Dead at 24 (Part 1)

I.

The Year I Disappeared

I was twenty-one when I had the dream that I wouldn’t live past twenty-four. It wasn’t vivid. It didn’t involve fire or falling. I was simply standing in the dirt somewhere under a blue sky, facing right, staring at the horizon when a voice matter-of-factly said, “You will die at twenty-four.” Then, a snap to black. I didn’t give it much weight; just thought, we’ll see.

I was living between Idaho and Oregon at the time, drifting. I was a quasi-vagabond who, generally speaking, held jobs that didn’t matter, except when I was teaching snowboarding or selling snowboards. I was proud to have either of those jobs be an essential part of my identity because snowboarding was such an essential part of my identity. I wanted to share my joy, especially for deep snow. I shifted between Boise and Bend for about five years, keeping my belongings to whatever could fit in my car. There was a kind of freedom in it because I wasn’t rooted to any clear purpose. I was waiting to be interrupted by a clear vision of who I was to become—a black crow to announce it was time to grow up.

The announcement came, but it didn’t come from a crow. It came as a vague but penetrating desire to learn. This surprised me because I hated school and couldn’t wait to get out. The desire seemed implanted, because I didn’t just have a desire for school; I also had a desire to move east, exactly what I swore I would never do five years earlier: go to college and move east again.

I did both.

I turned twenty-four and went to college near Philadelphia. Yet even this decision felt more like a drift, even if it was a sudden shift of current. So, despite this being a radical change from my unstructured mountain life before, it just felt like a new adventure. I would major in environmental studies and minor in astronomy and move back west again. That was all I knew. This was neither a crisis nor an awakening, just a sense that college might help materialize some shape to my life after years of translucence. A return to form. Or perhaps, a surrender to it.

Every winter it felt like a surrender, and I wondered whether I should’ve accepted that offer as a ranch hand, with my own truck and a free place to stay. And all my friends were still out there.

About the time I changed my major to English literature (less than a month into my first semester), I met a woman, someone I had a piercing love and concern for. So, when I had a dream—yes, another dream—in which she asked why I had not asked her out, I woke up that morning and decided I finally would. I had already made several visits the previous month, each with a new photo for her to frame. I bought frames I couldn’t afford for mediocre photos just so I could talk to her. My debt increased every time I delayed asking.

Eventually, we married.

Woven together, love reoriented my trajectory.

My sacrifices for love would be rewarded by love.

I wasn’t disappearing; I was maturing.