The last week has been pretty hectic. I drove up to Santa Cruz with Sharona on Thursday and essentially arrived into a mild apocalypse. A couple different storms blew through the area and the strong winds threw some trees into the power lines, causing a blackout for all of Friday and early morning Saturday. However, thanks to hippy ingenuity, the time was somewhat saved thanks to outdated trivial pursuit (1981 general knowledge is definitely different from today’s), an amazing cook, and a guitarist. Overall it was a really cool experience. Unfortunately, I was still blue from New Years and was having trouble being in the present. My emo-ness continued through move in, although actually having my own space with my own things in it lightened my mood. My roommate is a cool guy, but seems a little homesick and has pretty much bedridden himself for the last two days. He left behind his girlfriend back home and is probably missing her more than anything else, but he’ll also talk about the little things that people take for granted, like waking up and seeing your dog or your bedroom or anything of that sort. Everyone on my floor is really nice, but so far they have been drinking and smoking out every night, which I’m hoping will die down a little as classes get harder, but it’s something I don’t want to lose entirely because, after all, this is college! The only thing I really miss from back home is some of the people, but definitely not everyone, which is somewhat sad to say but it’s the truth. I’m looking forward to getting to know my floor mates better tonight since I don’t have to do anything until 2pm tomorrow. Classes are harder for sure, but they still seem like they’ll leave me with a lot of time for myself, which is great. But buying 11 different books for one class is surely a new experience. I’ve also come to the recent realization that the main aspects of the rave culture aren’t really all that far from a general hippy mentality, which I find amusing. In short, given a little more time I think that I will have a LOT of fun up here after I get settled in and more comfortable with the whole situation. Anywho, I got class in an hour and reading to do for it so I gotta jet for now.

        I never really took a good look at the friendships I have been involved with until the past few months. And I’m not sure if there was some change (either on my part or just in the relationships) or I am just seeing things in a new way. Overall, almost everyone I saw as friends I now see as mere acquaintances. There are only a select few that I think really know a lot about me and those are the ones that I see as true friends. The funny thing is, half of the people I see as the true friends are people that I met 3 months ago. (random wtf side note – my mom is watching playboy tv in the other room, which she decided to activate last month). Anyway, Space, Sharona, Lucy, and Shelly are probably the only people that know the real me. And looking back out I know all of them equally well, possibly with the exception of Lucy since she stays pretty quite, but I do my best. I think this is because I feel as if I am being judged by everyone else to a degree, and that makes me keep up my guard because I don’t feel that I can necessarily trust them with whatever I say.

            Looking into the relationships with people that I don’t feel that connection with carries some interest with it too. I feel like I know Alice, Shorty, Jane, Al, Germ, Clay, Dan, and the others as best as I can, but they never took the time to get to know me. The worst of all these is probably Shorty, as I have known him practically my entire life. This relationship is a prime example of that change I’ve seen in some of my friendships. I taken a broader interest in quite a few things that I’ve always enjoyed reading about, but never bothered because no one I knew could talk about them anyway. However, by taking up these new interests I have also allowed much of my old ones to wane. This has created a really strange relationship between me and Shorty where he’ll stop by, be somewhat aggressive (such as throwing things and laughing about it, but the objects are slowly getting heavier), ask me for a favor (usually a ride to food or something) and then just take off and go smoke out. We really have nothing to talk about anymore, because everything new that I am experiencing and learning about, he has no experience in. Not only are there no common interests anymore, but the feeling of being judged still resides over anything I try to bring up. This is pretty much what lingers in all of the friendships I mentioned above…I’ll bring up something and it is immediately scrutinized and prodded at to look for flaws or ulterior motives. And what’s the most interesting part of all? I have never felt like I have done so much for myself. A few examples, I mentioned doing volunteer work to help out a friend with a community service thing and Alice, Jane, and Shorty all looked at me like I just stole money from a blind homeless girl while raping her. Or I joined Greenpeace, because I am actually starting to look at the issues that are bigger than myself, and when a brochure was in the mailbox with my name on it I was met with a nice, “Greenpeace?! What are you…gay?” by Shorty, and something similar, yet less homophobic, from Al. Overall, the people I used to see as such good friends are now the embodiment of everything I have come to loath about the society that surrounds me. So maybe this move is going to be for the best.

            My mom seems to be getting more and more lost with herself as my moving out draws closer. I try to ask her about her day and chat with her, but all she has been doing is throwing twenties at me (even when I tell her I don’t need any money) and watching a Korean show called Pocoyo. I wouldn’t really worry but she is watching this show for at least an hour a day, and there are only around 7 or 8 different 4-minute shows saved to the tv. So she is obviously watching each one more than once, every day. But I guess that’s what makes her happy right now so that is fine, just a little creepy.

            By learning more about the divorce and allowing some time to let is swash around in my mind for awhile I began to think about a few things. First off, I thought about how it is nice to have a little more knowledge about the divorce, and by knowing what I know now, I think I can finally accept that it happened and let it rest in the past. Second, it got me thinking about what I think love truly is, and although I don’t think I have a super solid grasp on what it is I think I have a much better idea of it, as well as a much healthier mentality about it. I am much more willing to discuss it now and stopped getting all finicky when it comes up. Third, it got me wondering if digging up any more of the past is really worth it at this point. I got the closure I needed for the divorce, but I am left with this curious itch that developed while seeking that closure. Learning what I did about my mom caught me off guard, and it has also peaked my curiosity. I think this is because I have known enough about my parents lives in order to match up to where I am now. I knew about the first 20 years of both of my parents’ lives, but I don’t know much from that point forward. Maybe that is why I don’t feel as close to them as I did growing up, or maybe it’s because I see us all on the same field now, everyone playing the same game. Nonetheless, the itch I have to bring up the new info I have on the divorce, as well as the curiosities I have about her prison time, wants to be scratched, but I don’t know if I should bother bringing up things that could bring with them painful memories. I’m not sure if I want to put her through that for my curiosity, but at the same time I want to know if my mom was cheating on my dad, which makes his actions somewhat justified and might allow me to see him as something more than the weak, narrow-minded, selfish person he is to me now. However, at the same time I want to get my mom to realize that her offspring aren’t a bunch of twacked out druggies like she thinks, and maybe a small shock to her system might help her look at the bigger picture. I’m also struggling with the concept of how honest a parent should be with their children. I have always been under the idea that I will tell my kids everything about me at the appropriate time, my successes, along with my fallacies, and I feel that that will play a vital role in the love between us. I guess that’s why I feel that I should ask my parents anything I want to know before I move out, I feel as though I have been slightly cheated out of a part of the love between parents and children. And, strangely enough, my dad actually encouraged me to think it over and ask whatever I wanted as I left that day, which made me feel closer to him than I have in a long time, if not ever. But, here is my mom, holding back so much. Maybe this whole notion is ridiculous, shouldn’t I person feel comfortable talking to their parents about anything? Aren’t they supposed to be the people that you feel that you can count on regardless of what life throws your way?

            Another thought that came up while I was typing away for a philosophy paper was Plato’s concept of justice through the generations. He felt that with every generation comes along a lower sense of justice, which can be transcended into higher levels during the course of one’s life. This got me thinking because, if it rings true, that means that I started off less fortunate, in terms of virtues, than my parents did. This means that if I want the best for my kids I need to learn how to improve myself in anything that I see as a weakness. Consequently, that works out in my own interest as well, so the motivation is there, and I guess I’ve already gotten started on it without realizing it. I have never felt so close to matching who I am on the inside to who I am outside than I have within the past year, and it is something I definitely want to carry on into the new year, and into the rest after that as well.  

