Just be Selfish

The therapeutic and enlightening abilities of simple everyday activities in life never cease to amaze me. Who knew a simple day out to coffee and dinner with friends would prove to be one of the most cathartic and enriching experiences of my life?

It had been a while since I’d come home for a weekend; I’m actually overdue, past the every-two-weeks guideline I set back in September. I metroed home early this afternoon and immediately set back out again to meet up with Maria for coffee. We chatted about what had been going on in our lives, things have been relatively calm in both us, she has a guy who she’s at least semi fallen for who she thinks is beyond her reach despite calling him a “once in a lifetime kind of guy” even though he isn’t. I’ve been telling her to see that she really is worth it and is a much better catch than she sees herself as so hopefully things will work out. If only I found it quite so easy to reflect my own advice and words into my own life.

Last night I went out to dinner with M and some now-seniors from my high school. It had been forever since we actually got to say “hi” and hang out since our brief 10 minute jaunt Halloween weekend and was something I was really looking forward to. Dinner itself was rather eventful, well, that’s almost a lie, it was more shocking than anything. What happened to that group of mostly quiet, reserved juniors I knew back in the Spring? Well, nowhere to be seen at least in those two hours we ate.

The ones who were normally quiet had become loud, the modest had become boisterous, the stressed had become downright snappy and what was once only friendship had become backhand comments and behind the back gossip of hatred, and me and M were caught in the crossfire. Were these the people I knew back in high school? I can barely tell, and beyond the “I missed you!” hugs and “tell me about college” questions, I never would have known these were the people I had known for up to three years beforehand.

Was I like this my senior year? I wouldn’t be surprised if I too felt the excitement induced effects of finally reaching the top of the high school ladder but seeing who were and still are my friends scares me. I talked to M later that night as we walked the streetlight lit streets of her neighborhood and agreed that we probably were like those seniors, we reveled in things “finally being almost over”, but now we realize that the world doesn’t end with graduation, you just turn a page and start writing the next chapter of the multi-volume book called your life. We’ve entered the real world, not the hallway-confined, block-scheduled life we lived in for the better part of 13 years. We’ve seen things they can only imagine about, partaken in things they still consider taboo, and just have taken off the nanny-censor goggles we had been wearing all this time.

As I mentioned earlier, me and M walked around her neighborhood after dinner, the air was crisp, the moon was a mere sliver of itself in the sky and for once I saw stars, stars not flushed out my the glare of city life. We talked about a lot of things, the dinner we had just enjoyed, her life at an ivy-league university and our general lives. One thing we both learned was that we both were known for something in college that we were trying to shed. Regrettably, and somewhat annoyingly, we’re both known to mother, and despite both of our efforts to try and change that image, it irks both of us that we will likely be stuck with that stigma for quite some time. Unlike me, M doesn’t drink, but we both try to take care of others in life sober or in my case occasionally drunk as well. She’s tired of having to take care of herself in addition to others. Both M and I served similar roles in our circles back before college, we were both the listeners, the problem solvers who people went to to unload things to, and for advice on how to proceed in life. We’ve both had it engraved in our heads that helping=good no matter the context and we carried that with us when we parted ways for our respective universities.

Our situations continued to mirror each other as now we see that despite our roles in high school, they don’t translate well to this new chapter, it’s like when there’s a major technology shift leaving all the old equipment either crippled or almost useless. We’re both working to shed this image of mothering others and made a pact between each other to do so. As I told her about trying to shed that stigma she said something peculiar but makes sense; “be selfish”, that’s the simple way she put it. We’ve both done more than our fair share of playing the role of listener and rock to which others cling to, it was time to stop worrying about them and just have some me-time, to take care of ourselves, our wants, our desires for comfort, for friendship, for love, for anything.

College was supposed to be a new chapter, and with being more open about my sexuality I’ve made progress; well, maybe shedding this role among friends is just another page I still need to write. I will never stop being the rock or listening ear people can come to talk to and unload on, but rather carrying their burdens on my already bowed back, I’ll just neatly pack them away in storage, bringing it out only if those people want me to. I’ll still find pleasure in making people feel better through being able to unload, but now it will be a quiet process with less follow-through.

Nighttime walks and meetings with friends like I had are the exact reasons I miss coming home. I’ve known these people for years; they know my secrets, seen me at my best, seen me at my worst, and have seen me at every stage in between. These people know me for who I am and I know them for who they are. I love my college friends, but at least for now, I will never feel that level of connection with them, I will continue to hold secrets, censor my thoughts and words, and lie through my teeth if I need to. I’ve only known them for about two months compared to the years of friends back home, maybe one day I will feel the same level of connection I feel with M, Maria and my close circle, but time will sort things out for me in the end.

Tomorrow, me, Maria, and M will all be going back to our respective schools and I don’t know when we will get back together, hopefully over Thanksgiving; I’ve already promised Maria we would hang out for a full day Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, we hadn’t done that since the summer and is something I sorely miss. We plan to bake a cake, something we hadn’t done together since I came out to her at her house back in 2008.

I never truly appreciated my home until leaving for college, the familiarity of everything, being able to fall asleep on the couch and waking up to a full blanket my mom had covered me with to keep me warm. I also miss taking late-night naps, and strangely, another thing I miss is being able to dream. My dreams have been much less vivid since I left. My dreams usually involve all my senses, it feels real, but I hadn’t experienced that in a while. I just woke up from one of these late-night naps, and I just had a strange and somewhat unsettling dream. For the first time I can remember, I had a narrated dream, there was actually a voiceover. What I also didn’t expect was that one of my friends was in my dream, but we were more than just friends. The narrator said “and then there was a kiss that only a straight guy would refuse”, he didn’t refuse, he jumped up and we just looked at each other afterwards but I woke up at that point. My id can be so evil sometimes. I’ll try not to go too deep in trying to interpret the meaning of it all. We’ll see.

Anyways, I’ll be working tomorrow and then shall be headed back to campus. I don’t look forward to the next few days.

Hell Week, I shall defeat you.

All the best,

JP