MY LIFE - JULY

Sunday, July 7, 2002

As a rule, I try to avoid confrontations with people. I've found that it very rarely actually accomplishes anything other than making everyone even more upset than they had been before, and it's just a waste of time to begin with. Does this mean I have avoided confrontations? Not at all. I do get confrontational over certain things, but I try to pick my spots. I'm not going to do it if I'm not sure if I'm right.

It took me 18 years before I became confrontational with my dad, and that wasn't until he had nearly knocked me down trying to get my mom's attention by repeatedly shutting off the computer while she'd be doing something. Then she'd get in his face, he'd get in her face, and then I'd come barging in. My dad never did figure out how to handle me when I did get in his face and I don't think he'll ever know.

I mention this because I see more people getting into more confrontations all the time, sometimes over the smallest things. I witnessed this not too long ago in a parking lot, where a married couple were yelling at each other over $20. As hard as I tried, I couldn't drown them out, in fact, they seemed to get louder and louder until it nearly reached a boiling point.

This was also the thing that was starting to happen between my ex, Tab, and me. The fact that neither of us can back down from a challenge made our petty fights into challenges themselves. I'm not perfect, she's not perfect, but we both seemed to want to believe that we were and that the other person was wrong.

I do not take a whole lot of pride in my confrontations. I don't like them and they don't solve anything. I would rather just calmly talk about whatever's going on and try to resolve it with a rational mind.

Too many people in this country don't do that though. I've been cut off several times in traffic without batting an eye, but I've been cussed out by other drivers for using a turn signal and squeezing into the lane I needed to get into. I've been confronted by customers who thought I was a moron or thought I was trying to cheat them, make them look stupid, or any other tepid reason that they had.

I've seen confrontations online of all places. I just saw it not too long ago in a chat room where this girl and this guy were going at each other like no one else was there. There was swearing, name calling, and a whole lot of hostilities and these two were friends! I'd hate to see it if they weren't friends.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately not because of any situation I've been in. If anything, I've avoided a couple confrontations with people because it wears me out and it's not my thing. I've been thinking about it because it was the theme of my childhood.

Only a few people know the entire story of my childhood. Yes, I have a lot of it posted on this site, but there's a whole lot that I've never publicly mentioned or even thought of mentioning, not because I'm ashamed, but because I haven't felt the need to dig out the deepest of my demons.

I very rarely talk about my childhood to begin with. Anyone I know online only knows what I wrote in Me, Myself & I, outside of maybe Jen, and I'm not even sure if I've told her everything for that matter. I put up with a lot of shit that I'd never put up with now and it started very early.

I've never had a whole lot of friends. There's really only a couple people I talk to offline, Mike and Shelby, and a few people that I talk to online. When I was little, I really only had one or two friends, both of whom I met right before third grade. I met James first, then he introduced me to Ryan, a black kid. James and I ended up becoming pretty good friends, despite the growing popularity he had and Ryan and I became best friends for a while.

I no longer remember what happened between Ryan and me. I think he started acting funny around us and wasn't telling us the truth about things, so I got mad at him, he got mad at me, and we never talked again. In fact, we wouldn't even look at each other the rest of our time in elementary school. He did eventually move away and that's where I lost track of him.

James and I stayed friends, but rarely did he really treat me like a friend. More often than not, he was part of the problem, making fun of me, not showing me any kind of support at all when others would pick on me. A lot of it I may have brought on myself by the way I behaved, but still, a little help would've been nice.

Just how did I bring it on myself? By dressing different from everyone else (I had absolutely no style), acting different (I was so quiet that teachers wanted to know what my problem was), and just not trying to get along with some people. A lot of it reflected on my home life as things were always rough when it came to my dad, but I can't keep making excuses for everyone. What happened to me was wrong, but could've been avoided.

I think that some people liked seeing me cry too. I think a big reason why it seems hard for me to cry now is because I cried so much when I was little. It didn't take much and everyone knew what buttons to push to get me upset. More often then not, I avoided going places, talking to certain people, and alienated myself from everyone around me.

