December 2003 Aethestic

Before I move on to my yearlong celebration of 1999, there's one thing I didn't get to last year, and I can't let it pass. I won't link to this post anywhere. It's for Nicsperiment diehards only.

It's December 2003, and I'm under more pressure than I'm emotionally equipped to handle. I am 22-years-old, and I've spent the last 13 years of my life in what most diagnostic handbooks would classify as cult. I'm trying to leave, but also fearful that I'm negatively impacting my peers by doing so. My own mother, who I wouldn't properly reconcile with for another 15 years, is applying as much pressure as anyone--she brought me to this place when I was 9, and as much pressure as I feel that I'll hurt people by leaving, she feels even greater that I'll be hurt if I leave. However, I'm in my early 20s and a college senior. After a January 2003 doctor's visit revealed that certain cult-induced behaviors were literally killing me, I made a vow that I would live the rest of the year as freely as possible, as close to a normal heterosexual male in his early 20s in 2003 as I could be. So I did. It's been a great year. However, I've had all that cult weight basically pushed into a tiny closet, and by late December, it's starting to spill out and crush me. 

December 2003 feels like a last hurrah before I have to seriously contend with the weight bearing down upon me. An apocalyptic ending. Rather fittingly, I see Return of the King three times in the theater. It's not just set in an apocalyptic landscape--it features many great endings. The first viewing I attend at midnight on my 22nd birthday, with over 20 friends from disparate circles and walks of life, the most epic gathering I've ever fostered--before the movie starts, I share a box of birthday donuts with a handful of those friends, donuts given to me by my on campus job, and before that, I'd gone to the LSU vs Utah basketball game, just to make sure the day is full. I've also finished my last Spanish class just days before--those 18 hours, taken since my sophomore year, were the bane of my bad-at-foreign-language experience, so getting through them feels like a huge relief. My other big achievement that semester is completing a ten-minute shortform documentary for a non-fiction filmmaking class. I get an "A." In fact, I get all "A"'s that semester, the only time in my college career.

Throughout the month, I listen to Radiohead's histrionic Hail to the Thief, a very good album that nevertheless makes 2003 seem like the most catastrophic year in human history. It isn't, but that looming apocalyptic catastrophe looms over my head, nonetheless (is there a difference between “nevertheless” and “nonetheless?”). Speaking of endings and looming apocalyptic catastrophe, I've been reading the 19-book-long Star Wars: The New Jedi Order series since it premiered during my senior year of high school. It ends in late 2003 with James Luceno's The Unifying Force, and what an ending it is, essentially the Star Wars Extended Universe's Return of the King (and like live-action Lord of the Rings, it should probably end there!). As soon as classes end, I binge the book, love it, but feel strangely empty. 

Before I know it, the month--and the year--is ending. I spend New Year's Eve bouncing between two gatherings. The first is at my good friend Robker's house, where we play a card game spoofing Dungeons and Dragons. I eventually leave that get together and head back to my hometown to visit my cousin Amber. Our friend Katie is there, among others, and in the final moments of 2003, and the first of 2004, after everyone else, including Amber, either leaves or goes to bed, Katie and I watch Katie's copy of the nutso 2000 Japanese action flick, Battle Royale. It's one of my favorite all-time film viewings, and a memory far more precious to me now that Katie has passed away. In fact, that's why I felt the obligation to write this piece. Katie died in May of 2023. Amber and I were at Katie's bedside in the days before she drew her final breath, but I never got to have one last conversation with her. I never got to thank her for providing moments of safety and sanity throughout the course of my life, from our childhoods, all the way to now. It's January 2024, I'm 42, the cult I grew up in is gone, and it's been over 18 years since I left it. 

But Katie isn't gone. Her memory rests close to me, forever. I might be focusing on 1999 for The Nicsperiment this year, but the output is dedicated to Kathryn Springstead.