        Ok, I’m not sure why but I decided to go to the park and to write this on my laptop while at the park. It’s probably because it is a nice day and I needed to get out of the house after the conversation I just had with my dad, but most likely it’s because being out with Shelly makes me think more about resolving any issues I have, and we were both out here the other day, which was nice. It wasn’t an angry one, but more an emotional one. I learned a few new things, much of which helps piece together the whole story surrounding the divorce. I didn’t bring up his alcoholism, and he didn’t use that word either, but he did address his drinking. Whenever I hear my grandmother or mother talk about my dad they both usually say he was a good guy until about a year before I was born. Since this is all I have ever heard I never really questioned it until now, after all, my dad hasn’t really been the idyllic father figure growing up, but honestly, how many are in their kid’s eyes? He could have done a lot differently in the past, mainly control his drinking, which I think he still doesn’t know just how out of control it was. He said by the time he tried to kick my mom out of the house he had stopped drinking, I’d like to believe that but, for obvious reasons, I just can’t. He also was convinced that my mom was having an affair with a doctor or martial arts instructor, which I thought was ludicrous until I thought about it more and heard what he had to say. As it turns out the night he tried to kick my mom out he said he packed her bags because she wasn’t around for the Sunday night dinner, which he saw as important. Also, during that night the karate instructor, who had an intimate relationship with my oldest sister Rose from my understanding (somewhat forced on her by my mom from what I have heard her say), was also at the house, as were all of my sisters, so my mom was the only one missing…her whereabouts that night, I’m not sure, but my dad seems to think it was at this doctor’s place. Now that I know all this the reason they split up seems a little more clear, simply put, the love slowly faded from both sides, or as Shelly would put it: “the front fell off.” He also mentioned that he was suffering from a lack of sleep, most likely due to obsessing over the thought of an affair, but also because of “the parties out in the Jacuzzi,” which were apparently my mom’s doing from his eyes, and now that I think about it, those nights were basically Rose and the karate instructors, and most likely set up by my mom if what I learned from Rose is true. Technically, even if there was no doctor, my mom cheated on my dad in a way. It seemed as though she wanted something with the karate instructor, Ernest, which she couldn’t have, so she instead tried to embody that desire into a relationship with her daughter. I think my dad probably saw it this way too.

            Something else of interest is the fact that both of my parents say that the other changed around the same time. Strangely enough, my dad was able to elaborate on this a lot more than my mother. My mom just said his drinking became more of a problem. What I heard from him is that he “grew up at the age of 31,” which he didn’t sound too proud of (in the sense that it took him that long, not that it happened). Apparently he stopped doing things like going out to strip clubs with the guys and realized that he had a family that he was responsible for now. However, I think the only difference is that he didn’t go out to have his drinks now, so his problem was more apparent, which was the change my mom saw. However, my dad said that he felt my mom had changed too. He said that ever since she had her miscarriage, which almost killed her, she had changed. He said she seemed gloomy and said things like “I should technically be dead,” and never really had the same zeal for life. He also said at some point (it sounded like around this time) that my mom spent too much time with “Mother’s little helpers,” which is apparently slang for stimulants that I didn’t know about. He figures it got to the point where it messed with her head a little, and I don’t entirely disagree with the possibility, but then again there is no way I would ever know the difference since it all happened before I was born. So basically, I was born in the midst of life changes in my parents, and it didn’t work out. I never really felt that I understood or had a reason as to why the divorce happened until now, and it’s possible that I have been unable to let certain things go because of that, but I don’t think I will actually know that until sometime later down the line.

            I also learned today that both of my parents have spent time in prison, I’m not really sure what for in either case, but it put things into perspective for me in a way. Parents are people too, you can’t expect them to be perfect, and that simple fact needs to be accepted. My dad actually surprised me when he told me my mom spent time in jail, but told me he didn’t feel it was his place to tell me what it was for (which I thought was pretty admirable considering all the things I have heard about him). Another way this opened my eyes was by making me look at addiction in a new light. I honestly believe my dad doesn’t think he has a drinking problem, which at this point he might actually not but it was obvious he had one before. That comforted me in an odd way, because I am already willing to look at the possibility of addiction within my life, so I feel a step ahead of him in that aspect. So if it ever becomes a problem I think that I will be able to stop it before it takes me anywhere too bad. However, I also think addiction is just a way of not dealing with any problems your facing. The only way I could say I was addicted to weed is by socialization. It made it easy and took all of the work out of getting to know people, they just talked, regardless of whether or not I chose to listen. This was nice in two ways, first, it allowed me to gain perspective into the lives and thoughts of others, but it also allowed me to apply a lot of what was being talked about to my own life. I thought about a lot of things that probably never would’ve come up in my own thoughts, and it also eventually made me realize that I wasn’t happy with the path of life I was treading on, so I stepped off and started heading in a different direction, one with similar obstacles that still need to be overcome, but a different goal, one that I actually want, not one that others want for me. This brings me to my use of E. Is my depression a result of altered brain chemistry and possibly deteriorated brain tissue, or am I finally allowing myself to feel things and am actually feeling appropriate due to the circumstances of my life? Should I roll at new years knowing that it might bring me a little further down a spiral of depression? Is that something I want to risk? But if I make it my last then I feel like I have a sense of closure, which will keep me from having any urges felt by unfinished business in that scene. I think I should go, one last time, and have the best rave night of my life and then decide to end it there. It has been one hell of an experience, but Shelly had a very good point while talking to me the other day. I can’t really imagine being in a true friendship with any of the people I meet at raves, it is a pretty shady crowd. Besides, if I continue in that scene something else horrible will almost inevitably happen, everyone has rave horror stories, and there is a reason for that. But do I want to experience the first part of my new year, my new life, while under a chemical induced depression?

12 – 04 – 07

            Today was…interesting…it started off pretty well (other than learning I have to redo my entire paper I worked on for 5 hours yesterday), but I was caught off guard by one of the group presentations I thought we were done with in my psych class. Their topic was death and loss, and at first I thought it was just going to be another presentation where the students just read off facts that we have learned throughout the class…I was off by a lot. This hit more close to home than anything I have gone through at school, and it was hard to keep up my composure. Death bothers me a great deal more than I thought, and I don’t think that I ever reached acceptance of any of the deaths that have touched my lives. First off, there was my grandfather, the only person I ever saw as a role model for what I wanted to be when I grew up. As hard as I thought his actual death was, it was having to watch as cancer leached out what was left in my grandfather’s life that was what truly upset me. It was almost a relief when I found out the time had actually come, and that his pain and suffering had ended. Next was my uncle T, again, one of the only male role models in my life. When I answered the phone and heard my uncle B on the phone, using a dark tone. I knew something was wrong but couldn’t imagine what, I passed the phone to my mom in the middle of the night and when she put her ear to the phone she immediately sat up in shock. It was hard for me to sit and wait while she got all the details and I was left in the dark. After she hung up, the only thing she could say was that something had happened to my uncle, I asked what hospital he was at so we could go, but she said there’s no need, he was dead. Another death that was around the same time that hit me harder than I thought was the death of another uncle’s girlfriend, one on my dad’s side of the family. I learned that she died of a brain aneurism awhile after it happened. But when she died I lost the last shred of hope I had for that side of the family. She was the only person out of everyone on my dad’s side that actually seemed to make some sort of sense and wasn’t a complete dick/bitch. And it’s not only the deaths that directly affect me, but as I found out today the death of the friend’s loved ones. I figured the degree of separation would just make it hard to watch, but the pain would leave once I was alone again. I was wrong, as some of the people started to share their stories with the class every so often one struck a nerve somewhere and my eyes watered up. It took a lot of control and breathing to fight back the tears, but I managed.

Then, even though deep down I was hoping she wouldn’t, Shelly decided to share something. Death is something that, even though we have spent quite some time together, has never come up. She shared a story about someone from school who hanged himself on prom night, and in the past when I heard stories like that I could just shrug them off and continue, but this one was different. The combination of the relentless stories of others, my own thoughts, and Shelly breaking down into tears for awhile made my stomach churn and twisted me up inside. I felt awful, definitely something I haven’t experienced before…to make matters worst it was in the middle of a class full of people, so I couldn’t really readily express myself, even though I’m not sure what the expression of all those feelings at the same time would be. Anger, sorrow, guilt, happiness, frustration, empathy, and probably a few more that I didn’t even know about all hit me at once, a tempest in the middle of the room void of any noise, any sign of humanity. As the presentation went on it became apparent that a lot of people felt the same way, but everyone was holding at least something back.

I then started to think about the type of people that I have been losing recently, I realized that all of them shed some form of light or hope on a part of my life that’s been engulfed in shadow. It seems a trend in life that anyone who offers hope is met with death. Anyone delivering a message of peace met with violence. Why is it that the world seems to be a place where the darker side of people dominates? And not only that, but everyone seems to be so desensitized to it. The world is in a sorry state, and its future isn’t looking anymore promising than its present. It’s overwhelming to know that if the type of people that have hope and promise oozing out of their pores were actually in the places of the sackless money-mongering fools that are in power then there really is a lot that could be changed. The frustrating part is that with 6,602,224,175 people around the world change seems rather hopeless. On that cheery note, I have to a group meeting so I can nail a pointless presentation on a movie tomorrow…so probably more to come in a bit.

