Monday, July 26, 2010

Change is hard but it's the easiest thing in the world

I have started this story a few thousand times, but this time feels different. I don’t care anymore.

What is the life of one man? What is the life of a man whom lost his job during the worst economic crisis in several generations?

Well, I can tell you it’s not really all that interesting.

I would think that after nine months I would have some great stories but I don’t. I don’t have anything but heartache, loneliness and creeping insanity to for the worst time in my life.

I say that with a sense of history. I’m only 26 years old, so of course this is the worse time of my life. I really haven’t had anything else happen.

I was smart, breezed through school, got into college. Took honors English and was running the school newspaper by my senior year. After college is when everything started to fall apart.

I guess I could blame myself. Without the structure of school I totally fell apart. But it’s not really that big of a deal. I got a job. Had it for six months. Lets not talk about it.

Then I got another job. I had that job for just over two years. I don’t want to talk about it.



It is one o’clock at night and I have nothing better to do than write my stupid life story onto my computer. I mean, at this point we are only 200 words in. You know I’m young and unemployed.

If you are smart you caught I don’t like conflict and I don’t like my life after college. What you wouldn’t have caught, because I didn’t say anything, is that I’m gay. It’s not really important, but I felt like I needed to tell you.

Like you care.



It’s not to say that my life since employment hasn’t been fun. I get to sleep too much. And I get to spend time with friends. But it’s always on their schedules which makes me feel like window dressing that just went with the rest of the living room.

No matter what my friends say, I always feel like an afterthought. At least one would hit me for putting that out there as the reason I don’t get the passion back. Yeah. I totally pull inside, but I don’t want friends who just go along, I want friends who will fight and pull me out of my shell.

And when I do, I love it, at least for a moment or two. I was hanging out with on of my best friend and we were debating life. I said that humans would fuck up any good plan. He said that there could be a plan humans couldn’t fuck up. I countered with that if so, that plan couldn’t be made by humans because we would fuck it up. He agreed.

It doesn’t sound exciting when I just write it down. I think I could even put hours and hours into getting the emotion of that moment to come out and it wouldn’t. Only Todd and I were there. That is our moment.

Like he said, it was like we were fencing. In the end we tied. But isn’t that the way it always ends in a great friendship? You both win.



Besides Todd I wonder about my other friends. I don’t really do friends that entirely well. After I hit by best friend the summer before my seventh grade year. She hit me first, but I guess you don’t hit girls. Did I say she hit me first?

Sorry, doesn’t matter. Well she had an asthma attack after I hit her. I still don’t know why. Why she had an asthma attack, not why I hit her. She hit me. And she hit me because I called her friend a bitch.

I’m not making this any better for myself am I? Well her friend was flirting with my mom’s boyfriend at the time, Brad. I never like Brad. Brad was Mom’s first serious boyfriend after the divorce. Brad didn’t stand a chance; I was never going to like him.

But Darcy did. And she was annoying me by making him feel special. He was sitting in my kitchen, talking to my friends and I wanted it to stop.

So I called Darcy a bitch. Then Ashley hit me. Then I hit Ashley. Then Ashley had an asthma attack and went home. Mom sent everyone else home too.

Soon after Ashley turned all my friends against me. All of them except Mike; he wasn’t there that day. He was grounded for something or another. I should say that all the friends Ashley did turn against me were girls. I guess they had to take her side. I think I said I’m sorry to her. I know I thought about it night after night. For years.

I would go on to hold a lot of anger towards Ashley for years to come. For turning people against me. At least through high school. By then she was going by Ashleigh and I was trying to turn people against her. It was cold, petty, and fittingly childish.

I don’t know where she is now. I wish her the best. She was the first girl I fell in love with. So yeah, that’s fucked up.



I didn’t really start having friends until college, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I told you I was gay and that it wasn’t important. It’s unimportant to who I am like it’s unimportant if someone is left-handed. Their different but that doesn’t necessarily make them interesting.

I told some friend I had, also named Mike, in like 7th grade that I was gay. Get that. He was like "Well as long as you don't hit on me I don't care." And he was cute! This was middle school.

