bring on the fear so i can find my courage

one left...

2011-03-11T10:16:00.003-06:00

I am a crier. I always have been. I've spent most of today crying on the couch. For three reasons.

First off, I'm watching Julie and Julia which is quite possibly one of the most uplifting movies about living life with dignity, poise, and purpose. If you haven't seen it, it's about a woman in crisis who saves herself from herself via an epic quest through Julia Child's recipes. I think Julia Child's life is inspirational--an overly tall, gangly, outspoken (and sonorously offputting) woman conquering the world by finding purpose. And then there's my whole "I'm always mind-numbingly, pin-prickly aware that everything comes to an end" shtick that is boiled down to its essence by movies that end in an epilogue. Sappy feelings mean that I shed a tear or two. Almost always.

But this movie is particularly prescient today because the dignified, poised, and purposeful life theme practically bangs on the strings of my current life plan--the thing that is, in my mind, supposed to make fill my life with dignity, poise, and purpose. In the past two weeks I've received four rejections to PhD programs and two rejections to full-time jobs in the area. It hurts to admit that, even in writing on a blog that I rarely write in and is rarely read by anyone. I think it hurts because there is some crazy idea that, in this country, if you can't accomplish your dreams, there is something acutely wrong with you. Right now I feel stalled, like my dreams aren't happening. And I feel empty and worthless.

The third reason is always the underlying reason behind my tears--my mother. On days like today, when the bubble of hope starts rapidly deflating leaving behind empty feelings, I want to talk to my mother. I want to know what she would say to me. The world was different when she was alive--I was younger, floating in the carefree years of youth where there are very few occasions for rejection if you work hard.

It's not like that these days. And so I'm waiting for one more decision from one more school and I'm going to be trying very, very hard to wait with something resembling dignity, poise, and purpose because I can't keep waiting around for my mother to spring back to life or for a PhD program to decide I've made the cut or for a college to decide I'd be a fantastic teacher.

Or maybe I'll just find a bottle of wine.

distance or why Thanksgiving is heartwarming

2010-11-24T01:09:00.006-06:00

Distance is a funny thing. These days I call Woodstock, IL "home." Woodstock is precisely 263.56 miles from my childhood home. The first time I moved away from there I landed 126.1 miles away in Champaign. That venture didn't work out. ... And so I moved backwards 122.1 miles to an apartment in Jacksonville. After roughly two more years of that I moved 4347.3 miles to Paris for a study abroad program. If you are saying to yourself, Wait a minute, studying abroad isn't exactly moving, then you need to have a conversation with my sister who coordinated packing efforts to get me across the Atlantic. After a brief relocation or reluctant retreat to Jacksonville I jumped 334.89 miles to Ames, Iowa where I found a bit of myself, a masters degree, and the first place that I would make into a "home." One of the scariest moves I have made, however, is my move to Woodstock (336.04 miles, if you happened to be wondering, from Ames).

I say scariest because, despite the number of times I told myself "I am an adult" when I overloaded a UHaul truck to graduate school, I wasn't really an adult yet. I was still a kid in school. The day I got the final notice from a PhD program that my time spent on the wait list was to be, ultimately, unsuccessful, I suddenly found myself staring at a bigger and much more intimidating wall of impending adulthood. Self, I said, you've been training for 24 years. Now it's time to use that training and get a real job. And I did find a job, two to be exact, in the middle of Chicago suburbs, as many miles from where I grew up as the last place I had called "home."

And here I sit, writing out this thought that's been keeping me awake.

Tomorrow, the first full day of my Thanksgiving vacation, I will not sit. You see, somehow, no matter where I move, I seem to be near loved ones. I'm a mere 35.76 miles from my brother in Rockford which, I'll admit, was by design. The amazing thing is, though, that I landed a mere 27.85 miles away from a dear, dear friend who was just returning from a two-year pause in Japan. That wasn't by design, but I'm sure glad it worked out.

Here is where we get to the Thanksgiving part--the busiest travel days of the year. I'm not traveling this holiday but I have friends who are. Way back in Ames, I met a good friend. After he graduated he took a job in New York City but, for the holiday, he will be back in his hometown...which just happens to be 34.56 miles from my new "home."

Just goes to show that no matter how many times "home" changes, if you keep your eyes open, you find enough people to always feel at home.

From Portland to L.A to Hollywood to New York City to Ames and Des Moines to Albania to Springfield, Woodson and Geneva, happy Thanksgiving, people.

Virginia Woolf was right

2010-10-20T22:36:00.003-05:00

I am in the middle of my sixteen hour break between two classes that I teach. I get done teaching at 8:30, am usually home by 9:00 and try to be sleeping by 11:00 so I can get up no trouble at 7:00. All this so I can feed, wash, and dress myself by 9:00. Then I spend an hour with my teaching materials before I am out the door. After an hour commute, I am at school by 11:00 with another hour before I walk into the classroom. After I am done teaching and back home (another hour commute) I have four hours before I head back into the classroom for a three hour marathon class that meets once a week. Sometimes I think the Wednesday evening to Thursday night stretch is the worst but really my whole teaching schedule isn't fun.

I'm not complaining (I love teaching and I love the challenge of my job) but I teach four courses. Monday through Thursday I am booked solid. Mondays and Wednesdays I wake up at 8:00 so I can start working at 9:00. I usually try to take a break for a run at some point but otherwise I work from 9:00 to 5:00 (grading, reading, lesson-planning) before I actually step into a classroom at 5:30 (until 8:30). Tuesdays and Thursdays start out with a long one-way commute further in to McMansiontown. It makes for an odd schedule and it is a schedule that isn't frequented with "free time." I must also admit that a big chunk of the time I do have free is spent maintaining my budget and projecting it out over the weeks to come. If you divide out the money I make across the hours I actually spend working I make far less than minimum wage. Budgets can be scary. When strapped this tight they also lead to extraneous activities like applying for extra jobs (that I never seem to get). Add to this applications to PhD programs and professional development (article submissions and conference hopefulness) and I'm out. of. time.

"Free time" means thinking time. "Free time" means time to look at the world. "Free time" means time to write. I miss recording my thoughts on my blog and in my private journal. I miss spending time making notes for a future (dreamland) book of amusing yet thought-provoking essays. Writing is a privilege. Old Ginny had it right when she said that writing is the result of a well-nourished, generally supported mind. My mind doesn't feel that way these days. Most days I feel like I am at the bottom of a giant mound. My goal is the top of the mound but the mound is steep and ever time I start to climb it grows ten feet taller (this mound is obviously fed by a subduction zone). I keep plugging away but my brain gets tired.

and that's life

2010-05-12T01:12:00.004-05:00

When I get home, I going to swing by Barnes and Noble and buy a book for my mom. I saw several listed in the Mother's Day spread in Entertainment Weekly. They even had a section of books listed for "Mom's who like to read." That's my mom. It's been cold lately but I am sure, when I get home, it will be sunny out, and my mom's flowers will be in full bloom, and there will be just enough of a breeze to waft the pages of our books as we read together. I'm going to bring some of that Darjeeling tea I just discovered. She isn't a huge tea drinker, but this variety is just right. Not too dark with just enough of a fragrance to it. She's going to love it. Getting the tea will be my job and each time I get up to refill our cups, our dog Jules will look up inquisitively, only settling back down when I rejoin the peaceful afternoon with fresh tea and a few cookies to share. I will be in such a good mood, I might even bring him a treat or two. Maggie, our other dog, will be too busy sniffing something in the yard to notice. We will sit there, the two of us, reading our books in silence, simply enjoying each other's company as we spend that lazy, sunny afternoon together.

That's what I wish even though I know it can't happen. It's a dangerous fence to walk--maneuvering between giving agency to those wishes and, on the other side, gritting your teeth, nodding slightly, and moving on with your life. Despite the danger of walking constantly between option A and option B, balancing between the two is, by far, the happiest alternative. Either side, without the other, would diminish in importance on its own. And that's life, reduced to its essence.

creative people

2010-04-06T23:19:00.004-05:00

So I am sitting at my table surrounded by work. The remnants of this morning's American Public Address under signs of my job topped off with Frenchies talking about expats (thesis). It's all work, and there are weeks--like the last two, and the future four--where it seems like I do nothing but work.

So I finished grading seventeen speeches and was contemplating tomorrow's reality of twenty more and the unreality of a thesis that might write itself when I decided I needed a break. Not just a paltry need, like really, really needed a break.

So I pulled up facebook and, through a series of clicks, ended up on The Study Band. Now, The Study Band is special because my friend Jack is the pianist. I met Jack in Paris and I still remember the day I fell in love with him (no, not that kind of love, sicko) and an idea in one instant. Paris was difficult the first few weeks. It is far from home, and it is different. My head hurt with all of the change and, like everything, it all circulated around memories of my mom.

So I was trudging through the courtyard one day, fumbling with my lighter, headed for the lounge. It was a cold day in January and the cigarette smoke did that awkward thing where it hangs around your head. I was in the process of blowing it away from my eyes when I heard someone on the piano. It was Jack, and he was playing but not just playing, he was meditating, performing some act of self-therapy. By the time he had finished his song, his little bit of self-therapy had worked on me too.

So that's when Paris became about a lifestyle--the artist's lifestyle. Jack would play, I would write, we would spend long hours drinking with purpose and then wander the streets and, for me, it was all about experience. Like most artists, we weren't too terribly productive during our time in Paris (uhm, it takes time, duh) but it was worth it.

So when I am stuck at my table in Ames, Iowa surrounded by endless work that is so structured, so rigid, and, in some way, so painful, I listen to my friend Jack's band and I get this serene feeling in my shoulders and in the back of my neck. I am comforted because I know people who are out there giving the world the middle finger, writing music, living the lives of artists. Someone has to. So if it can't be me, I am glad it is Jack.

will you get in the car now, ma?

2010-03-02T13:42:00.004-06:00

"Goodnight, Christy."
"Goodnight, Ma. [Long pause as Bridget Brown turns and walks toward the car. She turns back to look at her son.] Go on, I'm all right. Will you get in the car now Ma, I'm fine." [Bridget gazes at her son, unsure of her place with him, unsure of his place with the world. She turns, and enters the car.]

