SWARTHOS

I sit here in my Los Angeles lair, the city’s neon pulse flickering through the blinds like some deranged carnival outside, and I’m thumbing through these cursed high school yearbooks again. It’s a ritual, a sick one, like poking a bruise to see if it still hurts. Starts out innocent enough—curiosity, a little nostalgia, the kind of thing that creeps up on you when the whiskey’s half-gone and the night’s too quiet. You think, Hell, let’s take a stroll down memory lane, flip through the pages, see what the old ghosts look like. Big mistake. Every time. It’s like stepping into a slow-motion car crash, a one-way ticket to a dark, depressive swamp where the air’s thick with regret and the ground’s made of quicksand.

These yearbooks, man, they’re time capsules of a life I barely recognize. Smiling kids with bad haircuts, scribbled notes in the margins—“Stay cool, man!” “See you at the reunion!”—all of it screaming potential, promise, a world where anything was possible. And here I am, decades later, staring at those glossy pages like some grizzled archaeologist unearthing a civilization that collapsed under its own weight. My life? It’s not what I’d call a shining success. Turned out to be a pile of busted dreams and half-finished plans, a jagged mosaic of almosts and what-ifs. I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong—grateful for the air in my lungs, for this bizarre, mysterious ride through L.A.’s fever-dream streets. But damn, those yearbooks drag me into corners so dark they make the city’s underbelly look like a theme park.

It’s the faces that get you. Those kids, frozen in time, grinning like they’ve got the world figured out. I see myself in there—awkward, hopeful, clueless—and it’s like staring at a stranger who trusted the universe a little too much. What happened, man? Where’d the spark go? Life in Los Angeles has been a wild, twisted saga—moments of pure, unfiltered magic, like stumbling into a David Lynch movie where the bartenders know your name and the sunsets bleed surreal. But there’s been bizarre crap too, the kind that sticks to your soul like tar. I’ve seen things, done things, lost things. I wouldn’t trade it, not for anything. This city’s been my muse, my tormentor, my home. But those yearbooks? They’re a portal to a place where I’m not just haunted by what was, but by what never came to be.

Every time I crack one open, it’s the same arc. Starts with a chuckle—look at that mullet, check out that cheesy prom pose—then the mood shifts, slow and sinister, like a storm rolling in. By the time I’m halfway through, I’m drowning in it: the missed chances, the roads not taken, the people I let slip away. It’s a slow trip through hell, and I don’t know why I do it to myself. Masochism, maybe. Or some desperate need to reckon with the past, to make sense of the mess. Regret’s a heavy drug, man—it doesn’t just hit you, it lingers, seeps into your bones. I close the book, but the weight stays. My life’s not a total wreck—I’ve got stories that’d make your hair stand on end, moments of grace that’d make you believe in something bigger. But those dark corners? I find ’em, and I get stuck.

So what’s at the end of this tunnel? Hell if I know. Maybe it’s just more tunnel, more shadows to stumble through. Maybe it’s a light, faint and flickering, that says, Keep moving, you’re not done yet. Los Angeles teaches you to live with the mystery, to embrace the chaos and call it home. I’ll probably open those yearbooks again someday, like an idiot, and take another dive into the abyss. But for now, I’m here, glass in hand, the city humming its lunatic song outside. The past is a ghost, but I’m still kicking, still chasing whatever’s next. And that’s enough. For now, that’s enough.