Jaganshi
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2006 9 May :: 9.48pm
So. Obligatory end of year post?
Sure. I'll do that. I have to do something to give this year some closure, after all.
I've spent another year at Butler and found that some things never change.
One, I will never ever have enough money. I will be perpetually screwed financially, and the best I can hope for is to survive up to the point where being screwed by Butler is irrelevant in any immediate sense. This is a result of the fact that my parents are changing their legal residence to New Hampshire, where they live. Up until then, we've taken advantage of various military loopholes that allow me to be an in-state student. My senior year I lose at least four thousand dollars in state funding. However, I won't have to register for classes again, and maybe I can save up to help defray that. I won't know until the time comes.
Two. People are the same no matter how old you are or where you find them. Many people are worth talking to, spending time with, even loving. Others are petty, greedy, and generally not worth any of the above. The people I've found are often variations on the same theme. These don't beg for respect. They take it. They simply are to be respected, without any need for them to cry out, "I told you so." I've met a few of these this year. Some people are distractions, but these new friendships... they are the diamond in the ashes, which I take in spite of you.
Some things have changed, though.
One. I'm becoming both more selfish and less self-centered if that makes any sense. I consider what I want instead of what is expected of me. I will not be guilted, manipulated, bullied, or abandoned when another more useful commodity comes along. My autonomy is coming along a bit. However, with this growing freedom is coming the realization that I don't have to need people to be around them. I don't have to be using them as a means to any end. It's okay for me to value the company of another person. It's safe to value the needs of others if I keep my head about me and remain conscious that their needs are not my needs. I don't need to mortgage my identity to anyone else to be relevant, but I can lend the identity I've chosen to the causes I value. The distinction may seem small, but it's a step in the right direction.
Two. Summer vacation isn't looming on the horizon as a three-months span in which life simply.... stops. I can spend that time with a young man I love very much, knowing that he loves me and is glad to have me around. I can go to my parents' house just long enough to see my cat. I can go to India. I can go to Ohio and get a job so that I can stay with Brian. Small sacrifices in order to gain everything worth working for.
Three. As I become more expressive of healthy emotion, I'm learning the difference between what's helpful and what isn't. I'm becoming a little easier to be around, very slowly and very gradually... but I'm getting there. I figure it's the least I can do for the people who stayed. They deserve that at least. The others? Let them remember me as they wish. I do not regret anything I have done. I was not unjustified in my scorn or dismissals all these years. I still have not been proven wrong. I simply intend to treat the people who love me with more gentleness than I've previously been capable of.
How are those for some changes? I am the same as I was, but greater in many ways. I will make different choices in the future than I have in the past, but the past is still there where it always was. I do not regret a moment of it.
3 PWNED |
In The Face.
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Jaganshi
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2006 30 April :: 2.34am
Blue Roses!
For my own record, but I really thought someone else might think this is nifty, too.
2 PWNED |
In The Face.
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Jaganshi
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2006 28 April :: 6.16pm
You know what?
I've been away for a very long time, and now that I've come back, the things that were bothering me seem to have gotten a bit better.
The people I'm watching are writing entries that are more specific. They were always personal, but people are actually saying what's going on now instead of merely telling me why everything is pain and suffering when you're fourteen years old and damn doesn't it suck.
The grammar's gotten better. Even in journals I'm not watching. People are using English, and it gives me hope for the internet.
I'll still be on livejournal, but for those of you I used to know: I may be around more, trying to get to know you again.
4 PWNED |
In The Face.
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Jaganshi
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2006 28 April :: 6.16pm
New GM Struggles with Existing Paradigms!
Read more..
In The Face.
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Jaganshi
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2006 28 April :: 6.12pm
An update some few of you will be able to understand.
I just had an odd request from a high school speech friend of mine. I said hi and the first thing he did was ask me for the whereabouts of Caleb. Now, I realize that in high school I was the only one who knew half the time where the boy was or why. I realize that I stuck by him for nearly two years even though that junkie wasn't exactly the best thing to have in my life. He didn't have anyone else, because no one else would have been able to handle being with him. No one else deserved it, so I stayed instead and everyone knew it.
But two years after the fact... apparently people still expect it to be true. Joe seemed... sad that he hadn't spoken to Caleb in two years, and that he'd never probably see him again. I told Joe that I cut ties with him after graduation. This was largely due to certain actions on Caleb's part after graduation that really don't need to be hashed over again.
It's just strange to have that reminder again. Even weirder is that it comes after a very.... odd dream that I had last night. Something about Caleb and a non-descript friend of his waiting for me in a men's room to rape me. Then I tried to get a cop to go with me and he asked me if it could wait because he was taking a break. Odd behavior for a policeman.
Maybe I'll try to think more about what that dream means, especially when you factor in the introduction of the topic into a totally unrelated conversation. I'm either superstitious, fatalistic, or simply don't believe in coincedence. However you want to see it, this is strange to me.
If nothing else, it reminds me of how much better off I am now than I was in high school. I don't regret anything that I did. I don't regret the (arguably undeserved) devotion to someone like Caleb. I forget who explained it to me this way, but she was right when she told me, "You're the most important person in his life. I just don't think that you're the most important thing." For a while that was enough. It never will be enough again, though. I had never been with anyone who told me I was beautiful without the obvious motive of squirming his way into my pants, or anyone who sincerely told me that he loved me. Most of the boys I've known have loved me the way a smoker loves nicotine gum. A pale substitute for what they really want, but for now it's better than what they've lost.
I won't say that they didn't have their reasons. Caleb's first love died of a drug overdose. He watched her die. Link...well, there was Tara. I shouldn't have to explain it that much further. I can't blame them, but I can say that I'll never sacrifice myself to people like them again.
In The Face.
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