And so ends, or nearly ends, My Left Foot--the movie starring Daniel Day Lewis as a man with cerebral palsy. It is a movie I must watch alone. I spend the majority of it crying. Crying not for Christy or his tortured body, not quite crying for his mother, but, instead, crying for my mother and what could have been or would have been between us had she not been the one to go first.

For me, the movie is about two things. First, it is about a tortured soul. Christy grew up misdiagnosed as mentally disabled, fought until he could communicate first with his left foot, then through garbled speech, then through painting, then through better speech, then, finally, through words on a page. While I am not crippled, I am tortured. When I watch the movie, I think of growing up gay and not knowing it, knowing only that I was different. That I am "different." But, truth be told, even my head can't fully justify placing myself on the same level as Christy Brown. I am only able to manage the parallel when my mind slips gracefully into the movie's second subject--the love of a mother for her child. The movie's portrayal of this subject really gets under my skin.

This woman, played by Brenda Fricker (the homeless woman in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York), is astounding. There is not a second when she is not fretting over her son, shielding him from his alcoholic father, pushing him little by little into the world, saving money for a wheelchair, trying to find him help, and worrying about his mental well being. She is the spitting image of my mother in some physical characteristics, but mostly in her personality.

My sister told me the story once about my bike accident. I don't remember it--I was unconscious for a while. The last thing I remember was closing my eyes for a second too long. I woke up in a hospital room with imprints a bridge on my face. But my sister remembers sitting at the table with my mom and my dad while I was out on my bike. Somebody told someone where I lived and sent someone else running to tell my parents that I had been hurt. As my sister remembers it, my mom was up, keys in hand, and out the door before my sister or my dad could even process what was going on. My mom's baby was hurt. That's all she had to know.

That's sort of who she was. You didn't notice her much (odd because her physical stature was quite imposing) until you either made her mad or hurt her children. Then she was scary. Nobody messed with her babies. Sometimes I think that protecting her children, offering them the best she could, was what she lived for. She certainly didn't get the chance to live much for herself.

But the movie also portrays a son's love for his mother. There is a scene in the movie, early on, when young Bridget Brown is pregnant, near her due date, carrying young Christy Brown up the stairs to his bed. She is sweating, breathing heavily, her eyes betraying doubts about her physical ability. She gets Christy in bed and again, it's her eyes--they tell us there is a problem. "Christy, I have to go and make a phone. Stay there. We hear her stumble out the door, down the hallway, and fall down the stairs. Her cry as she falls is absolutely sickening. The look in Christy's eyes is panicked and charged with adrenaline. Using his one good foot, he drags himself off the bed, out the door, down the hall, and to the top of the stairs. Seeing his mother collapsed, he half falls, half crawls to the bottom of the stairs where he pounds on the front door until help arrives. Christy, poor, crippled Christy, saved his mother's life.

That scream Bridget Brown makes as she falls down the stairs--I have heard that cry before. When my mother was caught in public with the evidence of a failed surgery, she made that cry--a cry of defeat and worry, a cry of concern not for herself but for others. She was defeated, and she couldn't fight much longer. She couldn't fight much longer for herself but what I think really got her was that she couldn't fight any more for others. Standing with her in that store when she made that sickening, end of the rope cry, I was alarmed and charged with adrenaline. I couldn't do much, but I would like to think that, in some way, I saved her that day. I put her in the car, and drove her home. It seems presumptuous of me to assume that my very presence gave her comfort, but watching this movie helps me remember the things my mom did for me when she was strong. Helps me remember the relationship we had. Helps me think that she needed her children just as much as we needed her.

And then we are back to the end, or the near end, of the movie--the point when Christy tells his mother to get back into the car. The last conversation I remember with my mother was at least a week or two before she died. We were cleaning out boxes of her things from her sewing room. I uncovered my pillow and pillowcase from daycare--items she made for me with her own two hands. I was devastated. I had forgotten about those things and I was suddenly afraid that there would be no one to make me things when she was gone. "I really would like to stay, Marc. But I can't." It was said in a caring voice, and her eyes showed caring and strength. But looking back, I think I also remember something else behind the front. A look of uncertainty. She was unsure of my place in the world, unsure of her place with me, unsure of what was to come, and most jarringly, aware that she wouldn't be here to find out firsthand.

And so she's still around. Not in any definite presence but she haunts my days, my nights, my weeks, my months. I have good days and bad days and they fluctuate based on how much of your memory I am able to process. Well, mom, I am not fine but I am okay. So will you get in the car now, Ma? I'm fine. Or I will be someday.

i sleep with my baby blanket

2010-01-07T01:30:00.002-06:00

I am twenty-three years old and I sleep with my baby blanket. It's an odd admission when I am not curled up in my bed with the blanket itself nearby. It's not something I would admit to when I am teaching or when I am out with friends pounding shots at a bar. It isn't an admission that fits into the adult world. Adults don't sleep with their baby blankets. Baby blankets are things we leave behind when we hit puberty and the attractions of the same (or opposite, if you must) sex lure us out of our heads and into the "real" world. It's not normal. It might not be sane. But I sleep, unabashedly, with my baby blanket.

My baby blanket is worn and tattered. It has holes in it and the silk edges are frayed and, in some places, falling off. My baby blanket didn't always look like this. When I was home for semester break I did some cleaning and I discovered a picture of me on the family vacation to Disney World--I was somewhere around five years old. In the picture I am sleeping on the bed, half the blanket spread out under me while the other half wrapped around me like the bun of a hot dog. I was shorter then; the blanket was longer than I was and its pale yellow color, much purer then than it is now, is offset by my hard-won Florida tan. That picture gave me pause. It isn't that I have always slept with my baby blanket so peacefully and tranquilly as I did then. My recent baby blanket dreams are a product of my recent past.

During the summer between my sixth and seventh years in school, I had a biking accident. It was stupid. The neighborhood kids and I used to dare each other to ride down a hill with our eyes closed. At the bottom of the hill is a bridge of sorts--the road crosses a viaduct and is hemmed in with rough-hewn two by sixes that once were emblazoned with reflecting plastic but now show their age with the rusted-out brackets for these mythical, long-gone notifiers of traffic. The dare was to not open your eyes until you sensed that you were on the bridge--the high, wooden walls of the bridge changed the sounds that bounced back to your ears. I was never brave enough to do it in front of my friends, so one day, while biking alone, I decided to prove to myself once and for all that I could do it.

I wrecked.

Crashed head on into the side of the bridge leaving imprints and scars of the two by sixes and the vacant reflector brackets. I was unconscious for a while, woke up in the emergency room for a minute, and then went back under until I had been moved into a room in the pediatric wing of the hospital. I recovered quickly, as children tend to do (what with the cells replicating so fast and all) and was back on my feet in no time. Until the first day of the seventh grade when my balls hurt so badly that I had to go to the office during first hour orchestra practice.

At the doctor I was told I had a potential hernia--likely the result of my biking accident--and that I would need surgery. Subsequent visits to specialists confirmed that I would, indeed, need to go under the knife. At the last check-in before surgery the doctor told me I could bring a stuffed animal with me into surgery to comfort me as I went under the anesthetic. I felt a bit foolish being offered such a surgery companion. After all, I was becoming a man. I was rapidly growing upwards and outwards. I had at least three combined hairs underneath my two arms. You don't offer "men" with at least three combined hairs underneath their two arms the chance to take a stuffed animal into surgery. Secretly, though, I was grateful. I was petrified at the thought of going in there alone. I didn't have a favorite stuffed animal, but, as I recalled, I did have a baby blanket stuffed away somewhere.

Somewhere along the line my parents realized that the heavy blankets and pillows that helped to lull me into sleep before surgery would be stripped off--along with my baby blanket--during the operation. Sending a baby blanket in could be risky. It might not come back to me. And so my mom went down into her sewing room and embroidered my name--Marc Malone--into the silk hem in a light, mint green. After surgery, the blanket came back to me safe and sound.

That is the story of how my baby blanket became emblazoned with my sure-to-be-famous-one-day name. It is not, however, the story of how my blanket came to rest in the bed of its now twenty-three owner. That came much later, after my mom had died of cancer. Her death came at a rather unfortunate time. I had long undertaken the balancing act of leading a double life. In public, I was straight. In private, on the internet, in chat rooms, I was gay. I was okay with that balancing act until she died. Something about her passing toppled the framework of my delicate lie. I wasn't comfortable in my skin. I hated me. I didn't know how to be both things--straight and gay--at once. Something needed to go.

That process was long and difficult. Probably because my mom's death was its impetus, I tried too hard to hold on to my past and fight off the future. I became depressed and friends talked me away from window ledges and laid down underneath my car so I couldn't escape with an armful of pills and a bottle of water. It was rough, but on the other side of it all I found a different way of being--a way of being strong and confident. While this stage of my life seems to (in terms of my body) weigh a bit more than the double-life-living me, I am better off here.

Somewhere along the line, however, in between therapy sessions and finding myself in literature, I recovered my baby blanket. Perhaps it was the first night I cried myself to sleep after I was ousted from my double-life. Or maybe it was just the first night I drank too much alcohol and needed something comforting to put me to sleep in a spinning bed. Regardless, I found what I needed. I found the appropriate amount of comfort in the past while staying firmly grounded in the present. My baby blanket is more than just a threadbare, shredded piece of fabric. It is, rather, the collection of all my life experiences. It is my trip to Florida as a five year old. It is my double-life. It is my mother's embroidery. It is my mother's death. It is my nearly-experienced trip off the seventeenth floor. It is my trip to Paris. It is coming out of the closet. It is moving to Iowa. It is pursuing a dream. My baby blanket is everything I was from birth to a second ago and it is what propels me towards the life that I want to lead, whatever that is.

mystery man

2009-12-12T01:25:00.003-06:00

So I found out from a friend of a friend that a friend of a friend three hours away is equally fed up with the gay community at large. Fantastic. Who is he? Pictures are stolen (willingly offered) from facebook and exchanged through the friend tree and what do you know? We are both cute. Stories are then exchanged through that friend tree. Turns out we are equally hysterical (Martha Stewart is indeed a classy, frosty bitch and I love her for it.) Loose plans are made for a "chance meeting" in January. I, for one, start falling for the mere idea of someone who is cute, funny, and intelligent enough to know that the world isn't about him and him alone. That itself is probably a bad idea but in a world that seems to be falling down around us, what else can you hope for but ideas? There is a new development, however. Apparently this mystery man found my blog through that friend of a friend and has been raptly reading my musings. I will not, however, be boxed up and shipped via FedEx to Minneapolis. I have a car and gas money and that seems a far more comfortable way to travel. (Insert winking emoticon.) Listen mystery man. You are tots cute too. Get your facebook back, or at least stalk around enough to find my email. I did, but I lost my nerve. (Is there an emoticon for nervous shame?)

you go girl

2009-12-02T00:20:00.003-06:00

It seems weird to title a post about feminism with "girl" but it's a queer saying along the lines of greeting a friend with "Hey girl, hey!" so I am sticking with it. Consider it inter-marginalized-group lingo.

