Some Things Still Aren’t Easy in Old Age

So I’ve just finished the seventh and final volume of the Dark Tower series. Anyway, a chronology, to the best of my recollection:

- May, 1992: I read The Gunslinger on the drive to Florida
- Later, 1992: read The Drawing of the Three (released five years earlier) and The Waste Lands (released the previous year)
- Fall, 1997: Wizard and Glass read immediately upon its release
- November, 2003: Wolves of the Calla
- June, 2004: Song of Susannah
- Today: The Dark Tower

Twelve and a half years. That’s a damn long time, almost half my life. I’ve gotten into a mood of thinking how much has changed over that time. I have but one friend, Kyle, that I’m in regular contact with that I knew before I started reading the series (I just mentioned that to him).

The five years until volume four seemed like forever. I think I may have reread the first three sometime in the years between. Wizard and Glass sticks out because it is very much a love story, and I was at the time moody and brokenhearted over the breakup of my first serious relationship. Surely the story wouldn’t have resonated so much if I didn’t have my own experiences with love. Ha! How naïve those teenage years can be. How funny it is to think back on those times with Lauren, and our eventual on-again-off-again relationship long after I was finished with that book.

Six years later and the end of the series is finally in sight, with sai King completing the final three volumes in succession. Rereading the first four books last summer provided a much-needed distraction from the post-Billie adjustment. Not that it was overly emotional, I think we were both confident in the decision to end things and not much of a shock at that point, but after four years it was still a strange situation. It was awkward at first, but I’m glad that I can now count her as one of my best friends.

So it’s now over a year later, those final volumes have come and been devoured, associations with other stuff in my life have been formed. But contemplating things right now, as I have been wont to due with much of my time the past year and a half, leads to realizations of how old I’m getting. It’s funny how I can comment on naïveté about my teenage self when it comes to relationships, yet at the same time do I really have much of a better idea of how to proceed in such situations? I’m getting the impression of a definite ‘no’ on that front. But it almost doesn’t make sense. There was a time not so long before Billie and I split that I fully expected to be engaged at this point.

Engaged … that’s a scary thought. But here I am at twenty-five, still confused and plagued with self-doubt and getting bogged down in trying to interpret signals and hidden meanings. Surely it should be easier at this point?

I seem to remember having some sort of point before I started rambling …