Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

I envy people who can come up with killer opening lines to their stuff, but I'm not really sure I'm one of those people. 

If you’ve ever written a paper before you know grabbers and that shit are pretty important in terms of getting your reader's attention. You pick up something by somebody like Eliot Weinberger and read the first line and it’s like, BOOM, you’re hooked. Unfortunately I’m better to talk to in real life then on paper, so I can’t promise anything all that spectacular or memorable. I’m not William Wordsworth, and it’s really all I can do try and to even record all of this, I don’t know if it will stand out from all the other blogs like this one.

That’s weird isn’t it? Writing what might ultimately be the last account of your life and hoping it’s not cliche. Like a hundred years from now the historians of the ages will be leafing through their virtual text books of people who went missing during the horrible fear reign, and they’ll find mine and be like “Standard, put it in the archives,” and that will be that. Kind of a depressing thought, after all, the only real immortality is in being remembered. I think that's why I decided to start writing this thing. At first I wasn't really ecstatic about the idea because again, I'm not much of a writer, but the thought of just kind of vanishing into the night without so much as a trace? Are people going to remember me? I hope people do. But I’m getting ahead of myself and assuming you all know more than you probably do.

Here's a quick list of the things you need to know. 

1. My name is Beth. Or Powers, Beth Powers, if you like Sean Connery (which I do.) I'm 25 years old as of today. I know, New Years baby, crazy. I officially have just hit the quarter life mark, and unfortunately I am spending my birthday alone because . . .
2. My family, that is my mother and my sister are missing. It's been about ten months since I last heard from them? I don't know where they are, though I suspect it has something to do with . . .
3. The Fears. A hodge-podge of abominable eldritch stalkers who have confirmed for a few people that there are things in fact that live under your bed. (Honestly if you haven't had experience with them you're probably operating under the assumption they're like UFO's or Yetis and they're just something a bunch of teenagers thought up, which, yeah ok, I'm not here to convince anyone otherwise. If you haven't had any run ins with them, you're not going to get it.) But in the term of ten months, my mom and my sister have gone missing and there's been this...I don't know exactly how to put it? A shadow chasing me? For all intents and purposes I'm calling it the shadow. This being stalked by a supernatural entity that gets in my head and dreams has caused me to now be . . .
4. On the run, or a runner, or a whatever. Point is I'm living in a van. Granted its a very nice van, I gotta mattress and some homey stuff to make it cozy, and my baby is here. (My baby being Scuba, who is not a baby but a Border Collie and basically my last friend...and my baby.) It's the two of us, which...is not what I'd call an ideal situation but it is what it is. We've been traveling around since I left home (in events pretty much unrelated to Fears but also maybe related I guess? To quote my Facebook relationship status, "it's complicated.") Right now we're in Northern California, ripping wifi off a Micky D's and watching the New Years broadcast in Time's square. Kind of a tradition with us, which sort of brings me to the point of this whole blogging thing.

This last year has been shitty, for me but for a lot of people too. I think when New Year's comes around every passing year just seems shitty and nobody likes shitty years, so we all get pumped for this new chance to finally do those things we've been telling ourselves for decades we're going to do. 2015 however, I don't know, for the first time I've been kind of dreading it. It's unnerving when you look at a year and think that this might be the one that gets printed on your grave. Which ties it into the blog thing that is happening right now as the year is starting up. I'm going to try and make this one count, and I mean that because this could be it. I've got my list of New Years Resolutions all ready to go. It’s been ten months of fear and paranoia, and I’m not sure where that got me. I’m still scared, I’m still paranoid, but it’s 2015 and I need to find something to do or I’m going to go crazy.

So starting a blog like this, reaching out to some of those other people out there so I don't vanish, that's item 1. And here I am, five minutes after midnight and getting it done. So here it is, as of now, the functioning last testament of me, Beth Powers, and I'm not being overdramatic with that, that's what I'm calling it. Header title, Vagabond, because I have no fucking clue where I'm headed, but goddammit I'm going to get there.

So cheers to new friends.

-B ✿