When I applied to graduate school, my personal statement articulated that I am gay. Coming out to a graduate admissions panel made my ultra-liberal undergraduate advisor pause, get up from her desk, and run next door to talk to her partner Nick. Was it okay? Should I not bring that side of myself up in such a situation? Thankfully, Nick's expert advice (which, in the end, correlated with Dr. Capo's gut instinct) was that it wasn't necessarily a bad decision as long as it was in the right context, aka I wasn't using it to get a pity vote for admission. Had I been told to take it out, I wouldn't have. You see, according to my personal statement for my M.A. program, a critical literacy autobiography (for Dr. Blakely's Theory and Research in Composition course), and an autobiographical essay and analysis (for Dr. Post's American Autobiography course), recognizing I am gay was a critical turning point in my academic career. I wasn't lying. It was a part of the culminating moment when I turned away from my future as an Architect, when I turned away from the prospect of a high-paying job, when I turned away from a childhood dream. When I came out I did it because I knew the world wasn't fair but I also knew I wasn't about to accept it. Coming out, in a way, led me to study literature, to study who gets it and who doesn't get it and why, to study what it is like to be disenfranchised, to study how these systems of oppression are created and sustained.

Tonight, however, I watched A League of Their Own for the first time in years and I had a memory, or multiple memories that aren't really memories; I had a feeling. I remember watching that movie with my mom and my sister. I remember the night my mom took me to see First Wives Club. I remember growing up with a definite sense that whatever men could do, women could do it and do it better because, damn-it, you just can't keep a good fighter down.

Until tonight I had never really considered who planted the original seed of social justice in my head. It certainly wasn't mass media. The same people who, up until Philadelphia, refused to portray gay people in a positive light are running around behind the scenes supporting cultural hegemony for the (imaginary) man / woman binary. (Did you know that scientists have identified at least five biological sexes? Seems to me like this whole man paired with woman by the grace of God and biology is *tisk, tisk* a societal construction.) It certainly wasn't the church. A woman's place is serving her husband? Well that's a bunch of bull shit if you ask me. Not that marriage is inherently bad but if men can't hold their own then they might as well just nominate themselves for a Darwin Award and watch some more football.

I realized tonight that one of the best things my mom ever did was to pull a Donna Harraway and sneak around (consciously or unconsciously) blurring the boundaries in the minds of her children. Movies like A League of Their Own and First Wives Club instilled in me early a sense of the differences that society constructs, the way it uses people. Those movies (thanks, Mom) set me off on the right foot, primed me for the path I am on now. It was a nice revelation to have, and, in a way, it answered some of the questions that I just don't get to ask my mom.

What did she think of feminism? I never got to ask her before she died but I can picture her sitting at the dining room table with her coffee, reading her daily devotional. If I asked her that question she would have gotten that indignant look on her face, crossed her arms and spoke her mind in that matter of fact, I grew up slaughtering chickens and sewing my own clothing voice. "Women can do it too, Marc."

You go girl.

live and learn...

2009-11-21T20:29:00.005-06:00

...and then re-write your story.

So for those of you who don't know I want to write. I can go on and on about the power of literature and how it changed my life and how I can't wait to be behind the podium teaching it but the truth is, I don't have the balls to go all Stephen King, take a shit job, and write Carrie during my fifteen-minute breaks. I need something with a little more security (read health care and enough money to keep me swimming in Gap's latest line of argyle sweaters) than that.

I do, however, write. I journal, I have several short stories in notes and in my head, I blog. Most importantly, though, I keep stories in my head. I think about how stories are constructed. I dissect the plot lines of shows like Weeds and The OC. Every time I talk to my brother I get some new idea for how I would (will) portray him in my book. The mental process doesn't often stop. So when really good things pop into my head I have to write about them.

Last night my brother and I did a long, drawn-out face regime involving no less than six products and and a power tool (bathroom variety, dahling). The end of the regime started with a flirtation with a bronzer that injects Vitamin C into your face from the first dusting to the next time you plug in the Clarisonic scrubber. According to my brother we looked catalog perfect. My brother neglected to tell me, however, that the bronzer transfers to fabric easily and hence my new, white, zip-up hoodie was a bad choice. The hoodie spent the last twenty-four hours soaking in a sink of cold water.

A few minutes ago I decided the hoodie had suffered long enough so I started wringing it out. Word to the wise: a fully-saturated white, zip-up hoodie weighs more than you would think. It was so heavy, in fact, that I announced it to my brother. The conversation went something like this:

Jon, this is heavy.
Oh yeah?
No wonder people drown! ... You know, I wrote about this in an award winning story once. The lead character rescued a woman on the Titanic because she couldn't swim under the weight of her dress. When faced with the real thing, though, I am beginning to doubt that my pre-pubescent lead character could have done any better than the woman wearing the dress.
Award-winning story, huh?

The point wasn't that the story was juvenile and mostly shit (just slightly less shitty than all of the others) or that one shouldn't wear white while applying vitamin bronzers but rather that writing is a never-ending process. I wrote that story when I was in seventh grade. I wrote it on a whim and didn't expect to either submit it or win anything. When I lifted that (excruciatingly heavy) hoodie out of the sink my mind went immediately back to that scene when the lead character, in a daze after watching his grandmother die, wades into the water spilling into the D-Deck reception area, finds, and saves a young woman who was about to succumb to the weight of her saturated dress.

And this is why I need to write--because I can't stop thinking in stories.

holding pattern

2009-10-02T00:31:00.002-05:00

Two of my friends announced their engagement to my roommate and myself tonight. Amanda messaged me saying she had news and that we should join her for a drink at Cafe Baudelair. I was anticipating an engagement announcement and while I was exited both for the news and for the couple in question I felt a bit numb on the inside. The conversation at the bar merged seamlessly from talk of engagement and the impending wedding ceremony to feminism, standpoint theory, and racial / economic privilege but my mind never really left the topic of marriage. To understand my obsession we have to go back a week or so to a completely different conversation in completely different circumstances.

My undergraduate advisor at Illinois College, Beth Capo, is currently teaching in Japan on a Fullbright scholarship. Prior to her departure from this continent our conversations were limited to facebook messages and chats at The Three Legged Dog when I was home on break. For an extend stay in Japan, however, she branched out to Skype. It felt weird to Skype her when I saw her online for the first time--academic relationships are often defined and redefined by barriers--but the conversation that ensued was surprisingly comfortable. In passing I mentioned my jealousy that she was in Japan--think of it, a new apartment, a new culture to experience on a daily basis, new foods, new drinks, exciting and challenging teaching experiences. Her response was typical Capo--instead of basking her the glow of her experiences she flipped the emphasis back to me. "Think of how jealous people are of YOU. I am not joking. You live in Iowa." Yeah, I do live in Iowa, a state that not only guarantees the rights for gays to marry but has, since its inception as a state, a long history of civil rights victories. Her statement called for pause and reflection.

That reflection, which in the style of my thinking rolls around in my brain's washing machine for days, is combined with my recent interaction with a fraternity for gay and progressive men and the ensuing explosion of friends and acquaintances who are of my, well, let's say persuasion. That reflection came to a head tonight when celebrating the engagement of two friends in combination with near constant thoughts of where I will end up at the end of this year when I graduate with an M.A. in English literature.

When I first moved to Iowa I was convinced that I was moving to the white trash, hick, backwater state of the midwest. I couldn't have been more wrong. Imagine my shock when, months after my arrival, Iowa made gay marriages legal. Whatever I end up doing after this bout of schooling, I would prefer not to leave Iowa. Living in a state that prizes civil rights at the sake of "social comfort" for the majority of conservative, white, middle class, Christians has been a cherished experience and I am not ready to give up that comfort.

Thoughts like these--a strong desire not to leave the land of gay marriage combined with increased interaction in the gay community combined with confronting an engagement head on--have led me to wonder the following: what would I do if I found myself in a committed, lovign relationship in the next year? It is, of course, entirely situational--it depends on the relationship. But let's suppose I found myself in a relationship where I was truly happy, where I could be myself, bare all emotion and reciprocate that process in a mutually beneficial way with my partner. Faced with the great unknown that comes at the completion of a degree, what would I do? Would I propose? Would I get married? Hypothetical questions that are, by and large, futile in a time when I have no prospects of any relationship, not to mention one that is committed. Nevertheless, they are questions perfectly suited to my mind--one that always reaches ahead to the the "what ifs" in its path.

Then we reach the part of the analysis that begs the question what does this line of thinking mean in a more meta context? Perhaps I am more ready than ever to take on a relationship? Does that mean I am looking? Perhaps, perhaps not. Some days I am convinced that I am not looking for a relationship. Other days I am convinced I am ready and unconsciously on the prowl. In the end it will be time that tells the truth but for some reason this particular line of thought and introspection has given me something resembling peace of mind.

Earlier tonight my roommate and I had a conversation about dates that trouble us. My particular date is always September first--the anniversary of my mother's passing. We talked about how it is important to be around for each other on days that are troubling to the soul and she apologized for not being there for mine this year. "Jordan," I said, "I wasn't available on my day this year. It wasn't you." It was at that point in the conversation that I realized I was doing something important for the process of recovery on that day. I was playing kickball with the men of Delta Lambda Phi, making friends, discovering people, discovering things about myself. I was living and growing, which is just what my mother would have wanted me to do.

