friendship

Sometimes I think my life is a soap opera and I’m just living in it. Other times I just wonder how I ended up with such a great group of friends.

We, as humans, do a lot of things that form what we call our life, including many different types of relationships, but nothing shapes us like our close friends.

In our society the ability to be sociable, that is to make someone like you, is a more prized gift than anything else. No one gets a job, no matter how smart or talented, unless you can get someone to like you.

So much goes into our relationships with our friends, but we don’t think about it. I remember doing the trust exercise in high school where I had to fall backwards into a friend’s waiting arms. Friendship is putting trust in that person they will be there to catch you if you fall, so to speak.

Friendship is a delicate thing that may be strong or it may be weak; most of the time you don’t find out until it is put to the test. Like it or not, friendship is one part shared history, one part shared interests and a whole lot of faith.

Please

Dear peope who don't give a fuck!,

It is Sunday afternoon, two days after the party. All I want to do it throw things against the wall. I want to hurt people. I want to hurt me.
I am just full of energy and have no fucking clue what to do with it. I do one thing, and it fucking blows up in my face. Fuck details!

I left the party early because I threw up and fel tlk e a fuckingaz. Fuckt!

I feel like I am running away but I'm not getting anywhere. I smoke pot, and i tdon't get anywhere. I drink and I don't get anywayere. I canf rdoaifhe

Any time I get close to actually having a moment of truth I fill with energy from no where and everywhere and then I blow up. I fill up with emotion and it just blows me up.

I no longer exsist.

I am no longer me. Who am I?

Please fucking tell me who I am.

Please.

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.

My favorite written works

I have been looking for books to read, so to see what I liked, I went back and found my favorite books/plays/short stories. Enjoy!

#1. Hamlet
by William Shakespeare




#2. This Must Be the Place
by Gabriella Morrison




#3 Home at the End of the World
by Michael Cunningham




#4 Dreams from My Father
by Barack Obama




#5 The Stranger
by Albert Camus




#6 Dance With Innocence
by Gabriella Morrison




#7 The Hours
by Michael Cunningham




#8 Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury




#9 1984
by George Orwell




#10. Team of Rivals
by Doris Kearns Goodwin

I am lost

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
- Albert Einstein

On this Black Friday, I am lost.

As a person that tends to take what other people say to heart, I have been beaten, bruised, and destroyed by people who are only out for themselves. They are lashing out from their fantasy world, and in the process, stupid little me tries to understand their place in reality.

And thus, I am wrecked. This is what I get for trying to understand people and the world better.

“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?”
- Albert Einstein

To live in this world, you have to understand that at any given time, only about 50% of the people are going to agree with you. The greatness of a man is to continue to fight for what he knows is right in the face of mounting opposition. A leader fights for what is right and makes it popular; he does not take what is popular and pretend that it is right.

"Let us have Faith that right makes might, and in that Faith, let us to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."
- Abraham Lincoln

Thinking for myself, for that I am thankful.

"And I will place within them as a guide
My umpire conscience, whom if they will hear,
Light after light well-used they shall attain,
And to the end persisting, safe arrive."

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book III. Lines 194-197

While Thanksgiving has never been a religious holiday, some are using it to push "following God's law" and not "economic experimentation with socialism" this year. Crazy, I know. Can't we just be thankful we are still here? Like, a year ago, that wasn't a done deal. A year ago things were looking really bad. With headlines like "Is the U.S. Headed Towards the Second Great Depression?" it is easy to see we really have had a good year and have much to be grateful for.

Personally, with all the talk of following God's laws, I am brought back to that quote from Milton. "And I will place within them as a guide/My umpire conscience..." To me it says almost everything. God gave us the ability to think for our self, and gave us a voice inside our head to do the right thing. And that voice is the spirit of God, whatever you want to call him.

So, telling me I have to follow a set of rules men wrote down in a book thousands of years ago even when the "umpire conscience" in my head thinks they are wrong is crazy. I don't like having other people do my thinking for me.

I may not be religious, but I do believe God gave me the ability to think for myself, as well as pointing me in the right direction. So please, don't tell me your beliefs are more right than mine, because in America we have the freedom to believe whatever we choose to believe.

