MY LIFE - JUNE

Tuesday, June 18, 2002

He had awakened in the mid-afternoon only because of his refusal to get up at 10am like he could've. It probably would've made the day a whole lot easier, but he decided that he needed as much sleep as possible and fell back into a sleep with his cat laying next to him.

Despite the scenery change, despite the chaotic events of the last month, she still was sleeping next to him where ever he was, as if that was the one last reminder of how things had been before the fire.

The fire. The events of that night still fail to escape him, almost as if he's doomed to remember them for the rest of his life. While he wanted to sleep as much as possible, the occasional nightmare would sometimes stop him.

He drifted off, only to wake up at 3 in the afternoon, remembering that he had to get to the store for a store meeting that was taking place at 5. He got up, got dressed, brushed his teeth, and headed on out to the store where he thought he'd be in for a one-sided shouting match. Things hadn't been going real well there with customer service and his manager wasn't too thrilled with things.

The meeting went well enough. There was no yelling and a surprising amount of laughter for a meeting that was to be a negative one, or at least everyone had been led to believe. Instead his manager conceded that a lot of what was going on couldn't be helped, that some issues couldn't be resolved.

He left the meeting feeling, well, decent was about as good a word that he could think of using. He got back to the hotel and checked the messages that were flashing on the phone. The message was from Mike, so he called him back. He said he'd come over, but it didn't quite work out that way.

He then went online to check his e-mail, the first time in probably a week that he'd be online before midnight. After signing on, he didn't see anyone he felt like talking to, so he just went straight to the e-mail. There were two e-mails from someone that he did not want to here from and some junk e-mail in there.

He thought briefly about reading the e-mails in question, but after receiving two less-than stellar e-mails from this girl and another from one of her friends, he decided he didn't really need it anymore. He had done what he thought he could do to rectify the situation, but it hadn't happened so there was no longer a need to dwell on it in his mind.

No, after the insults starting flying in, he had decided that enough was enough and talking to several other friends had only confirmed this. He was not going to give anyone the time of day if they weren't going to listen to what he had said. The e-mail from a friend was more than enough to convince him of this.

He was also not going to sit there and air it all out completely on the internet, after all, in the words of her friend, nobody cared about his web site, nobody cared about him, nobody cared about his cat, in short, nobody cared.

That was what had made him mad, reading the comments about nobody caring. If nobody cared, then why did he get so much feedback from his site? If nobody cared, then why would people sit and write him e-mails and instant messages about how much they liked what he had wrote?

All he could think about was why did this person waste their space trying to get to him when it wasn't going to work? Did they suddenly think he was going to change his mind, or did they think he was going to see the "error" of his ways? He couldn't be sure, but he started smiling when he thought about this person thinking that words were going to make him cry, make him feel worthless.

He fired off a quick response to whoever it was that had e-mailed him and no longer worried about it. If they didn't like his site, then they didn't need to go to it in the first place. He wasn't going to let one or two people suddenly make him doubt himself. He certainly wasn't going to touch the issues of whether or not he was gay. There was no sense in even responding to that ridiculous insult to begin with. Just because he wrote something that this person thought stupid did not make him gay, although he guesses some people are just immature that way.

He and his sister's boyfriend, Dan, played a video game for a couple hours to close out the night. Life was too short for him to get all bent out of shape over people who didn't know or understand, and he was not going to waste his time with them.

---

It's amazing to me what people will try to do to get a reaction out of me. I still remember thinking "what the fuck" when I was opening up this e-mail from someone I never knew, then I started laughing over the accusations that came out. If they were trying to get me worked up, it failed. If they were trying to convince me that I had somehow done something terribly wrong, the failed. All they did was take up space in my inbox and make me laugh.

Let's get one thing straight. I spent much of my middle school years listening to people try and accuse me of being gay. One week in high school changed that when I started dating, now get this, GIRLS. I'm as straight as you can possibly get. I love girls and always will. God, no one's accused me of being gay since those days until this person did in an e-mail.

Am I supposed to be intimidated now by this? Am I supposed to sit there and start getting all worked up over it? No, I'm not going to sit there and worry about what they think because that's falling into their hands. So they think that I need to get a life. They think that I should spend all the time I spend online talking on the phone to so and so instead. They think no one cares about the cats, about my cat, or about what I did.

I guess I should forward them all the e-mails I've received, not just since I rescued my cat from the tree, but since the fire itself. If they don't care, that's fine. But don't try and convince me that no one cares because you have no clue just how many people do actually care.

Let's see, now I've received five e-mails that pretty much were potshots at me and I've responded to one, and that was the one I just mentioned above. And it was about three or four sentences long. I'm not going to waste my time getting into a war of words with people. I explained myself a week ago and yet this girl is still trying to drag it on. I'm simply not going to get myself involved in this shit because I do, contrary to popular belief, have a lot of shit to do during the day.

She claimed that because I made time for her for three days, I could sit there and make more time for her whenever necessary. Her friend claimed that if I had time to write these entries, that I could call her and talk to her.

Let's see, I put off laundry, walking the dogs (which is kind of important whether or not you care to believe it is), going through a two to three page list of things that were recovered from my room, finding a kennel and doghouse, finding cages for the cats, buying food so that I had something to eat other than fast food, going to the house to give input on what I wanted done, and a few other things. I put off a lot of shit that I couldn't keep putting off, then I get an earful because I took care of things.

Oh, and as for calling instead of writing? Well, seeing as all these entries have been written past 1 or 2 in the morning, it just isn't going to happen. I don't call people after 10 or 11, much less 1 or 2 in the morning.

Is there any wonder why I stopped talking to this girl? I explain why I wasn't able to talk or hangout, and I get an e-mail filled with accusations. I get online late at night just long enough to check up on e-mail, and she refuses to let me sign off to let me go to bed, then I get an earful about how I didn't say goodnight.

Well, the last thing I'm going to say on this is this: it's a dead issue with me. I will not respond to e-mails on this. I will not even read them. If I do not recognize the e-mail address, it's being deleted. I will not write about it anymore from this day on unless something else happens.

I will not drag this on any longer. It's a dead issue and will not take up any more space in my web site.

---

Getting onto something worth my time...We did have a store meeting at work today, which meant I did have to come in on my day off and listen to my manager, Bob, talk about what was going on in the store. Lately, we haven't been doing to well in either the front or back of the store and Bob wanted to know what was going on.

By the end of the meeting it was clear that Bob didn't think that employees were the sole cause of things, that it was a combination of things. A lot of which we couldn't control so he said not to worry about those things.

In the long run, it was a productive meeting and a much-need break from what's been going on this week. I'm on vacation this week, but it feels like I've done more this week than I do when I'm at work. I don't know though. Sometimes life can be like that.

All I know is tomorrow better be quiet or I'm not going to be too happy a camper.