11 – 26 – 2007

Alright, so it’s been awhile and a few things have happened that are worth mentioning. First off, family came down for Thanksgiving and almost immediately made a plan for Disneyland, which is okay since it was mainly for my little cousins (I myself have been to Disneyland so many times that I should have burn lines from spending so much time in front of the small world light display). But in general it was good, while waiting for the rest of the family to show up me and my cousin (Bea) had one of the talks that seem to be showing up more and more in my life. Although, I have been noticing a trend in these talks that I’m not really sure how to feel about, one was at Disneyland (kind of a downer for a talk at the happiest place on earth) and another while playing guitar hero. It seems like I’m not really able to strike up a serious conversation in a serious setting, other than the one with my mom, which she actually started. In order to go I had to reschedule an appointment with my psychologist that I recently started seeing, turns out he was getting called back to active duty in the army and I had to switch to a different one who I will actually be meeting tomorrow. Overall, I think this switch might be for the best and most likely just because of the fact that the new shrink is a female. I thought about it and out of all my relationships I tend to disclose the most to women, with the main exception being Space, but I still don’t talk about everything with him. My guess as to why this is is most likely because my dad hasn’t really set the best example in terms of people to trust and there is also the ever so obvious fact that guys tend to rip on each other more when they learn things about others (of course in a playful way but it tends to get out of hand or old after awhile). At any rate, I’ll admit I wasn’t exactly straight forward with every little detail I told the first psychologist, mainly because I was afraid he would judge me for half of the stuff I was saying (as the past has been pretty fucked up), but now I get to start fresh and be straight forward from the get go, even if it is just for 5 meetings.

Next in the chain of events was Thanksgiving, which was at a snooty Republican’s club in LA (definitely not by my choice, but hey, it brought half the family together…kinda…). I can’t really imagine how my oldest sister (Rose) feels right now, basically the family has chosen my Aunt’s new husband over her boyfriend and that caused her to be the only blood relative that wasn’t attending the Thanksgiving. This sort of put a damper on most of the night for me. Other than this they family seemed intrigued by the lives of the grandchildren, and made an attempt at scraping up some info. This seemed to bother Bea quite a bit, and I guess she feels that they are just snooping in order to try to get some dirt to talk about (during our talk at Disneyland we decided that the adults in our family tend to act more childish than most of the kids do). However, I do sometimes worry about Bea, she admitted herself that she wants to move out but doesn’t have the faintest idea where to start. She can’t cook, doesn’t know how to cash her paycheck or pay credit card bills, among a few other things that are pretty essential in order to live on your own. I offered to teach her anything she had questions about within the next 4-5 weeks that I am here, but I can’t really cook anything vegetarian so I might have to crash course myself, which is probably for the best since I will be living in hippy capital USA soon. Anyway, Thanksgiving. Me and Bea found out that they don’t card at this club and decided to have at it. My cousin, being the college student she is, ordered a screwdriver and I got myself a dirty martini (Sharona has been raving about them recently). When the drinks came my mom shot me a look of death and fear as I took the first sip. She is honestly terrified that each of her kids are going to turn into alcoholics and junkies, which makes me feel distrusted and drives me further apart from her. She is constantly accusing my sisters of incredible drug habits that aren’t true and also never says it to their faces, just to me. So according to her, Rose is addicted to vicodin (even though it is prescribed as she was in a nasty accident with a bus a few weeks ago and is now in physical therapy), Sharona is addicted to psychotropics (as well as being gay, which is merely a product of drugs and alcohol from what I have heard -_-), and I am a super stoner deluxe / steroid abuser since I started dropping weight (not exactly comforting since I have worked my ass off to lose the 75 lbs that I have, some of which was recently muscle mass since I switched over to more cardio…making steroid use utterly ridiculous). However, here is the twist, she engulfs 2-3 cans of super caffeinated energy drinks on a daily basis; and was almost thrilled to share her secrets, of staying awake for hours and hours without sleep, with me when I was tired and going to pick up Sharona when she got in at 3am. I smell some projection! At any rate I have veered off of the path yet again. Thanksgiving! After all was said and done we took the elevator down and stopped in the bathrooms before we left, the next event changed most of my outlook on the evening as it is now the night of a good story, which is something I always appreciate. As I walked into the men’s room I heard a groan which I thought was just some poor soul who drank too much with his dinner. As I walked in a little more I heard another groan…from a different body…when the door shut behind me and made a sound the noises came to an abrupt stop. I then turned the corner and saw 2 pairs of men’s dress shoes in the same stall (one of which began to disappear onto the toilet). So basically, if you haven’t caught the drift of it, I walked in on a “gay triste,” as Sharona put it, in the middle of an ultra conservative Republican social club. HA! After the bathroom experience we went to get the car back where a douche of a servant man gave us a hard time about getting our car pulled up by the valet since we were merely guests of a member (god money can do ugly things to weak people).

The day after Thanksgiving, Sharona and I dared to partake in Black Friday, where I scored myself a pretty damn nice digital camera, and then we started to prep for Thanksgiving part II. The rest of the day was spent with the two of us cooking up a traditional Thanksgiving day feast, with me dropping my aunt and her boy toy off at the airport for about an hour and a half. Ick (the nickname the rest of the family has given my aunt’s boyfriend) is one of those people who seem incredibly phony, up to the point where just listening to him talk makes me want to smack him one. He is a little over half my aunt’s age (50) and has nothing more than a bro truck to his name. He moved into my grandmother’s house (where my aunt, and cousin half of the week, have been living since her divorce). At first I thought it was temporary but now he is getting his mail delivered to their house. It’s my grandmother’s business and she has to step up and say something since it is pretty obvious she doesn’t like the situation, but the only reason it bothers me is because my grandfather didn’t like Ick in the slightest. After all, Ick dumped his daughter while she was in surgery for a brain tumor, so it is safe to say the guy is a douche bag. So since he has moved into the house that used to genuinely hate him, I feel that the guy doesn’t have much respect for those around him. However, at the same time he is the only one who is stepping up to take care of the dog Bea just ended up getting (she likes the idea of having a dog but wants none of the responsibility [almost 4 times over now[) so I have to give the guy some credit, he has just taken entirely too long to step up after being such a prick for so long. There I go again, off on a rant…Thanksgiving take 2, and…ACTION! So after I got back from the long and awkward ride to the airport I headed back home and picked up a few things for dinner. I was expecting an awkward dinner since my mom recently told me that she isn’t fond of Rose’s boyfriend (we’ll call him JJ) and believes that he is why Rose is addicted to vicodin (in her little accusative world). Granted, JJ isn’t the easiest of people to get along with, but he seems to make my sister happy so I’ll tolerate him. Besides, he has been getting more and more personable the more I see him, and when he says something snide it occasionally has a good point to it. However, at the same time I see myself being worried about ending up in his place by choosing psychology as a major (since he got a degree in it from Yale awhile back and is currently unemployed or possibly working as a sous chef soon). But there seems to be more career options for psych now more than ever, so I should be fine. Anywho, the dinner was better than expected, although I admit I didn’t say much most of the night since I was pretty drained and am never really much of a chatter box at family functions anyway.

Before Sharona came in I finally got around to seeing my dad about help with paying for school, and it looks as grim as I thought. Whenever I brought up school and tuition he would either bring up his plans for the construction of his new house, his pay cut, or simply ask how I plan on paying for it. I explained that I have been selling things, planning on taking out a loan, as well as being given sizeable financial aid since I went to a community college first, and also told him that I will probably still come up short, but that didn’t seem to do anything to sway his belief that I didn’t need any help paying for it, although nothing was directly said, so who knows for sure. Recently I have been thinking about trying to build up the relationship with my dad before I go off to school, but come to think of it I have no clue where to start. The only idea I could come up with was asking him about possibly help me to fix one of the junker cars in our driveway since he took auto shop in high school and college and seems to know enough to fix a carburetor. He told me what to do to get started and offered some help if I needed it, which I will probably take him up on regardless since it is some time together. I have been thinking about bringing up the divorce but am not sure if that is the best idea. The reason I have been thinking about this is because I have everyone else’s side of the story but his. Growing up all I heard about him was that he was conniving, dishonest, violent, irrational, among many other things, and part of me is thinking that if I can do what terrifies me and put myself in his shoes, that I might be able to understand him better and build up the lost relationship between us. Other than that I plan on bringing up quite a few things throughout childhood that have really skewed my perception of things, just to see how he reacts and if he really realizes the consequences of his actions. Among these are obviously the dead dog, the putting down of the dogs, the “less of a man speech,” as well as his alcoholism. I have been afraid to bring these up in the past because I still saw him as the daunting figure in my childhood that had absolute control over everything. But at this point, the worst possible scenario is that he gets pissed off to the point where he walks back down to his house and our relationship stays the same (dysfunctional), or loses control and tries something violent. I feel that at this point in my life I am prepared for either. Plus, there is always the possibility he will talk through it and I will finally understand what has troubled me all these years. But I think that anything is better than what we have now, 3 houses down and I talk to him a few times a year about the weather and his business trips, what kind of closeness is that between and father and son…