And that is what Thanksgiving is about. Being free to make our own decisions. And for that I am thankful.

Open your mouth & speak!

“Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It's funny how little things can really help you think. I just turned off our desktop PC because the fan was being WAY too loud. Once it was off, I could actually hear myself thing again. It was like taking a torn out of your foot.

I have been up all night and I just can't seem to find my voice. I want to write something but I can't get my thoughts from my head into words. The first problem is I don't have anything to really talk about, so I just end up going on and on about nothing.

I shouldn't be so hard on myself. I actually did get some things done this week. I got my car payment situation fixed for now. It was gonna be hard to keep paying a huge monthly car payment without a job, but I got it worked out. I also applied to several jobs so that I can at least stay qualified for unemployment if I can win my claim next week. All I have to do prove is that I'm not responsible for getting myself fired. I actually have a good case.

But I could have done a lot more. I'm not sure what, but for one I could have done a lot more writing. I've thought about working on some short stories I have going, but that is leading nowhere fast.

One thing I have done in lieu of actual action is watch a lot of news. I have been really bogged down with the news of the last few weeks. I mean, from Ft. Hood to health care, and from 10%+ unemployment to off-year elections we have all been lucky to move day-to-day without going crazy. Now throw in losing your job, having your 26th birthday and taking your mother in for eye surgery. I have not been focused on the bigger picture. I've been worried about applying to enough jobs to quality for my unemployment while trying to figure out how I'm going to help my mom out now that I'm costing her money instead of making money.

That doesn't mean, however, I haven't been thinking about the big picture, but I feel like I've been so deep in the trenches of politics I haven't been fighting the battles that really need to fought. I have done what most liberals do: I have given into the conservative attack of the moment. Be it health care, Fox News, or the economic stimulus, I have let them define the debate. And doing that, we lose.

While we might be able to save this debate and win, I think the best we can do now is push to the end and pass health care. Then maybe we can get our footing and do everything else we need to do.

Until then, I'm going to read some more. Maybe then I will get my voice back. And have something to say.

Top 5 speechs by President Barack Obama

#1. 2004 DNC Keynote speech



#2. Only A Union



#3. Character of Our Country



#4. President Obama's Inaugural Address



#5. President Obama Memorializes Walter Cronkite



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Now obvisouly this is just my opinion. I would love to get your input.

part of a story I'm writing

“The man who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m not sure why I have always been a night owl. Staying up passed three every morning, just because I could.

Maybe I just loved the feeling of being so alive when every one else was asleep. Maybe I just wanted to do whatever I wanted to do, no matter how early I needed to be up.

Plus, this book I am reading has been a real page-turner. It is a political biography. “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

I know most people wouldn’t find it as engrossing as I do, but I have a great respect for the written word, and Goodwin knows how to tell a story. It doesn’t matter that it took place more than a hundred years ago, it is just as alive and interesting, if not more, as the current headlines. Who cares about Jon and Kate when you can read about how Lincoln put together what is possibly the boldest cabinet in Presidential history, at least to that point.

Even my friends make fun of my love of history.

“You’d rather live in the past than live today,” Van told me once. He’s probably right, but it wasn’t always that way.

There was a time I looked forward to every new day. Every day was a new adventure always waiting for me; every day there was always something new to learn.

Not anymore. Now every morning I wake up, I fight with myself to even open my eyes. Because on the other side of my eyelids is just the same bullshit corporatist world.

And if I don’t open my eyes then I’m not really awake, and if I’m not really awake, I don’t have to deal with all the shit in my life. I don’t have to deal with my alarm, which is going off. I don’t have to deal with Eve, Adam, or any of the dozen paintings I haven’t finished. And I don’t have to think about work.

But everyday, without fail, I open my eyes. It’s just another day. I hope everyone has this feeling. Because if they don’t, and I’m the only one, that makes me really weird.

Mark Cameron. That’s my name. It’s what people call me; but I don’t know if the name fits the soul. I’ve always thought I was more of a Ted. I don’t know why, but doesn’t Ted Cameron sound better?

Oh well, blame my mother. I’m stuck with Mark.