And these questions, "What would I do if...?" lead me to believe the same sort of thing. I am still simultaneously out there and in here. I am living and growing constantly, steadily making the slow transition from closeted, insecure man to self-accepting, hopeful, open man. I think sometimes that this progress is all we can ask for.

too close for comfort

2009-09-24T10:37:00.004-05:00

Sometimes music falls out of the sky (in a digital feed from iTunes) randomly (on the day the album is released) and hits pretty close to home (especially for emotional saps who long ago learned how to process emotions through song). Thank you MIKA for understanding what it is in my head (a fairly universal situation, to be honest) better than I know it myself. I had to do the gay gasp when I heard the lines in stanza four.

I See You--MIKA

I'm standing across from you
And dreaming of the things I do
I don't speak, you don't know me at all

For fear of what you might do
I say nothing but stare at you
And I'm dreaming
I'm trippin' over you

Truth be told
My problems solved
You mean the world to be but you'll never know
You could be cruel to me
While we're risking the way that I see you
That I see you [3x]
That I see

Conversations
Not me at all
I'm hesitating
Only to fall
And I'm waiting, I'm hating everyone

Could it be you fell for me?
And any possible similarity
If its all, how would I know?
You never knew me at all but I see you
But I see you [4x]

I'm standing across from you (But I see you)
I've dreamt alone, now the dreams won't do (But I see you)
I'm standing across from you (But I see you)
I've dreamt alone, now the dreams won't do (But I see you)

Truth be told, my problem solved
You mean the world to me
But you'll never know
You could be cruel to me
While we're risking the way that I see you
But I see you [4x]

I'm standing across from you (But I see you)
I've dreamt alone, now the dreams won't do (But I see you)
[4x]

But I see you
But I see you
But I see you

facebook freakouts, gay squeal and spins, and toe bashing

2009-09-15T00:19:00.005-05:00

Bid night was stressful for me which really isn't saying much; I stress out every morning when I pick out an outfit. Stress set in a month ago when I realized I had class from 6-9 on bid night. It got worse when I forgot and scheduled an appointment for 9, directly after class. It got even worse when rumors circulated that decisions would be made by 8pm and I would be unavailable. It got slightly better when class got out 40 minutes early and I was back in my car pacing the streets of Ames by 8:50.

I ended up settling in at my apartment watching Rachel Zoe and drinking a beer. Then rumors started circling that nine was the new eight. Ten quickly became the new nine followed quickly by ghastly rumors that eleven was going to replace ten. At approximately 9:50 I received a text message asking where I was. I was at home. On my couch. Watching Rachel Zoe. Drinking a beer.

Meanwhile facebook was busy ruining the secrecy and suspense that I imagine bid nights were back in the day--all the gays were busily messaging back and forth, fingers flying in a frantic rush of questions and support. "You are totally in, there is just no way," was mixed right in with "There is always a chance I rubbed someone the wrong way" and "Knock on wood right now!" Not quite the idealistic picture of deep introspection while waiting for official word.

Eventually I couldn't stand the pressure and my roommate and I descended to the parking lot where I commenced chain smoking. I really did try to pay attention to her recap of her day--reports, an event, a request to organize a meet and greet / fundraiser for a senate campaign--but my mind was running over and over the time that had passed and the signal my phone was getting: "How is it that I only have three bars?! Four is optimum! No 3G?" At one point the gay squeal and spin came out and I got pretty dizzy.

Then a red car pulled up with four guys in it. Four guys never travel together in this town, at least not four guys with FANTASTIC hair. Slowly their faces came into focus and I lost the power of speech. Ben, Darin, Chris and Joe got out of the car and all I could muster was an accusatory, "what are you doing here?" "We are here to offer you a bid to Delta Lambda Phi." That's when all hell broke loose. I moaned as my left hand went up to my face and my right hand went up and dropped my cigarette. "Have you been smoking because of us?" asked Joe. "I have been chain smoking because of you."

To make a ridiculously long story short, they explained my bid papers, invited me to a dinner on Friday and gave me a round of hugs (during which I stepped on Darin--he won't admit it but I totally did...my Kenneth Cole's totally stomped his awesome blue slip-ons). Then they were off to the next house and I was back to the gay squeal and spin.

Meeting these men was awesome. Getting to hang out with them (and do things I never dreamed I would do) was awesome. Realizing that I would be fine with or without a bid was worthwhile. Learning about myself was first rate. Getting a bid was priceless. Trying to calm down is going to be difficult.

the luckiest

2009-09-13T21:12:00.003-05:00

Back in the day when my ego and superego were much more at odds with each other than they are mow, I dated women. Not a ton of women--I have always been the kind of guy who wants something serious--but enough for me to finally realize that I wasn't kidding anyone, especially myself. Despite the fact that I have written all the time since I was very young, I have never been very successful at writing what goes on inside my mind. This is also why I will likely never be well-known for my writing. Hence, in order to describe these intangible emotions I would send them through a song, a burnt CD and a note often left on someone's car with a single flower. In hindsight it seems slightly stalker-esque but for the sake of my sanity let's just say it was evidence of my flare for drama and romance.

Looking back on this part of my life I regret what I did. I regret that I wasn't strong enough to tell myself the truth and I regret that my lack of strength hurt people, especially those women. I also regret that I gave some of that music away. I am all for memories--they are a huge part of how I function--but sometimes I get tired of reminding myself constantly that I hurt people, I get tired of walking down the road to self-blame and guilt every time I listen to those songs that I gave away.

And so I am on a mission. I am reclaiming those songs. I won't shy away from them on my iPod anymore, and I will work on forgiving myself. Because one day when I find someone to love I want to be able to give him those songs that describe the way my emotions work and not be sad. I want to be happy.

Starting with this extremely special number by Ben Folds.

The Luckiest

I don't get many things right the first time in fact, I am told that alot
Now I know all the wrong turns and stumbles and falls brought me here
Where was I before the day that I first saw your lovely face, now I see it every day
And I know that I am, I am, I am the luckiest

What if I'd been born fifty years before you in a house on the street where you lived
Maybe I'd be outside as you passed on your, bike would I know?
And in a wide see of eyes, I see one pair that I recognized
And I know that I am, I am, I am the luckiest

I love you more than I have ever felt the way to say to you

Next door there's and old man who lived to his nineties and one day passed away in his sleep
And his wife she stayed for a couple of days and passed away
I'm sorry I know that's a strange way to tell you that I know we belong
That I know that I am, I am, I am the luckiest

my overflowing cup

2009-09-10T21:47:00.000-05:00

Tonight was the last rush event for Delta Lambda Phi. We met at the union, ate pizza and socialized. There is something really fun about munching a slice of pizza while sitting next to a bubbling fountain and conversing with all of the people you have grown to love over the course of a few weeks. After the pizza it was time for the main event--a technolatti scavenger hunt around campus. My group didn't win but I did get a few great pictures and laughs out of the deal.

That is what this whole experience has been--great times with great people. I got drunk and laughed my ass off at drag shows; I played kickball for the first time since grade school; I served a volleyball for the first time since high school; I got to mime a peacock and radiation at a game event; I cried on someone's couch about coming out, my mom, and my struggle to accept the world as it is. I started this process with the hopes of finding a niche in the queer community in Ames. I wanted to find a place to be with those like me and a place where I could feel like I was a part of a greater cause. I didn't expect to become so emotionally attached to these people and regardless of what happens on bid night I will still have those people in my life so the fraternity already provided me with one of my goals and for that I am thankful in more ways than I (a writer at heart) can find to express.

As usual the event ended with people sitting around talking to each other. Those who could moved to a cafe in Campus Town. We pulled tables together and bothered the waitress with too many "I'll just have waters" and more than a few moments of confusion. We sat and talked and laughed and joked. The air had a warm yellow-brown tinge to it and outside the plate glass windows, beyond the sidewalk and the trees the cars of Ames slipped by. I couldn't help thinking that three weeks ago I was in one of those cars driving by this cafe caught up in a graduate student's life, completely unaware of the people I was missing out on. As I had these thoughts the night started to wind down. People trickled out with intentions of studying or sleeping or relaxing before a busy Friday. One by one the goodbyes and hugs were shared around the tables and one by one the door swung open and the Fall 2009 Delta Lambda Phi rush process came to an end for me and my fellow rushees. As it does when something ends, my heart became heavy with emotion. I have a hard time moving on from things, even when I know that endings are new beginnings. With both my proverbial cup and my tear ducts running over as they are, I think that's reasonable. When things seem so perfect, why would anyone want to move on to the next step? Life as a whole isn't perfect, so we hold on to the moments when it is.

Thanks guys.

i can

2009-08-31T00:52:00.000-05:00

I can successfully balance my workload. I can take three courses, teach three courses, serve as a senator for my department, research for my thesis, and pledge a fraternity all in the same semester. It is possible.

Self, it is time you stopped undercutting your own needs / happiness. You can argue me but it really is time. It was time, like, yesterday.

maybe

2009-08-25T00:13:00.000-05:00

I go through phases. I go through phases for many things in my life. These phases usually cycle. I cycle back and forth from being reasonably content about my body / weight to harboring contempt for the thing in the mirror. I go through cycles of fiscal responsibility--these particular cycles are brief, sometime flipping back and forth three times in a twenty-four hour period. I also go in cycles about relationships. Sometimes I feel like I am ready for one, other times I feel like it is the last possible thing I need in my life. Right now I am ready for one.

In the fashion of such people as my life coach, I attempt to be logical about these things. While logic and reason don't always work in the real world when faced with real pressures and fears this logical life-plan has been rather successful. One thing it has taught me is that I don't logically need a boyfriend. I have the oxygen I need to breathe and a book to keep me occupied, what could I possibly do with a boyfriend? Boyfriends aren't practical. I am a narcissist--who isn't these days?--and narcissists don't get along well with people who demand things of them. Boyfriends demand things of people and that's not nice. Letting someone in requires that I become "okay" with that person asking for time, time to be together and time to be apart. The real problem is that his demands might not match up with what I am willing to give. It gets complicated, and it would likely get ugly more than once.

