It's My Own Desire. It's My Own Remorse.

Where we used to have our Wednesday evening meetings in the California Conservation Corps.

I'm trying to do more writerly posts...Again. So, here we go. This is just a sketch and will need a ton more work. As you know, I am about the messiest writer in the world. I just need to get some of it down, so I can start tidying it up:

We were riding in a state van from Angels Camp to Leggett, California. The radio was on playing all of the big hits of that Spring. Too much Wham and Whitney Houston, but then Tears for Fears came on. I said, "Ech! That's not true. I don't want to rule the world."

"Bullshit. Everyone does. You're just trying to sound like you're better than that."

"No. The last thing I would ever want is to be in charge of the world. I don't want to tell people what to do. I just want them to do what they want without hurting anyone else. It would make me crazy to have to be in charge of everyone."

"I don't believe you. If you could make everything work exactly the way you wanted, you would do it. I know I would"

At the time, I didn't realize how telling this conversation was. He was my first boyfriend, and we were heading to our first real job in the Conservation Corps. I was 19 and everything felt new and was happening so fast, that I couldn't process it all.

Originally, I wanted to get placed at Turtle Island. I had friends moving to San Francisco, and I wanted to be able to hang out with them. Then when I went to the training academy I changed my mind. I met Jimmy, and he was going to Leggett. He told me that that was where the real work was. Salmon Restoration. We would be saving our little corner of the environment. On Turtle Island I would mostly be picking up garbage all day.

So, I went. We were a small group heading to a tiny satellite center in a town of about 150 marijuan growers on the border of Mendocino and Humboldt County. We were there for about a month before Jimmy just stopped talking to me for no apparent reason.

Eventually, he got his ex-girlfriend from high school to join the corps and come to Leggett. She was so sweet. I remember talking to her after she had been there for a few months. she was all upset and frustrated that Jimmy was always so critical and bossing her around all of the time.

I, on the other hand, met another guy there and we started dating. He wasn't bossy, he was just messed-up in as many different ways as I was. Not a good combination, we two. We stayed together on and off, and moved around all over the place before finally breaking-up for good in 1988.

It took me years and ever so much emotional work on my part to finally be able to have a healthy relationship, starting in my mid-forties. There were always clues early on in every relationship that it wasn't going to work, but I either ignored them, or was sure I could and should change or cut off those parts of myself that didn't work with the other person. For the first time in my life, I haven't had to do that for John. Sad that it took so long in my life, but I'm glad that it eventually happened.

People always say they wish they could go back in time and relive their youth, knowing what they know now. I don't think I would. With as many horrible mistakes I've made in my life, I wouldn't want to go back there without being able to experience all of that for the first time. I wouldn't want to experience that time without that innocence and ignorance...Mostly, though, I can't imagine having to hang out with all of those other messed-up people in their late teens and early twenties in 1985 without my head exploding.