Last but not least, the rave, it was sort of a spur of the moment thing and only happened because I knew someone else that was going and happened to have some extra cash (not to mention the timing was perfect for dropping off Sharona after it was over). Soon after I made the decision, Sharona and Space decided to come too. At this point in the week I had been up to LA 5 times within the last 6 days and was rarely there for my own pleasure, so going to this was something I wanted. Plus it gave me a chance to catch up with someone who I met at Monster before it went bad, which offered a certain sort of closure for me about the hellish events of that night. Overall the night was fun, at first glance I thought it might turn out to be a bust, but after everything got going it was pretty good (even though they wouldn’t let in my lights T-T). It is hard to tell if Space is having fun raves, usually I can just tell because he is red in the face from heat, but it was cold and he wasn’t doing much moving so I wasn’t sure. However, after Ian Van Dahl came on I knew that all 3 of us were on the same page. Something about everyone sharing the same feeling of happiness while listening to the same music and knowing the words creates one hell of a connection that is hard to come by. During the night Shelly called me, and invited me to a get together and said she wanted me to meet someone and sounded pretty pleased with herself. I felt kind of guilty that I was having fun and couldn’t share that time with her, but I also thought about how much actual time I have been spending with the 3 of us together recently. It has been a long time since me, Space, and Sharona have just hung out with each other, and it brought back a lot of good memories and warm feelings for me. So overall, the guilt subsided. Later on in the night I met up with Yadi (from Monster) and her super cute friend Emm, they were both incredibly friendly people but were also on the mellow side, which is nice when you are having a more mellow/cuddly roll, but I wanted to dance so it sort of put a bit more of a damper on things with Space just spacing out and keeping to himself. However, talking to Emm gave me a pretty good idea that I think I am going to follow through with. Out of everyone I have met since September (Shelly, Lucy, Emm, and a few others I met through school or through Shelly) all of them seem to have a fondness for snowboarding in common. When I heard Emm tell me that she liked to snowboard but had problems finding others that liked to something in my head clicked and I thought about my grandmother’s gigantic unused house in Lake Tahoe and the fact that winter is upon us. So I am leaning towards a nice little going away party for me up in Lake Tahoe for a week, but we’ll see how that goes as the possibility of my grandmother’s house getting trashed goes up with each new person I invite, so maybe I will just try to keep it small and bring a select few.

Anyway, the E blues set in and I think it will go away soon, but it just reminded me of how much I hate feeling depressed. I am gonna take 5htp tonight and maybe tomorrow night but try to stay off of it for awhile since I am almost out and since it turns out that it might lowers the amount of serotonin your brain produces by itself. So the next couple days will either go smooth or be a pain, but I’ll chug my way through (gogo turkey and orange juice). But ya, sleep is a good thing and I got a lot more on my mind to think about so I am gonna go lay in bed now. Nighty night.

11 – 16 – 07

            Yay talking! I sat down and had two overdue talks to some of the people closest to me, my mom and Space. The talk with my mom caught me off guard but we talked for almost 2 hours and covered a gargantuan variety of topics (some of which I really think I would have been better off not knowing…but they haven’t devastatingly changed anything for the worse so I guess it is alright).

First off, we talked about the near future. Trying to figure out what she wants out of life at this point and her possible options. She seems to be leaning toward going back to school and becoming an RN, but is deterred by that because everyone whom she has known that was an RN got tired of it and became a massage therapist, the other reason she gave was being surrounded by sickness and death consistently. I also brought up the fact that she was offered a place to live by her clients that moved away, and she said that they would probably still have her, but she said she didn’t like “chickers” so she didn’t really want that (I think she’s just redirecting the fear of change onto something else). However, it sounds like Frodo is willing to invest 20 grand into the house after I leave, which should be enough for the master bedroom, kitchen, and some of the other bathroom (basically everything that is in dire need of being fixed), so that’s pretty good news.

Next up in the conversation was family history. My mom shared a lot of very buried family information, much of which caught me entirely off guard. I learned much about my grandparents, their parents, my dad and his family, my aunts, and the events that led up to the divorce (starting with stuff from before I was born). As I learned all of this, I really started to see patterns emerging through the generations, which was both terrifying as well as inspiring. It also explains a lot about the dynamics of my mom’s side of the family. Throughout learning about both sides of the family, I thought it was funny that my mother seemed to be able to recall every incident involve alcohol and marijuana except for her own little science experiment (which I have learned about from my sister). But finding out that the presence of drug addiction went all the way back to my great grand parents and most likely further was something I didn’t expect. Luckily for me I don’t believe that addiction is genetic. My mom is very bitter towards her family, and from what I can gather it is because she uses all of her siblings as a benchmark for success and wellbeing. She harbors a lot of resentment to her mother as well as two of her siblings who she kept referring to as “the star children.” Overall, I found out that the side that I used to think was the “normal” side of the family, is really just better at sweeping things under the rug…I would’ve never expected that molestation, physical abuse, substance abuse, and suicide (the only thing which I has heard of, but no where near this depth), among a few other things had ever occurred on that side. Then the talk switched over to the divorce. Judging solely by my mother’s voice, her biggest regret regarding the divorce is that I never got to know my dad before something “pushed the asshole button on him,” as she so delicately put it. However, I also found out (although it wasn’t directly said) that my birth is something that greatly added to the snowball of the divorce. Now normally I think in the past I would’ve felt responsible even though it was outside of my control, but now I see this as simply a flaw in my dad’s character, something he was too weak to deal with. By what my mother said, my dad’s drinking got worse “about a year before you (I) were born.” I’m thinking that by “about a year” she meant “when he found out about the pregnancy” because he lost control while drunk more often and got a vasectomy within the same year (I highly doubt a coincidence, but only he knows for sure). Overall, my mom told me a lot of things that made me lose most of the lingering respect I had for him, which I feel was somewhat unnecessary but it happened.

So now I think I might have finally come full circle into why I feel so awkward asking him for money. It’s a matter of strength and self-control; he lacks it to the point where I pity him. And the only power he does have comes from the money he makes. I think I will feel almost tainted if I use any of it (not exactly the feeling but the best I can do with words at the moment). Another reason I feel less inclined to ask probably has to do with the fact that every time I used to go over there for dinner after both my sisters left he would always say “so you hear anything from your sisters? And by the way you should tell them to stop by and talk more often, and not just when they need money.” However, I don’t feel entirely bad for this because the guy only seems to take an interest in the lives of his kids when they aren’t around anymore (and need the money). So I figure that that’s how he sees it, an investment with an eventual return (as people tend to pay closer attention in business when their assets are on the line). Now, by all means this isn’t how everyone else sees it (as my oldest sister defaulted a pretty sizable loan on him not too long ago) and maybe his view on it will change too. But until then it feels a lot like bargaining with the devil, except this devil will probably bitch about a return after social security falls apart to the baby boomers…but I guess that is something that I can deal with.