Eventually I learned how to not let people get to me, but until that happened, I was a sitting duck. Kids can be mean, especially if they know someone's weakness. I think my weakness was written on the wall: any kind of insult, insinuation, or sign of someone not liking me was often enough to set the tears in motion. I was emotionally unstable when I was young and it had a lot to do with the unstable conditions at home.

Right around middle school, I hit my rebel stage and started doing all these things with people I thought were cool. I met Kevin in fifth grade and we were good friends up until a few years ago. We drifted apart as he went the drugs, alcohol, and violence route and I went the working route. The summer before 7th grade, there was a group of about 5 or 6 of us that would constantly get into trouble, do things that were blatantly stupid, but we had fun.

Smoking cigarettes started up first. I only lasted a couple months, but it was kind of weird to feel like everyone thought you were cool because you smoked. I know better now and I knew better then, but I was just trying to fit in. I drank very little, having the occasional wine cooler, and no, I don't remember how we got a hold of them. I smoked weed three times before I got into high school, and while it wasn't the worst thing you can do, it's something I won't be doing again. I still remember the feeling of sitting in a chair with a stupid-ass grin on my face while my friend said all this bugged-out shit.

I did all the crazy shit that teenagers are prone to do, but I did something my friends didn't do, and that's give up all that crap. Sure, I'll drink socially every now and then, but I have never been drunk and I'm not so sure I want to be drunk. After all, it only takes one time for some people to become alcoholics and I don't want to be that kind of person.

I did 2 hours of community service when I was in middle school as well. My friends had gotten into going to department stores and stealing whatever they could get their hands on. Then we'd all ride back to someone's house and check out all the crap we had grabbed.

One day, one of them saw a backdoor was open to a convenience store in Brunswick, went in, and started grabbing bottles of beer. Well, someone caught them back there and they all ran out of there. I was obvlious to what was going on, so I didn't know what was going on until the guy grabbed me from behind and made me go inside the store office. Then I had to give the names out of all the people involved.

James came back and turned himself in, but the others took exception to what had happened. When we went back to school, Kevin and his friends constantly took aim at me, calling me names and making an already bad experience even worse.

The weird thing? They eventually got over it and we all became friends again. I'm sure James had something to do with this, but to this day, I still don't know why they forgave me. In the meantime, I was changing in appearance and beginning the start of a very long transition from being a complete loser in everyone's mind to someone who was pretty cool.

In between though, girls would pretend to like me, then when I'd finally fall for it, they'd all laugh at me like it was some silly game. This happened about three or four times before I finally got pissed and then it stopped. Strangely enough, the girls that did it to me, we became friends later on, this also thanks to James.

By the time high school started, I was known by all the popular people and was out with James and his friends quite often. I was also aggravating the hell out of my mom by not listening to her, doing things she didn't want me to do, and generally being a pain in the ass. I thought that being cool was worth it all though and didn't really realize that I was jeopardizing more than I'd ever want to.

I had some social clout though, something that I didn't know what to do with. Instead of hooking up with girls, going out with different people, and moving up the social chain, I kind of stalled in neutral. I had my opportunities, I even had a couple of semi-girlfriends. Hell, the most popular girl in my grade had a crush on me, but I was still too shy to know what to do about it.

My sophomore year, a girl named Rachel and I became pretty good friends during French class. She'd mess with me, I'd mess with her, and she was the first girl that I really felt comfortable around. I even told her to her face that I liked her and that I liked her a lot. We started talking on the phone, but that's where it stalled. I didn't know what to do next and we never did get together, even though I knew she liked me enough. Eventually, I lost track of her like everyone else in Brunswick.

There was another girl, Christie, who also appeared to like me. Again, nothing ever happened as I was too shy to talk to her and never really became friends with the girl other then by her association with a girl, Bianca, that James was and is still seeing to this day. Outside of that, we didn't talk and I'm kind of glad that we didn't now because she was a bit flaky.