This unorganized list of reasons not to let someone into my life doesn't keep me from wanting one. My heart aches with desire sometimes. I have never had a "boyfriend." I went about things all wrong a few years ago and that probably left me more damaged than the actual coming out process--that was easy. What is not easy is giving yourself over to be a sex-object in someone else's passion play. Here tonight, gone in the morning, please don't contact me. Talk about contributing negativity to my self-worth. I decided to stop doing that and in a way I decided not to let anyone in. I needed time to process who I was. But now I might be ready. I might already be in love but like Kate Winslet's character in The Holiday this love is unrequited and I don't always know that I know (or he knows) why. But that's fine. I made the decision long ago to keep him as a friend and nothing more. But he will always be some milestone on my road to emotional recovery--the first time love--yes, even unrequited love--came knocking and I didn't run away from it.

My heart is just so heavy. Maybe I don't want to be a self-centered narcissist all my life. Maybe I need someone to care for just a little bit. Maybe someone out there appreciates getting flowers every once in a while. Maybe someone out there still likes mixed CDs and hand-written letters. Maybe someone out there won't mind my head on his shoulders while we watch a romantic comedy. Maybe someone out there...

adult sized swing sets

2009-06-27T08:54:00.000-05:00

My roommate and I have taken up walking. Both of us come from central Illinois where snow isn't a guarantee during the Winter season. Okay, so it will snow at some point, probably at a few different points. And it will be cold and wet. White snow, though, isn't exactly as constant as muddy brown. Having both moved to central Iowa and having both survived the first Iowan winter (not as bad as Minnesota, worse than central Illinois) we decided that we should enjoy the months where we aren't snowbound even if it makes us sweat a little. Plus, it's a nice change from the elliptical at the gym.

We have also discovered it is nice to walk through a town that is unfamiliar or rather, to discover a town previously though of as familiar only to discover a different pace of life. There is a big difference when you walk by the same landmark for the first time as opposed to driving by it twice a day for ten months. There is also a whole new dimension to getting lost. In a car the moments between street signs or recognizable points of interest are quite quick--you never feel the lost sensation for more than a minute--two at most. Walking however ups the level of discomfort and unease between not knowing and knowing where you are--the pace is just that slow. This isn't helped by our geographic location in Ames: we are on the very outskirts of the new construction that happened in the last five to seven years. We have seen newish looking maps where our road doesn't exist. Directly across the street is suburbia world where the roads twist and turn and dead end and circle around and are dotted with cud-de-sacs. The only chance at maintaining some sense of your relative location depends on your ability to look for the water tower over and / or around the two story houses set in a rolling landscape. That plan is inherently flawed as the water tower is circular and you never really know from which angle you are looking.

There are also fun moments to walking. On day two of our walking escapades Jordan mentioned that she remembered a sign for a bike path about three blocks from us, so away we went. We discovered a path that leads away from the road, through some trees, up a hill, eventually letting out on a street initially unfamiliar to us both. We eventually figured out where we were and decided to loop around and make a circle testing out my theory that a "dead end" street a few blocks from us was not actually a dead end but rather hadn't yet been connected to another dead end street near my friend Paul's house. Mind you, this discovery would mean significantly shorter drunk walks home; it was fairly important. My theory was proven correct--the two roads are connected by a gravel-ish path through some prairie grass and next to a frog-filled pond. We took the connection and looped our way back home.

The next night Jordan suggested we try to follow the same path in reverse and away we went. Everything was going fine until we diverted from the original path to explore an interesting neighborhood--a row of new houses that sprung up in the middle of an otherwise empty new development. We thought we could simply hop back on the grid and let it take us back. I was convinced however, that on the first night we had walked two blocks too far on the grid and therefore directed us to where I thought the roads met up with the hilly, wooded bike path. I was wrong and we ended up on a street that ended in a double cul-de-sac. I was annoyed until we discovered an odd sidewalk leading into the woods from the tip of one of the cul-de-sacs. (We had previously discovered one such sidewalk in suburbia world and had significant reason to believe that it a.) was a public sidewalk, and b.) that it led somewhere.) We took it and had to walk over some weeds and through some grass down a tunnel-like section of woods. Then we rounded the corner and we were in a park--a two acre ridge of grass overlooking the hospice and the road we drive on every day. The best part of this park is the playground.

Being the giant eight year olds that we are, we immediately hopped on the swings. They fit Jordan better than they do me because I am built like the Jolly Green Giant but I made them work and was soon flying so high that I lost tension in the chains and experienced a moment of free-fall. The experience made us both laugh. Once I recovered I started building up speed again. This cycle went on a few times until I realized how exhausting swinging is. My hands hurt, and arms, legs, and abs were all sore. I kept going though, because it was that gosh-darn fun.

It made me think, though, about growing up. I live directly across from a fitness center and every day I see everyone from eighteen years to sixty years entering and leaving. There are no children. The children are too busy running the streets like they own them, finding pools to swim in and, yes, swinging on swing sets in public parks all across the city. Doesn't it sound like more fun to be doing what they are doing than hanging out on an elliptical? Personally, I vote for swinging.

puckered lips

2009-06-25T01:12:00.001-05:00

I was seventeen and gearing up for another school year--I always got impatient with summer and the heat and the listlessness. I spent my time designing web sites, reading, and manufacturing blizzards for the masses. Meanwhile, my mother was in the guest room dying of cancer.

There were many difficult conversations and I say difficult because, looking back, they were so exhausting that I avoided them. One conversation I remember in particular. My mother had decided that she was going to clean out her sewing room. It was a large corner of the laundry room that for twenty years had accumulated fabric remnants, cases of thread, several sewing machines, and a few plastic and concrete geese for good measure. When my dad told her she didn't have to worry about that mess she replied, "Terry, you didn't make the mess, I'm not going to make you clean it up." And that was that. For a day, my brother, sister, and I carried box after box--her life in sewing--from the basement up to the guest room where we would sit as she sifted and sorted each one. Fabric was sent to the neighbor who quilts, thread was organized into cases, some things went directly to the trash. As I sat perched on the edge of her hospital bed holding a box she sat directly across from me in a green wingback chair directing me. I pulled out a few pictures of young women on a catwalk with feathered hair and crazy outfits. My mother, without aplomb, told me that she had put on a fashion show while she was teaching home economics in Canada. I was amazed at the idea that her life extended further into the past than my seventeen years.

In a rubbermaid tub I discovered the pillow my mother had sewn for me. It was my day care pillow and I remember the pillow case being somewhat thin with a blue and red cartoon pattern. I was surprised to see it--I had forgotten it existed. All I could think about then was that one day my mother had sat down to sew me a pillow and a pillowcase and the amount of love evident in that simple small pillow sent tears slipping down my cheeks. My mother said, "Marc, I would like to stay around longer, but I just can't."

It got really difficult for my mother to move. Formerly a large woman, her body was literally withering away leaving large flaps of skin and weakened muscles and bones. It got to the point she couldn't do stairs anymore and so one day my grandpa--her father--showed up and built a wheelchair ramp off the back deck. It probably wasn't at all connected but I remember telling her about my upcoming choir class. I got into choir. The director practically begged me to be in the group--my audition was incredibly quick. We are singing the national anthem at some event the first week of school. Can you come and hear me sing? In my memory I picture her standing where she used to leaned against the door frame between kitchen and dining room but I know she couldn't have been there; she was sick, dying. I do remember her face and her hands. Her elbows were resting against her stomach and her hands were up in front of her face, fingers touching in the "this is a church, this is a steeple" pose. Her eyes expressed serious doubt when she said, "I can try." The realization that she was dying washed over me yet again and I felt shamed that I had asked her to do something she deeply wanted to do but seriously doubted she would be able to.

My mother loved food and she particularly loved steak. During the last few months of her life she couldn't eat--the cancer had blocked her intestines and so once or twice or three times a day I can't remember we hauled out a one pound bag of refrigerated milky white nutrients that we plugged into the port on her chest. She was strong though, and was I think still holding out hope that she would pull through. She didn't mind that we ate around her. Sometime before she received her death sentence my dad grilled her favorite cut of steak--New York strip he has since hypothesized--and we were eating as a family on the deck. My mother was watching television in the living room and I decided I would eat with her--I didn't want her to be alone, but maybe I was getting an inkling that I might not have too much more time with her. There was something about watching me eat, or something about the smell of the steak wafting through the house but I looked up from taking a bite and her head was turned away from the set, her left hand covering her lips, tears sliding down her face. I felt embarrassed. I was young and fit and eating a dead cow in front of her when she would never eat again. I put my plate down and gave her a hug whispering into her ear, "Sweetie your life isn't very great right now but if anyone can take it you can."

As the youngest child I probably got the most alone time with my mom. Twice a year her hometown throws a celebration called Spoon River Scenic Drive--a glorified craft fair with fantastic fattening food. Twice a year she would pick me up from school and we would drive two hours up to the festival. We always stopped at the gas station on Main and Walnut and bought a bag of Chili Cheese Dorritos and munched on them the whole way there.

My mom died the first week of my senior year. On the first day of gym class, we filled out the emergency contact cards and naturally I listed both parents. These cards also served as a record of what units--badminton, tennis, basketball, walking for fitness, bowling--we selected throughout the semester. As I was in fitness phys. ed. I didn't get to switch units but they still passed the cards back for us to sign each time the other students were switching. A couple of weeks after my mom died there was a unit change and there, in my own writing, was my mother's name: Carolyn Malone. I was late starting the activity that day. I couldn't get off the floor.

When my mother learned she was had cancer she decided to cut her hair. For many years she had rocked what she called the "I have two kids in college" haircut but staring down chemotherapy and probable hair loss she decided to get it cut. Her stylist was located downtown right next to the Illinois Theatre. There was some sort of a street fair that day and I remember very clearly the irony of the sunshine while my sister and I hovered near a sandstone building trying to come to grips with our new situation in life. My sister was on the phone with a coworker when my mother walked out. Birkenstock sandals, khaki pants, grey blouse tucked in with a brown belt, trademark glasses, sophisticated new haircut. She looked strong and confident.