This brings me to the talk I had with Spaceman a few hours ago. We talked about a variety of things but what stood out to me was drugs and problems. The drug part was mostly about hypocrisy, feelings towards it, and his brother. Hypocrisy, something I have never seen so much of in my entire life as I have within the past week. Alice is telling Spaceman to stop smoking, Spaceman is getting ready to tell Shorty to stop smoking, and I’ve been telling them all to stop smoking. Luckily, I am in the clear on this as I have been setting a decent example and by no means am inhaling smoke on a day to day basis like the rest of them. Me and Space came to a mutual agreement that Shorty is most likely smoking so often due to the fact that he has no one else who he hangs out with. And since Alice’s mom not only fails to discourage it, but partakes, he most likely sees it as something normal. I basically sent off Space with the knowledge that Shorty isn’t going to listen to a word of what he says unless he shows improvement and stops smoking cigarettes (“do as I say not as I do” from a sibling? YA RIGHT!). At this point I see Alice as a lost cause because she has been surrounding herself with more and more people who do nothing but toke all day. And the same for Jane as she is still under the mentality “all the cool people are doing it” and I don’t have to influence in her life to break that. The concern with Shorty lies in the fact that the only friends from school he talks to me about are the ones he has been finding out used to sling in the past and still most likely do on occasion (varying from weed to E at the moment, but judging by his jealousy that I got dosed at Monster most likely acid if he finds one). Now, if I had more faith in the boy’s decision making skills this wouldn’t be a problem, but he doesn’t seem to know how to keep it at a minimum. But I’ve rambled on this before and not much has come of it, so enough of that. The next part of the talk was about the problems that me and Space have been facing lately. Space flat out said that he knows he needs to get his shit together, and plans on it, but is having problems dealing with the commitment that comes with making a choice (he also found out Alice is doing the same thing [she has also been on his case to get his act together] and he seemed flustered at the hypocrisy again). I shared the fact that I went to the school therapist and talked to him about drugs, past and present problems, among many other things. At first he thought I was joking but then after I shared the rather humorous story of the doctor’s reaction to my bringing up drugs he got interested and started asking a lot of questions. I think that is the natural reaction of everyone to the concept of therapy, when it first crossed my mind a few years back I figured therapy is only for people that have problems, but then I realized that everyone has problems, most just don’t want to acknowledge it (spitting image of Shorty’s mentality). So, if anything, I may have sold Space the idea of going back to school solely on the fact that you get $600 worth of therapy sessions for a $15 health fee, plus he can work through his gen. ed. requirements until he figures out what he wants to do.

Through therapy I have found out many things. The most interesting was the fact that I have mild depression, as well as social anxiety (which he thinks is a result of wasting a few months in the garage and not being able to directly relate to anyone outside of the group I smoked with). As far as the depression is concerned, I’m not really all that surprised, I never really let the effects of the loss of two close family members (both of which I held as role models) get to me. I only shed a few tears and then tried to keep my chin up for the rest of the family. We also examined my lack of anger. He made me realize that the last time I was actually angry was when I punched a hole through a wall in my dad’s house after I found out he put down my dog. But that was at least 3 years ago now.

We also took a stress test in my psych class, which was a bit of an eye opener. The average score in the class was probably around 150 on the first, and 190 on the second. I scored a 457 (life) and a 517 (life w/ school [which will jump to around 650 after Christmas]). This was interesting because he had everyone in the class call up their numbers so he could put it on the board, and by the time most of the class was done, there was me and some girl (who scored a 432 and a 445) still adding up our scores. So naturally the whole class was dead silent when we were finally able to call out our scores. The first reaction of those around me was essentially surprise. “I don’t get it, how are you so laid back all the time with all that?” Then the teacher asked me something that really got me thinking…”now, is this much stress typical for your life on a year to year basis?” I told him that it was typical for the last 3 years or so, but before that it wasn’t as high, but still probably pretty high up judging by the questions asked.

So I think I have finally realized the majority of why my mom has been acting strange (ie. Slowly losing her mind). For the first time in her life she isn’t absolutely needed by anyone else. I guess that’s the root of everyone that experiences the empty nest thing, but it’s part of life and she has to face that. However, she hasn’t been given the same advantage that most other families have, a stable significant other. She, instead, has Frodo. Now this isn’t entirely bad by any means, but due to circumstances it just doesn’t equate. For example, I was misinformed about Thanksgiving this year and thought that my sisters and I might be spending it with my father. If this was true then it meant that we couldn’t make it to the ritzy version on my mom’s side that my aunt invited us to. When I called up my mom to find out how to solve this dilemma, and told her that we might not be going this year, she just told me that if we weren’t going to forget it. I asked what she was going to do and if she knew that Frodo was invited as well. She then said that he was spending Thanksgiving, as he usually does, with his family. This is where the difference is clear. Frodo is separated from his wife but they are still married and will probably always remain so, and on most of the holidays he spends time with his family. Obviously there is something missing here that is present in most relationships, devotion. I think this is why Frodo has never really sat well with me…the person himself is alright, and I can tell he means well, but he needs her a lot more than she needs him and I get the feeling that she is trapped by this. It’s a very odd/sugar daddy kind of relationship, as she often does get help to pay the bills from him. In return, he gets someone that cares for him as he slips deeper into the inevitable (which always seems to be the case). My biggest concern about all of this is what’s going to happen a few years down the line. Eventually, as all people do, he’ll pass and my mom will be left with no one being dependant on her. For her whole life someone has needed her; my dad (he couldn’t have made it through college without her and constantly seems to forget that), her kids, and now Frodo. But now all of that is slipping away and she is left with something new and terrifying to her; something she really doesn’t want to face. I’m starting to think this is why my grandmother has also been acting strangely. And if you look at their lives there really isn’t all that much of a difference, other than the marriage not working out. Both married young and had kids young, as people did, and I think that there is an obvious reason that people are waiting to marry until their mid-thirties at this point. Everyone has seen the same thing growing up, obviously some more mildly than others but it is still picked up. It’s for this reason that I honestly hope my mother goes through with the talk and goes back to school and becomes an RN, she’ll get the feeling of being needed back, and I believe that that is something she needs to get by.

            This brings me to an update on Shorty. His mom knows something is up with him, and shared that with me a few weeks ago while I gave her a ride to the bank since they are having incredibly ridiculous car problems, but can’t place her finger on exactly what it is. I’m not gonna lie, the thought of telling her crossed my mind, as she would definitely straighten Shorty out since he is entirely reliant on her, but then I looked more closely and thought about it. If she dealt with that she would most likely find out more about Spaceman’s hidden life too, and judging by what we talked about in the car she doesn’t need anymore of a burden to carry right now. Also, I don’t believe it is my place to disclose something about a friend that might drive his entire family apart. Spaceman’s noticed a difference in Shorty’s behavior too, everyone has, except for Alice and Jane, who blaze it with him, (as gradual change is hard to see when you are there for it the whole time). Their mom’s biggest concern is that Shorty will end up like Spaceman, whom she seemed disappointed with in the way he turned out (something I couldn’t bear to bring up to Space when I talked to him about it). I reassured her that Space would come to his senses after awhile (as he already has somewhat begun to) but she didn’t seem to believe me, which I found pretty frustrating. What’s worse is that Shorty seems to be following the same path, except maybe with more commitment…Today he asked me where I got the 5-htp from and how much it costs, the only reason I thought this was weird is because he took it after Monster and said he didn’t think it worked. But 5-htp to used, by me, to cut down on the effects of the come down after you roll. The only reason this worried be is because it has been almost a month since he rolled and he shouldn’t need it. Then I got to thinking, when we were at Monster he took the bag of pills and picked out his…but I never got it back before he disappeared. In that bag were 4 pills originally, and we had split one…3 left. The rest I had that night I either had on me or got from a friend since I couldn’t find Shorty to get more. 2 strong, 1 medium, and he supposedly sold one to his friend. 2 left, half of one, if not another entire one, should have been taken by him throughout the night. Which leaves 1 and that’s where I’m headed with this story. If Shorty has taken that extra step towards using outside of the setting, and within such a short gap, things could lead down a horrible path…especially since Alice’s sister knows where to get more (hopefully Alice has enough common sense in her to keep that from happening). I plan on bringing up the unaccounted for pills next time I see Shorty, mainly to judge his reaction but also because he owes some money for them (and the less money he has in his pocket the less he can spend on the ganja).

            Anyone, 10pm, time to go to Shelly’s…peace out.