I would think about writing about being gay in my personal journal we had to keep for 6th and 8th grade English (same teacher). Good thing I didn't. Several girls read it. To flirt and to toy with me.

(random: I had to take 8th grade English because I didn't read/write well enough based on some test. yeah, look at me now.)

But yes, it was not till 10th grade that I told someone else. I told Aimee Hankins. She was to be my first (and only) girlfriend. Given my attraction to women (even to this day, but yeah, still gay) I was lost. I called myself bi for a period in time. So yeah, we dated during the summer before 11th grade.

 That is also when I told my mom I was bi. I then started seeing a therapist. Of my own free will, mind you, I wanted help to work all this out. But yeah, he was no help at all. Bastard.

Aimee and I broke up because I wanted to. I don’t remember the reasons, but it doesn’t matter.

But yeah, so the next...oh, 2 years I would deal with being gay all by myself. Well, I still had Aimee for a bit before she ran off with her mom's car (don't. even. ask!) and her friend Amanda for a year. But yeah, in that time I have several online affairs, Leo, some crackpot from Michigan, and a guy from Louisiana I was "in love" with for sometime. Is it bad that I can't remember his name? Darryl. Yes, that is it.

Then there was Anthony; I first e-mailed him on March 2, 2002. He would prove to be the one that I would go to see and be my first 'gay' experience. If you don't count the phone sex with Leo!

But yes, Anthony and I met in the summer before school. June 21st, 2002 I do believe. I drove up to see him one day. His parents were out of town on vacation and he had the house to himself.

We met at a Perkins. So funny. Then I just followed my heart (or another organ) and I followed him back to his house. I made him lock the door, and when he came back to the couch I kissed him. At that point I knew, yes I was gay.

We made out. A lot. This is when I found out I love the feel of making out with a guy with a little bit of stubble. So gay.

We watched a movie, then we went to his bedroom. Well that was interesting.

A few months later I got my heart broken when he told me he slept with another guy. He’d actually done it before I even first met him. I got the e-mail and I sobbed. And I don't cry easily, or at least I didn’t back then. My first heartache. It was not really bad, but it hurt.

 But yes. Then there was college, where I dealt with being gay the most. But you don’t care about this anymore. Like I said, it’s not interesting.



College was more interesting for me making friends again. Most of the friends I made that first semester turned to shit, in one way or another. I know the first two girls in my class. Then I remember the two guys I rode with on the bus trip back to the campus after some event. One guy’s name was Steve, and I had a hard time remembering it. His friend I had no problem remembering; his name was also Anthony. I would live with those two my junior year. If only I would have known.

School didn’t get fun until the school paper and I really became one. But that is also just after my sophomore year. I had a horrible sophomore year. Lets not talk about it.

The summer before my junior year at Grand View College I moved into the apartments. I wasn’t moving home. I was moving in with Steve and Anthony. I was getting ready to be on the school paper. The News Editor. And that summer I started drinking. I had never even really drunk anything until moving into that apartment. I would meet Dan, Anna, Todd, Marty, and a million other people in that apartment and that is where they met me. I think my college life is summed up in that four-unit apartment on the first floor.




If that apartment summed up my social life, the newspaper office was the other pole in my life. I was on the college newspaper since freshman year. I was on my high school paper too. It seems I have a thing for writing.

But no matter how much the newspaper shaped me, it’s time with my friends I remember. So many friends and so many memories.

I don’t remember friendship being this hard. When did it get hard?

Now Dan is getting ready to move to Reno with Anna so he can go to school for his PhD. I only wish I was kidding. I’m happy for him but I am going to miss my friend. But I already miss my friend. I just don’t know how to be great at being social.

I sit here unemployed and I am only wondering when Todd is going to leave. The only reason I am staying is because I have nowhere to go.

But that’s not going to stop my friends. Change is hard. But I just don’t know if I’m ready to fully jump into the next part of my life.

Change is hard. Change is hard but it's the easiest thing in the world.