She died four years later. Sometimes I want to ask her things. I am writing ten pages of my autobiography for an American Autobiography / Memoir course and I am trying to describe my neighborhood--modest homes with flat backyard boxes. Then I realized that my backyard slopes downhill and borders on a field instead of someone else's backyard. I remembered all of the sudden that the backyard was a selling point for my mother and I wondered, while smoking a cigarette in the humid parking lot, what did it feel like for her to move in to that house, go to sleep, wake up, and look out that back door on that view that was hers for the first time? I want to ask her that, but I can't.

I miss sugar lips (my nickname for my mother to which she would always reply, "Oh stop!" and hit me with whatever piece of paper she was currently holding), my momma, my constant champion.

take control

2009-06-21T02:12:00.000-05:00

In calling your name, I heard a voice

Yeah, somebody spoke to me spoke to me
We're one and the same, but you have a choice
And I hope that it's not like mine
I made a mistake; there's no turning back
You need to let go of me go of me
It may be too late for your dearest friend,
But know in your heart that you still have time
Whoa time whoa
Looking back now, I'd do it again
That choice was a part of me part of me
I was so far gone that it was the end,
But know in your heart that you still had time
Whoa time whoa
I can't say it's never too late, but it's not now
You never believed in fate,
So show me -- take control
Of your life just this time
Take control

Take Control, The Science of Sound

jack kerouac and childhood memories

2009-04-14T03:51:00.000-05:00

When I picked my high school senior quote, I wasn't attempting to be morbid or predict sad, melancholy feelings across the rest of my life, I was just looking for a good quote that described what I was feeling. For the first time since my "group" of friends came together (and fell apart, and then came back in a different way only to fracture and rebuild yet again, etc., etc., etc.) I felt like the world was jettisoning us only to be ripped apart by whatever or wherever we landed. I was positive we would land in the same vicinity, and that we would stay in contact and to some extent that has remained true. I was just trying to express what I was feeling, and so I picked Jack Kerouac's famous quote from On The Road.

"What is that feeling when you are driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's goodbye, but we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the sky."

I actually hate Kerouac as a writer. I find him the epitome of worthlessness, but this one little quote has haunted me since the day I picked it up from the ending of some crazy film. I saw an old Disney movie--from back when Disney actually spoke to a generation through actual, realistic events from society. It is called Wish Upon A Star and it brings back so many memories. Memories of watching it while drawing up house plans, while building models of buildings, while being a nerd in general, but also memories of watching that film and being confident that I would find absolution the same way those high school girls did. Looking back, I haven't found it, and when considering Kerouac, I realize that the world will always be too huge, it will always be vaulting us. The best we can do is hold on to each other and hope for the best.

I have never been very good at leaning on people.

2009-03-13T00:21:00.000-05:00

I have lost the ability to control my life.

what is the feeling when you are standing in a void space unable to look forward or back?

2009-02-26T01:30:00.000-06:00

It is entirely annoying when I can't find my journal--my real journal. The one I can hold in my hands and write with my own hand. I don't write in it often--most of my thoughts are sane enough that they can exist in cyberspace. When I do need to write in it though, it is usually an urgent need that needs to be quenched. I tore apart my room like an alcoholic looking for a drink (no, I am not drunk). I can't find it, and due to some strange obsession with having to write all entries in the same journal (often in the same ink), I cannot write this down anywhere else. So. Here I am.

Let's just say that I am constantly searching for my mother in movies and books. When a mother character is particularly close to my own, or what I remember her to be (it sucks that I don't remember), I get sad. Saw a movie tonight and I got sad and I miss my mom. And then I realized that every day when I do something right--when I actually do my reading, when I make it to the gym, when I feel good enough to write--I am moving one step at a time away from that frail (skinny), broken (beautifully) boy I used to be. I don't want to move on. I just want to go back into her arms in the rocking chair where she would cradle me until I fell asleep. I still remember one night when she took me to the chair--it was dark, there was one lamp, and the room looked like a yellow cloud--and sometimes, at night, when the world is asleep and I am restless (like tonight), I just want to go back and fall asleep on her shoulder. Mothers shouldn't die. Seventeen year olds shouldn't have to move on. There is too much growing up left to do. I am like that tree that grows up in a drought whose rings are all skinny and close together.

come on skinny love

2009-02-18T23:43:00.000-06:00

Come on skinny love just last the year
Pour a little salt we were never here
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer

I tell my love to wreck it all
Cut out all the ropes and let me fall
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Right in the moment this order's tall

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
In the morning I'll be with you
But it will be a different "kind"
I'll be holding all the tickets
And you'll be owning all the fines

Come on skinny love what happened here
Suckle on the hope in lite brassiere
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Sullen load is full; so slow on the split

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
Now all your love is wasted?
Then who the hell was I?
Now I'm breaking at the britches
And at the end of all your lines

Who will love you?
Who will fight?
Who will fall far behind?

cancer of the forearm

2009-02-11T23:13:00.000-06:00

I am not good with doctors. I am not good with the whole "diagnosing" process. I don't have great experience with that in the past.

About seven months ago I went to the doctor in Jacksonville for a bump on my arm. I had researched the bump online and didn't think it was anything to worry about until it started causing pain. Turns out the bump was/is an abscess and the pain in my arm was a pulled muscle from lifting weights. I felt rather stupid.

The doctor did inform me that if it started changing color or shape that I should come back and get it looked at a little closer. About a month after this visit, the bump started morphing, not only in color and shape but also in size. Since then it has gotten bigger, smaller, changed from red to pink to flesh tone to white-ish and I haven't gone back.

I haven't gone back because I am convinced that I have cancer; who wants to go through that diagnosis? Not me. No thank you ma'am.

I am going back tomorrow because the bump is back to--or rather actually--causing pain. I am pretty sure this isn't a pulled muscle. There is a sort of dull ache around the center of the bump and then radiating pain that I feel mostly in my fingers as sharp pricks. I am pretty sure I have cancer of the forearm and I am going back to the doctor.

As of this moment I have about eleven hours remaining where I am cognitively cancer free and I plan on using that time to plan my funeral.

There will be free elephant rides as well as rainbow parasols with Victorian lace trim.

You aren't invited.

finding the time

2009-02-07T00:03:00.001-06:00

I used to be a very busy person. Today I dug out my old planners and realized just how busy I was. There were entire weeks when I would get up at seven, get ready, go to campus and not get back to my apartment until well after midnight. While I recognize that being an M.A. student has its perks--only two courses per semester plus teaching=time to eat, breathe and think--I miss being a busy, overachieving undergrad.

On the wall in the hallway Jordan and I both have the Sturtevant Award given to graduating seniors who exemplified outstanding leadership and service during their time at Illinois College. When I see it, I feel pride in my past accomplishments but I also feel a sort of nagging regret that I am not doing more with my time at Iowa State.

It isn't as easy to get involved as an M.A. student but Iowa State itself also poses some problems. It is a large state school. Getting involved isn't necessarily harder, but it isn't the same experience as it would be at a private, liberal arts school. Groups here often have fifty or more students, not ten. I like standing out; this whole big pond, small fish thing doesn't really work for me. But...

It is hard for me to rationalize this when I see glaring issues that I would love to sink my teeth into and tackle during my spare time. Iowa State is severely lacking in support for the LGBTQ community. I talked with the director of LGBT Student Services and he knows of quite a few cases where LGBTQ students were completely satisfied with their academics but were dismayed by the lack of a support community; they transfered to other schools. Its a shame, and I could do work with it. I have ample experience with leadership and service--it feels like I am cheating the school as well as myself out of some tiny bit of difference.

In other news, I miss Paris.

salt storms in iowa

2009-01-20T23:17:00.001-06:00

Today I discovered yet another reason that Iowa (or really any state that gets a foot of snow per week) sucks during the winter months. Picture it: I was sitting in class and had hung up my coat and scarf on the wall rack across the room (because when you have to wear a coat, a hat, ear muffs, two scarfs, and gloves, it gets too bulky to keep at your chair and you get in the habit of using the coat rack) but had, as usual, kept my bag at my chair so that I could access its' contents--chap stick, hand sanitizer, kleenex--during class. At hour 1.2 of 3, I leaned over to grab my bag off the floor, plopped it into my lap and proceeded to rummage for the chap stick that the severe wind and cold require I use four times an hour, minimum. There I was, happily applying chap stick as my hyper-literate classmates discussed the topic at hand. I couldn't have been happier. After a liberal application, I returned the tube to the bag and the bag to the floor only to discover a rectangular patch of murky, white dust that had accumulated in my lap. My gay senses practically threw up on the spot and I let out a semi-audible squeak as I frantically brushed the mysterious powder off of my lap. While a good half of the class was watching me intently, I shakily grasped my leather messenger bag only to find that the entire back of it was covered in dust. That was when I squeaked even louder and started smacking the bag repeatedly, a cloud of dust billowing out with each, solid thwack of my hand. At this time I had the attention of the entire class. It wasn't until later that I discovered the origin of that white, grainy powderdust. As I don't normally keep my bag on the floor (only when my table space is too small or otherwise occupied), this dust had escaped my notice. It has been slowly creeping in since the first snowfall in November and is nothing less than the salt they use to make our sidewalks and drivable surfaces safe. It accumulates in astonishing quantities. There are little piles of it around the corners of the room and where the table legs meet the floor. If you listen carefully, you can hear it under your feet. If you lie on the floor and breathe deeply, you might accidentally snort some and get a contact high. Welcome to Iowa.

my little slice of office

2009-01-19T21:00:00.000-06:00

I moved to Iowa at the beginning of August, 2008 and at the time, the only desk I had was one that matched the bedroom set I got when I was in first grade. It was pretty tiny; not really enough space to have a computer and a book open at the same time. Luckily, the studio apartment I moved in to had a large, built-in desk that worked perfectly. Needless to say, I left my old desk at home--one less piece of furniture to move six hours up the road.

I moved into this two bedroom apartment on December 1st, 2008. While it has more space and is a perfectly nice, functional apartment, it isn't nearly as cool as the studio. No high ceilings, no storefront look, no hardwood floors, no floor to ceiling windows, etc. While my roommate and I are more than happy to have an apartment that keeps the Iowa winters out and our heat in, there are some things our apartment lacks that we would love to have if we had the money to pay for them. I was mostly missing the built in desk; I spent the weeks before finals writing papers at the dining "area" table while my roommate played Nintendo and watched Desperate Housewives. It wasn't the optimal working environment.

