous weight taken from my shoulders. It is – only that it turns out that without that weight I feel completely empty. The weight of Flash has been 90% of my life for so long that just philosophically knowing that it’s gone is like loosing a close friend or a family member. It’s been two days and I still feel like death on two legs.

Or maybe it’s been all of the hard drinking.

All right, it’s not just Flash. It’s Dominic as well. For almost a decade we’ve been closer than most brothers ever get to be. We’ve shared the same terrors, savored the same victories, and overcome the same obstacles together for so long that I have a hard time imagining doing anything without him. Even as I’m writing this I keep thinking, “How would Dominic feel about this?” We’ve spent more time together in that tiny, stressful office than we ever have with our wives at home. I honestly not certain that I’m a fully competent adult without the man I’ve come to think of in my adult life as an older brother. For much of my life I haven’t had to be.

I’m also not certain I’m a full man away from the helm of the business I stared a mere three months after I became old enough to drink. Or even a complete person away from the city that, for good or ill, has shaped my entire adult life. I’ve deliberately and systematically stripped away from myself everything that makes Jason Walters who he is so that I can become something that doesn’t really exist. It’s just a dream; abet one that has haunted me in waking visions for half a decade. More like a compulsion than a desire. To be really and truly free in that uniquely American way that our nation’s Founding Fathers envisioned. To live apart from others, liberated even from the wires and cables that tie us to one another. To live, as Jesus Christ once said, “As a passerby.” To become a real writer like Darren Watts, Steve Long, and Ken Hite rather than limping along as a dilettante. And, perhaps most importantly, to become the husband, father, and man I always hoped to be.

In the last two days I’ve learned this: while separating from the things one despises may indeed be the highest virtue, separating from the things one loves is the greatest torment. It is simply one of the Universe’s great cruelties that the two are often inseparably joined together.