11 – 11 – 07

Today is one of those days where I am dirt tired but can’t sleep. I wanted to sleep last night, but Shorty preferred that I stayed up and was irritatingly persuasive. At 11:30pm he called me up and asked if I would take him to go get some food, since he can’t drive and can only cook instant mac ‘n cheese or rice (the real reason was the fact that he reeked of weed and didn’t want to go home because he thought his parents were going to be out for the night, which they weren’t, but that’s something he’ll never fess up to). I tried to avoid the obvious topic on both of our minds because he finally cooled off and started coming over again, and I felt that if I brought it up he would storm off and stop talking for awhile again. So instead, I we talked about what was going on, I mentioned what was going on in my life and he shared the fact that he went to Alice’s at 11am and was there all day, nothing more…After we ate, we moved to the living room to watch the rest of Chapelle’s show and he said he was bored so I offered a few ideas to fix it. At this point I had been up for 18 hours or so and was getting kind of tired and told him that, but that didn’t seem to matter. After he turned down all of my ideas and didn’t offer any in return, I flipped through some channels and turned on some random stand up comedy routine. Eventually, as it was late, I started to get sleepy and tried to dose off (not very usually as Shorty practically lived in my house growing up and usually lets himself out if I sleep. However, this time he decided to start hitting me with couch pillows while saying “I’m bored,” over and over. None of the ideas I came up with were given a response so eventually I just took away the pillows and started to ignore him. At this point he started poking me in the head and still wouldn’t shut up about being bored (I now know how my sister Sharona felt growing up with both of us in the house, but I’d like to think that we never physically bugged her for over an hour, let alone 3). I told him I was tired and suggested he go home and sleep, as it was now close to 3am (he had been at it since 12:30am) he didn’t say anything and continued being a pain for another 15 min before I got fed up and went to my bed and turned off all of the lights in the house. So…instead of leaving like any normal person would he sat in my doorway shining LED lights at my face and kept saying he was bored. At this point I told him to “get the hell out and go to bed,” and then pulled the sheet over my head to block the lights and tried to sleep. He stood there for a good 10 more min flashing the lights and didn’t say a word other than “Can you go to sleep with me standing here?” following the first 5 minutes of silence. Overall, I found the fact that I couldn’t rather unsettling, because that means I don’t trust him enough anymore to sleep while he is in the same house. At around 4:30am (23 hours of me being awake, with a 10 page paper typed up right before he came over), he finally left, saying that he is gonna do the same thing on January 1^st and was going to come back this morning at 7am. On a side note, the only thing that we talked about regarding him that whole night was a few weird dreams he had since the last time I saw him, he tends to talk about his dreams a lot.

This brings me to Monster Massive, because if you don’t know this story then you can’t possibly begin to understand how it got to this point. Shorty is a quiet person, easily more so than me…and I don’t say all that much to begin with. Since I started rolling, I realized how much of life I have been missing out on by being a social recluse and I thought maybe he could learn the same lesson if he gets out more. So with this logic in mind I had no problem taking him to his 2^nd rave (EDC being the first). Another thing that I thought was astonishing was that he actually knew someone that was going to be there, and not only that…it was a girl! Now keep in mind that every time I hear that boy mention something about his friends at school it is usually followed by “isn’t that stupid?” or “They can’t do anything right!” So for this to happen was a pretty big deal. He subtly hinted that he wanted to go off on his own and spend some time with his friends rather than just go around and meet the friends that I planned on seeing throughout the course of the night. So I made sure he met up with his friends, raves aren’t the safest places in the world, and after I saw them all getting along figured that they had the combined common sense to survive through the night and give me a call or text when they wanted to meet up again, so I took off to meet with a few friends; some from school, some from introductions through friends, and some from a rave a month before. Now, the first 3-4 hours of the party were pretty damn good. I met a few more people that were pretty cool, gave some lightshows, got some pills from one of my friends that I have known since high school (since Shorty had the rest of what I brought), and then hung out with Lucy and Shelly. While walking to go meet up with the two, I actually bumped into Shorty and looked right at him (this was after I sent him a few texts about the night in general and got no response, I assumed it was just reception problems because that’s what I was dealing with). He looked right at me and didn’t acknowledge me (assumed because rolling makes it kind of hard to see at times and I cut off most of my hair the day before), but was then pulled into the crowd by the girl he was with so I just smiled and assumed he was ok and having fun. So I met up with Lucy and Shelly and gave them some lightshows, danced, and eventually me and Shelly had a nice little quality time where I found out the real reason they flavor lip balm. Around this point is when I think I first realized that the pills I got from my friend weren’t as clean as I thought he said they were. Which wasn’t immediately terrifying, it just made Shelly’s already stunning eyes becoming dazzling, which made the time even better. Some time went by and we went through about 6 bottles of water between the 3 of us so, naturally, we all had to pee. So we all left our seats and went to the bathrooms and said we would meet back up at the seats since the lines were long and Lucy’s friend was going to meet us at our spot. So being the guy I got in and out quick and when I got back to the seats I found Lucy’s friend and we talked a bit and I gave her a lightshow. During this I felt my pocket vibrate and figured Shorty was finally getting back to me. So I wrapped up the show, read the message (which said “Got jacked, meet me at the downstairs place” from a number that I didn’t recognize), and obviously decided that I should go there. So I told Lucy’s friend to wait there and that Shelly and Lucy would be back soon and then headed off. As I was walking out I saw Shelly and instead of explaining everything like I should have I told her that I have to go and will be back in awhile. She asked me to stay a little bit longer but I insisted that I had to go until she shot out a quick “Fine then, just go…” with a disappointed tone. At this point I felt bad about that but put it aside because I had to figure out which friend had sent me the message. I assumed it was my friend from high school or maybe Shorty since I hadn’t heard from him in awhile. So I got to the place and waited for about a half hour before I started to get trapped in my own thoughts. I sent Shorty about 10 texts asking if he was ok, and sent a few to others asking if they knew what was going on. I’ve recently found out it was indeed my friend from high school, but on the way to meet me he bumped into a group of mutual friends and forgot to text me back saying he was ok…fun fun…so at this point I decide that no one is coming and decide to try and look through the massive blob of people there for one of the two. I looked for the last hour and a half of the party and spent my peaking time extremely stressed out. At the end when they turned the lights back on I saw some of my friends and told them to keep a look out for Shorty, which was moot because there are a billion Asians at So Cal raves. I then was ushered to the gate we entered through and figured Shorty would meet up there if I waited long enough. So from 4:15 to 5:30 I sat and watched the face of every person coming out of that gate, not missing a single person, and came up empty. I then figured that maybe he had gotten out before me and would meet up at the car, as that’s the next logical step in my mind. On my way there I got a text from a friend that said there wasn’t anyone waiting at the car when they passed it, but I took a quick look just in case. I kept my search up and walked around the whole outside of the complex and still found no one. At this point (6:30am) I called up Spaceman, Shorty’s brother, and told him what was up. Then, during the call I got beeped at by my phone, at first I thought it was call waiting and felt relieved, but then I found out it was the low battery noise, which is much more stressful. As I was looking for Shorty I saw one ambulance leave, and heard another take off while I was walking around. At this point, I started thinking that maybe Shorty had been taken away by one and figured the best place to start looking would be at the 2 closest hospitals. So I called information, who apparently can’t tell how close hospitals are to an area, and got the numbers of a few places. I then told Spaceman that I was going to start checking hospitals with the last of my battery. So, I walked through the parking structure, noticed that the only cars left were mine and most likely the ones belonging to the people who got ambulanced off. And filled with regret I drove off to start the search. I went from hospital to hospital explaining the situation and how he wouldn’t have had ID on him if he was taken in, and after about 15 minutes of waiting at each, I was told the same thing “Nope, we haven’t had any Japanese males come in from the sports arena.” After I checked the final hospital on the list it was 9:20am and Spaceman, whom I called on a payphone, told me to just head home. I agreed, being out of ideas, and passed the sports arena one last time on the way home, still nothing. So I got home, took a shower, and when I got out saw that I had 3 missed calls. I looked and it was Spaceman. So I called him up and he told me that Shorty had called him and that he was going to pick him up right away but was in traffic. I let out a huge sigh of relief and then tried to get some sleep. After I realized that I was too cracked out and stressed out to sleep I decided I should eat something, since I had been on empty since 2pm the night before. Then they got back and Shorty found his way over where I found out that he dropped his phone there and that’s what brought about this whole dilemma. 2 days later Shelly told me that she was almost raped after I left and didn’t say much else to me the rest of the week.

We talked about the night and everything seemed ok, surprisingly. But as the days went on Shorty brought up the next rave and said that his friend wanted to come with us next time. At this point I had to share what I felt about everything. I felt taking him was a mistake on both mine and his part. I told him that he needs to think about controlling his substance use because he was getting carried away. And I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable taking him to the next rave. He then let out a barrage of things that he had been holding in from that night. He pushed the blame entirely on me. In his eyes, it was my fault that he was left there and I didn’t look for him hard enough. At first, I’ll admit, I took this to heart and agreed with him. But as I looked at the situation I put myself in his shoes. If I had dropped my phone, I would’ve immediately asked to burrow someone else’s phone (like I did many times after my phone died) and let the person that took me in on the details. But then I found out that Shorty didn’t know my cell phone number, but he obviously knew Spaceman’s at 10am, so I still didn’t feel bad for him. If you know a number at 10am, you know a number at 4am. The next thing Shorty did after failing to call either Spaceman or myself was to fall asleep outside the arena in a little hovel, kind of like a hobo. Now I don’t know about you, but sleeping on the streets would be the last thing on my mind if I knew that my friends were probably looking for me (let alone the fact that with the pills he had he should’ve been too cracked out to sleep). So after considering all of this I lost any guilt regarding this issue and figured I was done with it.