But ah the triumph of man! Today, while I was at Target picking up some Seventh Generation laundry soap, I found a missionary-style desk that fit the space I had available (not much) and was big enough to spread out a bit of research or grading on. It only took me an hour to put together and looks positively delightful. What is more, I can finally unpack my "office supplies" box that has been sitting around annoying me for the past month and a half. I am as tickled pink as when I got my bedroom set in the first grade. I have some serious nesting instincts.

on upheaval

2009-01-14T11:04:00.000-06:00

Upheaval is a funny thing. It is something that happens and it has an effect; for me that effect has always been like being overcome by a sudden sense of overwhelming dread. It is never pretty, but the results are like building muscle; you tear a few things down so they can build themselves back stronger.

I was thinking yesterday about my freshman introduction to writing course that I took from an amazing feminist who is very fond of the color purple. Like most good composition courses, the focus is not necessarily about how to write a five paragraph theme or methods of research--all of the technical aspects of writing too a backseat to the readings we did. In the end I learned a different way of looking at the world; I learned how to see with a critical lens. I am not sure if her class was the direct cause of my change in world view but I can safely say that it planted the seeds for the plants that I would need to eat for nourishment in the months that followed.

Shortly after basic composition, perhaps two months, I came out of the closet in a not very smooth or confident way; I was not prepared for how unsettling the experience would be. I remember very distinctly laying on my bed as the walls of my apartment mocked me with a taunting dance. I couldn't breathe, I was dizzy, and I felt like I was weighted to the bed. I remember kicking off the physical effects long enough to send a text message asking for help: "I can't do this alone." The response came back: "You aren't alone, but I can't help you right now." Getting out of bed the next morning was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do.

The summer before my senior year in college, I had a few friends who stayed in town for jobs or internships. We had GRE study parties where we usually ended up cooking some food and drinking copious amounts of alcohol, our vocabulary lists and writing samples shoved in a pile to the side of the room. One of these friends is named Claire. After years of believing the right-wing religious nut jobs who used the Bible to condemn me to hell, I had adopted her as my religious coach. One day I decided I wanted her to explain a Bible verse about homosexuality so I got my shit together and drove over to her apartment where she explained several things that acted like explosives at the foundation of my rejection by God. It was one of those new world view moments where you walk in not necessarily content with the world, but at the very least confidant that you know how it works. I will repeat something I said earlier because it is both very important and very true: those world changing moments, particularly their after effects, aren't very pretty. Over the next few days that talk and its implications banged around in my head knocking shit over and leaving my thoughts in general disarray. During the next study party, I consumed a fifth of vodka and had what can only be equated to a complete emotional breakdown. I was innocently using the restroom one moment and I was on my knees dry heaving and sobbing while attempting to crawl back into the living room where I spilled my drink on every surface available while ranting about religion, my dead mother, the pains of being born a gay man, and people like Claire, who have the innate ability to bring that kind of shit together in a cute, original, and fun package with a velvet bow on top.

At Iowa State, English graduate students are most commonly hired for one of two jobs, a composition TA, or a speech TA. I was hired to be a speech TA and had long been mulling over whether or not I should switch to composition at the beginning of the next academic year (better for my intended career path). I had decided not to switch as of 6pm last night--I was comfortable where I was and reasonably confident that I could still get into a PhD program without experience teaching basic composition. I was thinking about all these things last night while simultaneously absorbing the classroom activities of my course called Theory and Research in Composition--the class where we learn how to effect that element of a "changed worldview" into our students. The byproduct--intended or unintended, it doesn't really matter--of learning how to do this is that I am going through another worldview change. It suddenly became very clear that I am teaching the wrong thing, that I desperately need to switch to be a composition TA. And not just for the resume building aspect, but for the "this is what I want to do with my life" aspect. It is what I want to do with literature as a student of it, it is what I want to do as a professor of literature, and it is what I want to do with writing as a basic form of communication--I want to teach students that it is good to question everything, to hold the crystal up to the light and look through a different spectrum, even for a few minutes.

It was like I was back in Dr. Udel's freshman writing course, like I was back on my bed with the room spinning, like that night I broke down on the floor my friends' apartment. It was one of those annoying, world changing epiphanies that makes you want to throw up but only because you have some putrid shit in your stomach that has been there for too long. Now I am trying my best to sit on my laurels, waiting from an answer from the powers that be--will I be allowed to submit a late application for reassignment?

so this is the new year?

2009-01-01T21:26:00.000-06:00

"What is the feeling when you are driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too huge world vaulting us and it's goodbye, but we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the sky." Jack Kerouac

Ugh I hate the end of things. Today was not only the end of the "Holiday Season" but the end of 24 hours of fun and mayhem shared amongst friends from Illinois College. Jordan, Claire, Kim, Juliane, Anne Marie, Ann, Jacob and Nikki all came together at my dad's house to celebrate the new year at Don's, the undergrad hangout. It was so wonderful to see everyone and catch up on everything--there was so much genuine happiness surging through the air it was catching. The group next to us said once "Man, the party is over there." After the bar we all took the drunk bus back to the house and some of us kept drinking until five am. Today wasn't very pretty but Dad cooked a buffet brunch and we napped a bit and spent the rest of it talking before everyone had to leave and go back to our little corners of the globe (some as far as Alaska and Japan). Oh it is fucking depressing and I hate it. I am never good with goodbyes and I never handle the end of things well. It isn't just an emotional response, my entire body gets involved in it. I feel sick, anxious, my stomach is flipping around, and there is a tightness in my chest.

This is the same feeling I had when I tried to go to Germany, when I went to and came back from Paris and when my undergraduate career ended. It is nice to know that these past twenty four hours rate up there among those experiences. Good friends can change one's entire outlook.

loneliness on Christmas

2008-12-25T18:36:00.000-06:00

Sometimes playing dress-up is far too easy and far too deceiving. I live six hours from where I grew up in an apartment that I pay for with my paycheck. After enough of that paycheck flows out to fund corporate America, I have enough left over to fill my empty days and nights (those that aren't spent using my researching, thinking, and paper-writing skills) with more than the appropriate amount of fun. I own my car (albeit it a paid-for-by-a-check gift from my father), enough technology to keep me semi-current, and a few well-placed designer shoes, sweaters, shoes, scarfs and leather goods. Except for a few closely-held friends and this online journal that no one reads, I keep my personal feelings and problems to myself. It is with all of these things that I keep at the end of a micromanaged leash that I can say that at a bare minimum, I leave my house every day feeling a tad more than presentable and the image I project is one of self-confidence and success.

Here's the thing though, it is all a mirage. I may look and sound like my shit is together, but at the core I feel like I am spinning on a merry-go-round barely able to keep myself on the ride let alone keep the real parts of me (emotions, desires, wishes, obsessions, etc.) from spinning off into oblivion. Today, my thoughts resound with the phrase "epic fail." Despite being surrounded by my family, I am essentially alone on Christmas. I make no secret about the fact that I wish for a partner, someone to share my life with. I envision something The Family Stone-esque--coming home with a man in tow and having someone to go to bed with, someone special to exchange gifts with, and someone to drive home with. Not having it is driving me crazy. My family is driving me crazy and I want classic, old Hollywood love to give my sanity back to me.

Perhaps wishing for something before its fruition is the biggest folly and the most telling sign of my immaturity.

reflections from the home front

2008-12-23T22:41:00.000-06:00

I really don't like this feeling of being home. I have been here for four days and I have felt nothing but listlessness sort of like I am a touch empty on the inside. This most likely stems from the fact that I really enjoy being around people; it is weird to come back to where I grew up and went to undergrad only to find that the people from both times in my life are strangely absent. When they aren't absent, they are a bit different or the situations in which we meet are different. It was the same feeling when I was at the tail end of my Paris experience. Some people had jetted back to the States; others had left to spend their last few weeks in Europe traveling. I was among the group who had a few days left to kill in the city. At least there were people around who I was friendly with but in all honesty, the situation was different. The balance of the group was off and when you combine that with the sadness of leaving part of your life behind it makes for a queasy stomach and now I feel it all over again--life here is changed and I find myself wanting to interact with friends from Ames who are all home on break and out of the Ames social scene--they aren't really interested in keeping up with it all.

In other news it is weird to see people from home, to be away and then come back. Sort of like reverse culture shock. I blew off at least three people at the store today. Part of it is the whole Christmas family thing. I am not in the socializing mindset at the moment. Now is the time for family and laying around the house. Unfortunately the weather sucks so my dad is stuck in Saint Louis and my sister is stuck in Springfield. It is just my brother and me holding down the fort. It is such a screwed up situation that my dog Jules is sleeping alone in my dad's bed waiting for him to come home. I don't think anyone can grasp this totally awkward social atmosphere.

In other news, to make myself feel better, I purchased a new MacBook. Go me.

go fucking figure

2008-12-19T01:21:00.000-06:00

"nothing can fill the deep void in the part me that wants to be held, cuddled, and kissed.* It's only been a week and now it seems as if the world and God himself are against us being together.* "Give up," my mind shouts to me. "It's just a crush," it reasons. Something inside me can not let go.* It's just how I am. I am stuck."

Go fucking figure.

a hug

2008-12-07T20:51:00.000-06:00

The scent of the skin on your neck, like alcohol tinted ivory. The feel of your skin on my lips--utterly human, fleshy and real--pulls me out of my head, pulls me back to reality. That look in your eyes and the unchecked pout of your lips betraying fatigue of the body and the soul. The concept of real. A solid body, a thin layer of skin between my hands and your blood--a real, live boy; a foreign object realized once again. My senses telling me about you but also confirming something about me, sewing up the tears in my soul, putting the pieces back together again. All these things I can't tell you; words that my tongue won't cooperate with when I am in your presence. How could I tell you? It goes beyond logic, that a simple hug signals infinite synapses swirling in a hurricane of ambiguity that makes my heart breathe again.

new apartment, new outlook?