Another girl, Sara, took time out of her day to talk to me all the time when we had the same class together. If there was a group project, she often picked me to be in her group. One time, she wasn't in the same group as me, but she was making a presentation to our group (this was speech class for those wondering). As she was doing so, she stood right beside where I was sitting and had her hand on the back of my head. I don't really know how much she actually liked me, but I'd have to say she was at least curious about me. My whole sophomore year, she was like that to me.

My junior year was my best year. I was more outgoing that year than any other year and I had my best grades in high schook, earning a GPA over 3.0. I don't remember what the exact number is, although I think it's in one of my older entries. I remember this year because this was the year that everyone talked to me in all my classes, I was very often a part of the more popular groups, and I was just readily accepted by everyone. If any year was my chance to break out of my shyness, this was the year. It didn't happen, but it was still my best year.

Senior year sucked outside of Tricia Ross and the small group of people that we were part of in Ecology. Things were bad at home, so my concentration was way off at school, and I was overstressed most of the time. I showed my potential, but never fully realized it. I ended up graduation without much fanfare and lost track of everyone I went to school with. Yeah, it sucks real bad because there were a lot of people I wanted to keep track of.

I guess high school could be summed up like this: I got along with every kind of person and had no real enemies or bullies to contend with. It could've been better, but it could've been worse.

The rest of my life is pretty well documented. All my struggles, my successes, the weirdness, it's all documented from 1998 on. But all the stuff as a little kid, most of it I'm telling for the first time. The stealing incident. My escapades with drugs. I bet no one would believe me if I said that I was in a van that hit a mailbox, then all of us dumbasses decided to go back and see what we had done. We spent the rest of the night hiding in this kid's house with the lights out, watching as cop cars came up and down the street with lights on, looking for us. The whole time we were in the house, Kevin and one other person were hiding underneath a pine tree. We thought we were so cool that night, but it didn't take me long to realize how stupid we actually were.

The most important thing is I learned from the mistakes I made. I do not regret a single thing that I've done or been a part of. Sure, I learned some lessons the hard way, but it's better to learn them the hard way then to never learn them at all.

Regardless of what happens in the future, I'll always have these life lessons behind me to look back on if I ever think of doing something stupid again.

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I've had the computer lock up on me four times tonight while writing this entry, so I'm going to wrap this up by saying I've pretty much laid to rest the situation with the girl I've been writing about. Her last two entries have been much more mellow and there's no reason for me to sit her and continue talking about this. She's doing her own thing and I'm going to do my own. The fact that she never wrote me back is enough of an answer for how she really felt about me and I accept that.

All I can do is wish her luck and move on. Life's too short to make a big deal out of something like that, no matter how strongly I feel about it. She's obviously not concerned with it so I shouldn't be either.

I just can't help but feel that she doesn't want to give some guys enough respect. I can understand that she's been through a lot with guys, but I've been through all sorts of things with girls and I've never stopped respecting them. Maybe I just don't know though. It's hard to figure somethings out.

She has the right to handle the guys she sees as she finds fit though. I can't change that, nor can any of those guys. I sincerely hope that she finds someone that works out, but until she accepts that with every guy she's taking a chance, it's going to be the same thing over and over again.

As for me, I already know what flaw I have. I fall too quickly for something that may not be there. I move too fast sometimes and I need to stop doing that. I have to let things come naturally. Only then will I find a girl that works out for me.

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A couple of quick notes....I'm going to six flags tomorrow despite not being able to find anyone to come with me. Tab and whoever she's bringing will be there and who knows, there's always the chance I'll meet someone there. If my stomach hurts though, I may scrap that idea....The passing of Ted Williams is on my mind as with any baseball fan. Williams was a great hitter, but he was always a great man, always sharing information with other players and his charisma will always be remembered. I still remember the 1999 All-Star game where he was honored by Boston and the All-Stars that year. Seeing all those modern players honor Williams was one of the most touching moments ever in baseball. The tears on the faces that night, those were genuine.