Today I found out I was mistaken. It turns out Alice was calling up Spaceman yesterday to guilt trip him for not driving back up to LA to look for his brother. She was incredibly lenient while talking about Shorty: “You know him, he can sleep through anything,” or “Why would you expect him to remember where the car was?” So on the plus side, this means Shorty is finally talking to people, it just takes him an incredibly long time. But all this brings me back to early this morning, when I was being hit with a pillow for the third hour. It’s crystal clear why he was doing it, I just wonder if he can see it. The kid has no outlet for anger other than a computer, and I think that it true with a lot of kids out there, because there are a lot of douche bags on the internet. Hopefully he got it all out, because I don’t have the patience to sit through that again without popping him in the gut or bringing the reality of his stupidity right up into his face where he can finally see it.

Anyway, my soul still belongs to group projects and 10-12 page papers, so I’ve gotta go and get back to that. In our next issue, will dinner with dad finally happen?! We’ll see…

Life’s finally getting interesting and things have sort of started to change. I am slowly opening up to the people closer to me, I finally had a semi-serious conversation with my mother about what her wants out of life are, and I have finally begun to learn how to balance out that childish side of me with the more adult side while at family functions on my mom’s side. Too bad it’s later than I wish it would have been. The only uncle that I really had some sort of a bond with died not long after my key male role model. I don’t think that I have truly let my emotions out surrounding these events and that’s something I think it symbolic of the rest of my life. I’m not sure when I stopped feeling; the strange part is that the happiness I felt while dropping E is what reminded me of emotions. I forgot what being happy, sad, angry, and anything else actually felt like…for 10 years. The only feelings I have felt have been anxiety or just some sort of void feeling that I can’t even being to describe. The anxiety levels vary, but are usually over anything social. Recently I have come across what I feel is a pretty cool concept. Personality. I used to think I knew what it was and then I started looking into it more. Persona literally translates to the word mask, and in ancient times (Greek/Roman) a personality used to be a façade that a performer puts on for a play. A person who was great at fooling others into believing that they were actually the person they were portraying was said to have a good persona. I think that definition still stands. Everyone has barriers and masks they put up to keep others out of sensitive areas; mine have just been inside as well as out.

I’ve fooled myself into believing that somehow I was alien from others. I coped by a lot of mimicry…although I can occasionally see the uniqueness that is myself; some of my life has been living through others. I’d find someone who I admired for one reason or another and take on some of their traits, interests, or linguistics. I think the best example would be my friend Al. He seemed so sure of himself and had this uniqueness around him. Basically I saw what I thought I lacked in him (and maybe I did lack it at the time): confidence, passion, and strength. He had the confidence to say things that, if taken the wrong way (or maybe even the right way now that I really think about), were damaging to others. He used racism so frequently that you just assumed he was joking around...but now I’m not so sure he was as it has gotten worse with time. I used to see this as a strength, but that view left me awhile ago. The other confidence I built with him was through airsoft, at the start I just thought it was fun, but over time I realized that when the game started people would often look to 2 main people for a strategy, me or him. Of course, he was the star of the show and I was okay with being 2^nd in command because it often brought upon a sense of power that has never been present in my life (other than with food, which is why I think I was overweight). The next big reason I looked up to him was because he was actually passionate about something real. He has known for a long time that he wants to be involved in criminal justice, and lives his life (for the most part) accordingly. I honestly believe that alcohol will very seldom, if at all, touch his tongue. I admired this passion because I had none of my own for anything that was tangible; the only thing I was passionate about was getting gold or purple pixels that were outdated within weeks of getting them. Recently I have faced that and found seeds for passions that I expect to grow deeper with time (humanity being one of them because I think it is something that you honestly don’t see that much around the world). Finally, I saw strength in Al, the kind that guarantees you the ability step up to an obstacle when it’s thrown your way. At least that is what I thought I saw. I involved my self deeply in weight lifting and still don’t regret any of it, but the strength it gave me was already there; ingrained within me from 7 years of training. I realized everything I needed to about strength within less than a minute of my life.

The moment I was sucker punched in the face by some skate boarding punks and didn’t strike back. Throughout my entire life I have been around people yelling at me, barking orders at me, encouraging me to build up a strength and a rage until it got to a breaking point. That day the breaking point hit, and I snapped, but in a different way than I thought. After one of them hit me the next logical step would be to make sure I went down, but instead they jumped back and kept a good 10 ft barrier between us. They eyes were wide open and I saw something in them that was clear as day…fear. Up until that hit I was blinded by anger, and after it landed I almost felt centered again. It is somewhat comforting and calming being attacked or hit by someone while knowing that you can overpower and downright kill them if your life were actually threatened. Since then I have stopped sizing people up when I meet them like I did all throughout high school. I saw each new person as an opponent or a threat, which kept many people distant. With this new found outlook going to Al’s “fight day” was an interesting experience to say the least. Everyone seemed to have something to prove, except me. I was the only one with actual training and the only way I knew how to deal with the way they were fighting was to take them down and break a limb or choke them; and call me crazy but I saw a problem with doing that, so I watched. I watched as each person let out anger that they had built towards one another and that they all actually fostered within themselves as well as their friends. There was a burning hate in their eyes that left with the fight, and smirks as people blacked out and hit the floor. It was something they each needed.

Anyway, back to emotions. I’m not sure when I went numb but it started before the divorce. I rarely remember feeling any positive emotions within the time leading up to the fight that drove our family apart, or during the time after it. I do know that I was angry at anything and everything after words, but before I can’t remember all that much. But soon after when that anger started getting bottled up, I always figured that cutting out emotions would start with the negative and affect the positive but looking back I don’t think that the foot matches the print. Although I can remember times when I was happy and laughing, that time never lasted as long as the anger did before it left. I would be happy for around an hour but anger lasted for weeks at a time and surfaced in explosions when I couldn’t control it anymore. After awhile I realized that the anger I had was merely causing the family I had left more problems and eventually I just stopped feeling it. It’s something that I never really noticed or consciously did, but it is plainly visible looking back as hindsight is always 20/20. After I was basically void of emotions (8^th grade maybe) I still felt brief periods of them, but they were dim glows compared to the stars that they used to be. After awhile I could barely get excited for anything or happy for getting good grades, everything was just another thing that happened and the outcome wasn’t nearly as important as it had been. I was just tuning in to the uneventful soap of my life, and it wasn’t a very interesting one so I often changed the channel to something with more pizzazz, humor. I found myself joking around more and saying things mainly to see if I could get a laugh, and usually I was successful. Oddly enough I could never joke around with people who I didn’t thoroughly know, and I still usually can’t to this day (although when I do I have a pretty good time). I guess I am just worried that they might take it the wrong way. But I still believe that even though humor might not always be the best medicine, it is definitely a good distraction.

Death, it’s something that always quiets people down when you bring it up. No matter what your take on it happens to be, it is still inevitable and therefore makes people uneasy. Personally, I used to think that dying was just that. BAM! Void of life, you’re gone…enjoy the dirt. But as I learn more and more I am beginning to think that there is more to it. Maybe not full on reincarnation, but something similar. Everything a person is can be attributed to flashes of energy flying through their brain. But there has to be something in the perception that is more than just the energy. Everyone has basic concepts across the world: good, bad, weak, strong, living, dead, etc… but people choose from those basics differently. I think that variation accounts for something more. A soul, not in the sense of the little thing that flies around and goes to heaven or hell, but more along the lines of something that guides you and rebirths itself in others after you no longer need it and die. At least, that is what I’d like to think and so I will. I like the idea that the same force that guided my uncle and grandfather in their lives now guides children somewhere else through their journey. A collective unconscious but taken one step further. I’m not really sure if my view on death changed as a way to cope with loss, or just because I have broadened my knowledge, and quite frankly I don’t really care, everyone needs some sort of spirituality or life seems rather dull and pointless, and what’s the fun in that.