2008-12-05T08:47:00.000-06:00

Here I am living in Ames, IA. Same general location, new apartment, new roommate. I am laying in bed trying to figure some things out, and I have come to the conclusion that it is too soon to make any conclusions. Let's ponder the positives: In the last four months I have lost fifteen of the seven hundred billion pounds that I gained while I was on antidepressants (and am getting a gym membership on Monday), I have proved to myself that I can survive, thrive, even enjoy living while distanced from my family, and I have done reasonably well the first semester of my masters program. The negatives? Really there is just one: I feel like I might be ready to take a step or two towards what I want in my life, and I have faltered in this place before. This is the place, about three years ago, that I felt free, unburdened, and myself for the first time in my life. I overstepped, I misstepped, I got scared, I lost control, and I turned and ran. I thought I was ready for this, but I screwed up again and it feels like I am standing over a crevasse with one leg on each side. What happens when the space between where I am and where I want to go gets too wide and I have to make a choice? I hope I don't screw it up.

something so appropriate

2008-10-26T03:37:00.000-05:00

When I first registered this blog I was sort of tired of the whole blog scene. I had been doing it for years (way before it was a popular thing that blogging engines made popular and easy). Eventually I grew tired of paying for my own website and doing the graphic design for a new layout every time I felt the need to express a new moment in my life. After a couple of years of having a blog hosted by myself, I spent a few years writing at Xanga. When I came to blogger I was worn out and wanted something new. I spent a couple of weeks pondering what I would call my new blog and eventually settled on "bring on the fear so i can find my courage." The idea came from the novel Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan. "I find my greatest strength in wanting to be strong. I find my greatest bravery in deciding to be brave. ... If there's no feeling of fear, then ther's no need for courage." At the time I was sitting pretty at Illinois College--resting comfortably on my dad's checkbook and the experience three years in one place brings. I guess you could say I saw Levithan's concept as something noble. In retrospect, I don't tink I could have judged how important the title of this blog would be. Now I sit in my studio apartment in Ames, Iowa, two months into my first semester of grad school. I pay my own bills according to a budget that I haven't followed. I find myself awoken in a cold sweat worried about money or a lesson plan for the next day that I am not sure will work. I ride the bus and I eat lots of tuna (it's cheap you know) and haven't bought a new article of clothing for at least a month. Most of all though, I worry about where my life is going. Continuing one's education in hopes of getting a better job is nice. Being a part of the education process for younger students is great. Not being a garbace collector or a factory worker is peachy. But really, what is it all worth if you aren't surrounded by amazing people? I find myself looking into the past at all the great times and wondering why they have been mostly absent since I moved here. I know the adage that you don't recognize the good times until you look at them in retrospect, but sometimes that doesn't seem good enough. I have had good friends, I have had great friends, now I want a boyfriend. I want someone to share my life with, even if the sharing only lasts for a week. I want that experience. Wanting doesn't do anything, and if I am not careful, I will end up barking up the wrong tree. I am just lonely and every once in a while, I want that loneliness to stop.

ice storm

2007-12-09T19:06:00.000-06:00

"The Jacksonville area has had an ice storm that caused campus power outages for about forty-five minutes. Lights and heat have been restored to the main residence halls. Some off campus locations remain without power. Students in these buildings are being relocated to halls that do have power. Please check back on Monday for further updates. "

When they say some of the off campus locations, they really mean two foreign language houses and an entire apartment complex...200 students total? Two inches of ice on the ground now. More freezing rain the next two days. All on oncampus events (including tutoring hours) have been canceled and all students are requested to stay indoors as much as possible. I spent the day watching trees fall in my neighborhood...will there be finals? I hope not.

marc quoted in the peoria news

2007-12-01T18:35:00.000-06:00

http://www.hoinews.com/News/news_story.aspx?id=71664

Today I received a $3,000 award based on volunteerism and advocacy in the homosexual community. The awards banquet was in Peoria and I was interviewed by one of the local news stations. I am misquoted in the above link and the amounts of the awards given out are wrong, but still, it is kind of exciting. Perhaps they will post a video clip like they said they would.

scary

2007-10-16T00:37:00.000-05:00

I had a scary moment today. I realized that I could not remember the last time I had taken my daily antidepressant/antianxiety medication. It was at work and I ended up being quite distracted throughout my entire shift. Realizing there is a reason for the steady, broken feeling of a long-lasting depressive mood is however semi-liberating.

When I got home though, I couldn't find my meds. The last time I took them (sometime early last week) they were on the dining room table. Stephen would never move my meds more than a few feet, just as I would never move his--it is a room mate pact. I know he didn't move them. I moved them. I put them somewhere, shuffled them to the side, got them lost in a pile of something. I couldn't find them and I couldn't find them. I swear I thought I was going to die from panic. I ended up cleaning my entire room in hopes they were lost under a pile of clothing. In the end I found a sample pack of the pills and took two of those to make my regular dosage. I don't feel panic anymore, but I am still in my mood--my funk.

I just realized the pills are most likely in the trunk of my car. Living out of a random car in order to make all of homecoming run smoothly never bodes well for keeping one's life organized.

Time to read--this week I am focusing on my honors thesis. Next week: who knows.

sometimes I don't know how to deal with emotions

2007-10-15T09:20:00.000-05:00

So, every time I start to look through pictures of Paris, I get a strange twist in my stomach that won't go away. It feels like I left a part of my life behind and haven't been able to pick it up again. How could I pick it up again? It is four thousand miles away. It hurts too much to do it.

fed up

2007-09-07T22:03:00.000-05:00

Honesty is a hard trick to master, one that I have never been good at mastering. Lately I have felt like I stay indoors--sometimes in my back bedroom--in order to lie to myself. If I am lounging around in sweats or athletic shorts and old tees, I don't have to face the fact that I am not so slowly expanding out of my clothing--almost all of my clothing. I don't have to face that reality if I don't get dressed.

I need to get over it and start being honest. During the course of the summer I did some good things. I managed to quit smoking for almost a month, I kept my apartment clean and tidy and I even went spinning regularly for a few weeks. What happened? I certainly have fell into a slump which is unbelievably frustrating. Right now I feel like yelling at myself. "The only want to break that chain of frustration is to make a dramatic change and actually follow through with it you dumbass!"

I need to start exercising again. I need to keep my living environment clean. I need to quit smoking once and for all. I need to stop hiding anxiety and frustration behind alcohol.

Wish me luck.

Missing Paris

2007-08-11T12:20:00.000-05:00

It isn't a sappy "Aw, wish I were back there," but rather a deep and hollow pain that starts in my chest and radiates outward until my upper arms are numb and I am dizzy and short of breath. It happens every time I open up a photo album and see all the friends I made in Paris--the friends that I am no longer in close contact with. I see them smiling and the backdrop isn't a Jacksonville bar or some lame party, it is the grand canal at Versailles or the crowded caves of Bar Trois. It just makes me think.

Somewhere along the line--probably when I was in Paris--I forgot how damn lucky I was to be there. It isn't that I have tons of regrets, but I do wish I had lived every day there like I was the luckiest kid on the planet because that is how I feel when I look back. I feel that if I hadn't taken it so much for granted I wouldn't feel so much of this pain and sadness now.

I could say that hindsight is 20/20 and not be lying, but I also wouldn't be hitting the truth on the head. That paltry little phrase doesn't take me back to Paris and it certainly doesn't give me any comfort when I start feeling this sappy. Paris was something I prepared for for more than a year. I spent more than a year of my life pumping myself up so I would have the courage to step onto the plane and in the end--I did it. I have immense satisfaction that I did it, but also immense sadness that a year and a half of preparation ended in four months--four months filled with more turbulent emotion that should be physically possible.

I guess that is it. I am not ready to deal with that emotion--or the magnitude of that emotion.

penpal

2007-07-13T13:37:00.000-05:00

I remember the days when I used to have a penpal. It was an optional thing, a part of my French class. I am pretty sure my French teacher wanted us to sign up for a French penpal, but I didn't. I signed up for one from Malaysia because the Petronas towers had just been built, and they were the tallest buildings in the world and that country was suddently hopelessly cool in my eyes. I remember writing only one letter to him--the response I wrote to his first and only letter. It was a fascinating experience. I wish I still had that letter, but I don't. During a bout of frenzied cleaning I thew it away--apparently because it had little sentimental value to me at the time.

I recently checked out a book called 52 Projects--a book about projects and how they affect one's life. The projects are of all different types--anything from starting a stamp collection, to writing all of your old teachers and telling them what you remember about thier classes. I haven't officially started a project yet, but just reading the book gives me inspiration. I think getting a penpal would be fun. Having someone to share my experience with, and getting to share someone else's experience would be well worth my time.

changes

2007-07-11T00:09:00.001-05:00

Life is funny. I don't know if it was ever understandable or chartable the way one can diagram a sentence. I do know that it certainly isn't that way now. I have been keeping a journal in some form or another for a long time. They haven't been consistant by any means. I remember one that I named Simba in honor of The Lion King and another one that I kept on my first computer when I was somewhere around ten. When I was a senior in high school, I started using xanga. Since then I have had a continuous journal. Five years of journals is nothing to scoff at, and I used to shun those who continuously switched from xanga to bloger to myspace to facebook. I kept up my xanga--mostly for nostalgic reasons. For me xanga was a form of solidarity in my life, coming around just after my mother died, when I learned the hard way the real meaning of loss and pain and emotional torment. For five years I have kept a semi-continuous record of my life on xanga, keeping every entry public for one reason or another. I decided today that it was time for a change.

It isn't that I no longer like xanga. I do, but I find it depressing that I am one of the final few holding on to a tool that few use. Anyway, in a few days I will be moving into a new apartment. In a little more than a month I will be heading into my senior year of college. For the past few weeks I have been researching graduate schools, scanning faculty lists, ordering books, and generally planning where I will be headed in a year. It is a time of change, and I am ready for it.

In the words of David Levithan, masterful author of Boy Meets Boy, "I find my greatest strength in wanting to be strong. I find my greatest bravery in deciding to be brave...If there's no feeling of fear, then there's no need for courage." I read that book a couple of years ago and have tried to keep that quote in my mind ever since.

Here's to jumping off the proverbial cliff without a parachute.