Family, now there’s something that’ll take some explaining. Two words: unbelievably dysfunctional. Oh no, not just on one side anymore, but two! Ain’t that the bee’s knees! There was so much latent aggression present at my grandmother’s birthday (mom’s side) today that the gossip could confuse a high school prom queen. Every time someone left the room or I walked by another room I heard snide comments about the past or the present, even from the 4 and 6 year olds. Now that’s just weird, but I guess we learn everything from somewhere. The 6 year old, Errol (the son of my late uncle), told me something today that I will definitely keep a look out for in the future. He told me that he saw a robot with broom arms sweeping up the floor, but looked again and it wasn’t there. Normally I would take the eccentric kids words with a grain of salt because, after all, he is a kid. But when he told me this he had one of the most confused looks on his face that I had ever seen. I also found out that he is bought mass toys every Sunday and that his parents still treat his meltdowns with new toys. Remmy Le Beau, on the other hand, is the 4 year old and has been raised with a strikingly different approach, the word “No.” it’s something to take notes on. The two kids are polar opposites but have abundant similarities in their lives, it’s actually pretty cool to watch. Today was an hour long argument between the two one whose karate style is better. One’s was “let’s fight and see,” whereas the other’s was “if I fight my sensei won’t teach me anymore,” and these attitudes are totally reflective of the way they are disciplined, which is also interesting. Overall, there is a common attitude towards my grandmother’s friends throughout the family, and that is that they are using her. Personally, I don’t entirely disagree (they most likely aren’t paying rent while staying at my grandmother’s place and complain about not having any money before going on a 2 week long trip to Europe, or bumming a fully paid vacation to Cancun or Hawaii) but it is still her life and people should butt out every now and then. This brings me to the cousin my age, England, who can’t get a moment of privacy in her life now that she has something that may or may not be a boyfriend. My aunt’s already tight grasp is clenching firmer with interrogation techniques before she heads out for the night. This makes England want to answer less, which causes my aunt to freak out and try to get me to spy on her daughter. However, the concern is somewhat merited as England has become a band junky like the rest of her friends from work (whom are also alchies) and lost the focus she used to have on her film, which is by all means is still her choice, so once again the butt out rule applies.

Ah friends, something else that’ll start a rambling. Today, we introduce: Spaceman, Shorty, Jane, Alice, Germ, Al, Lucy, and Shelly.

First off, Spaceman, the partier without a destination. He currently has: no job, no money, no plans, and no car. I take that back, he does have plans…Vegas this weekend, San Diego next, LA the week after, and so on. He has recently started showing up again, as he does, because he is getting burnt out on his Ricers and starts thinking about more serious issues that we will usually talk about outside for a few hours. However, I can’t really blame him for not showing up again until recently as I haven’t been as much as a friend as I should have been within the last 6 months. But within those 6 months I have also found out more about myself than I have learned in the past 19 years so I can’t beat myself up about it too bad. After he split up with Alice she came to the realization that the only friends she knew were the ones he introduced her to. This caused Alice to try to establish a connection with everyone in one way or another. For me and her, it was weed. First once every two weeks, and eventually (with a lot of influence from her sister Ash) it became something that was 4-5 times a week (dark age) for us and now that I have stopped something that is a couple times a day for her. Now, naturally, spending more time with your best friend’s ex than with him is a pretty fucked up thing to do, but for some reason or another (most likely the green and the fact I felt kind of sorry for her for not knowing anyone) I wasn’t seeing that. But we’ll continue on that later, this is about Spaceman. Anyway, during my “dark age” he would stop by times that were just bad, either when we found a new type and were stuck on stupid or when we were mid rip and knew he didn’t approve which made it awkward. Clearly, this put a damper on our friendship which has been repaired, if not improved, by now.

This brings me to Shorty, Spaceman’s younger brother. Shorty and I have always been brought together by one thing: common interests (it definitely wasn’t the conversation). So our friendship grew as a result of doing things together, which ended up including him in the more illicit activities under the mentality “if he is going to learn it from someone then it might as well be someone who cares enough to make sure he does it safely.” Soon after he started smoking out with us I realized that it wasn’t me he was learning everything from, it was Alice (who had become quite the proficient toker due to lessons from Ash). He (as well as Jane) adopted not only her rip styles but also her frequency over time. The strange part was that throughout the 3 months or so that I was there smoking with all of them he literally never spoke more than 10 times (excluding phrases like “You smell” and “Your mom”). To this day I think that the only reason I know what I do about him (which really is more about the facts of his life than him and his views) is because of Spaceman, or the super short conversations me and Shorty have on online video games (usually about what movie we are going to go see). As far as the future is concerned, I see a lot of his brother in him but a version that is a lot more uneventful if he continues on the path he is on (just called me to take him to go get food because he still has no interest in his license >.<).

Jane is Alice’s sister and I can clearly see a future full of substance abuse in her future, which is sad considering the fact that she is only 16. There were nights when everyone was open to the idea of smoking but we were fresh out. She immediately turned to liquor and wanted to go hang out at the park full on plastered half of the time. The one thing she said that is clearly imprinted in my mind is “I don’t care what we end up doing as long as I’m fucked up,” now, a 16 year old stating something like that clearly and not caring about it is something that I really hope I never see again. I haven’t talked to her recently and maybe it was just a phase, but the last time I did talk to her she offered me a bowl within the first couple minutes of talking, so I doubt all that much has changed.

Alice, other than what I already stated about her there are a few things that come to mind. First off, props to her for getting to see Al’s soft side; few people think it exists. But she is entirely too focused on weed. A clear representation of her logic is when I told her I wanted to cut back on how much we were smoking and she replied “so you don’t want to hang out anymore?” which I’ll admit rings true now but by no means, not even non verbally, was that communicated at the time. After I stopped she found another smoking buddy at her school and even managed to kick up the frequency a notch. Meanwhile I guess she had it in her mind that my sister is what made me drop the habit because when Sharona came down she flat out told her that she was addicted to weed (maybe expecting confirmation on her theory?). Overall I think the time we spent together was more a place for her to vent than anything else for her, and for me it was time to think about what I truly wanted out of life (which led me to lose weight and take interest in new things as well as better myself as a whole).

Germ, what else can I say other than another pity case. I know it sounds heartless to put it that way but the guy flat out told me he has no one else to hang out with. For some reason he sees me as some huge party animal that is his gateway to fun and excitement, but all I really do for him is call up Al and Lanky to go shoot some pool. However, he does find out about the occasional parties I go to and keeps hinting at an invite, but I have a feeling that he will turn out being the type that gets plastered and pukes all over the floor. He is one of the many people I know that I think if you put them in their own house, rent free, wouldn’t know how to get by. All the boy can think about is getting smashed and he got into the CHP training program…no wonder the cops that pull me over are douche bags.

Al is still one of the friends I have good feelings toward in regards to their future. He is in school and knows what he wants to do for a living without a doubt, which I’ll admit is pretty cool, but at the same time he hasn’t really seen what else is out there. Other than the extreme racism which I still think is all a front (I sure as hell hope I’m right) I couldn’t imagine someone else more suited to be a cop. He honestly wants to help people but doesn’t want to show that softer side to anyone who partakes in his training camp (which, by the way, guarantees results). All in all I still admire that strength to charge right into whatever you want without a care but also think its foolish, but to each his own I suppose.

Lucy is by far the sweetest little Asian girl I have ever known. However, I have been amazed to find out how fast she takes to giving 90 lb. lap dances while at parties, maybe too much of Shelly’s friends has worn off on her, but even the 90 lb. lap dances still manage to be cute (along with her fobby “Pimpin’ ain’t easy” line). She also plays a mean game of golf and wants to be a teacher, which is always admirable in a way. So far, I haven’t known her for long but there isn’t much conflict (we also actually bring it up if it is there) and with Shelly involved we usually have a pretty good time, although Lucy has a little bit of a hard time learning her poker hands, which makes for a good laugh too (but at the same time when she wins she wins BIG).

Shelly is the kind of person I didn’t know existed. She is ridiculously open and friendly and almost forces you to get to know her better, but at the same time doesn’t trust many people (if any). She is almost 18 and has helped me learn more about myself in a few short months than I have managed to in 20 years, it is pretty cool. She capability for friendship never ceases to amaze me and is something I greatly admire about her. But at the same time I think her trust issues lie within the fact that she lets anyone and everyone in and expects never to be hurt, which is unlikely. So far she has gone through a pretty rough life, including a father to constantly pops all kinds of pills, and a mother whom uses something I have yet to figure out (just says she’s fucked up most of the time). But the bond between her and her cousin Whit is really cool too. Shelly has a sister who is a fraternal twin but they couldn’t be more unlike each other (both mentally and physically), I have never met her but there seems to be a lot of problems between the two. However, she built a really close relationship with her cousin Whit and the two are almost inseparable, one of those finish each other’s sentences kind of relationship.

Anyway, that does it for now…Shorty is coming over because he can’t drive and wants food -_-.