Tips for Going Back to School

Confession

I didn't put this in the High School Post. Thought now was the right time.

The High School Post

Friday January 16

Everybody wants to hang out with me all of a sudden. I woke up this morning to multiple text messages and a voicemail to go out for breakfast. So I'm currently doing the only logical thing in this type of situation, I'm sipping my coffee, reading The Andy Cohen Diaries (which kind of sort of inspired me to write this, because I feel as if I'm somewhat more relatable) and pretending to be asleep. I do feel kind of bad about it, but not bad enough to get out of my sweats.

I know what I promised yesterday, so I guess I'll start with ninth grade. But really quickly, I'm sorry I just have to talk about work tonight for a second. Oh my gosh, I couldn't remember why I don't ever put effort into how I look. Well, tonight I remembered. Never have I ever been looked at like such a piece of meat. I felt like Britney Spears was belting out If You Seek Amy all.night.long. It was bad, all I did was gel my hair, wear contacts, and earrings and my looser red v-neck. About five or six women and a couple men wanted to have super long convos and gaze into my eyes deeply. This always happens. I should just accept it because honestly I love all the staring, and the double-takes, and the blushing. I feed off of that shit for real. Anyways.....

            Ninth grade. I was 14 when it started and I was just coming off of my "darkboy emo" phase. That is to say I was constantly wearing black clothing, specifically with skulls and other depressing things all over them. I was also right around 250 pounds. I didn't have friends, only acquaintances who were also outcasts like myself. Although there was one girl who I grew closer with with each passing year, and we still remain friends to this day. I had also taken a vow of silence and only spoken when necessary. The only person who looked at me without judgement was my grandfather, who was the greatest man to ever live. Eighth grade scarred me pretty badly in that I was just really sad all the time and so lonely. There was also a specific individual who was a good friend of mine the year before and come eighth grade he decided that I was gay, and so that spread like wildfire. Back in 2008, it was still super bad to even be suspected of being gay especially on little old Grand Island. (The individual that spread the gay rumors about me was pitted against me in tackling practice when I played football my senior year and I went at him with everything I had, still bitter of course, and he broke down and said he loved me. I think he meant platonically, but you know what they say about "football bullies." I took this as an apology for everything and I haven't seen him since graduation.) Those rumors followed me into high school further hastening my growing unpopularity. I even tried the "cutting thing" once but it wasn't my thing. It kind of hurt, like a lot. So yeah, my entire ninth grade year consisted of me trying to be more normal, so that people could maybe like me for me. I started wearing less black, and I even started to speak a little bit more, just a little bit. That year was super bland. I still just had acquaintances, no friends. The big thing that year was that I discovered Facebook and I found my voice online. People started commenting on things I would post and would say I'm funny. I even waged war against my English teacher Kelly Baumgartner. Online of course. I felt really bad for orchestrating a pretty nasty discussion about the woman, especially considering it was her first and last year at the school. What I didn't feel bad about was the attention I was receiving from some of my peers for the first time outside of mocking me or a few words here or there. 

Fast-forward to sophomore year. This was the year I turned sixteen, and I'm pretty sure it's a rule that at some point during you're sixteenth year you start rebelling. The first four months were like a continuation of my freshman year, except that for the first time I had friends. I mean most of them were the outcasts from the year before, but now I went to the mall and movies with other people my age. It was such an ego booster. I was also beginning to thin and grow into my body. I went to my first school event, the seniors versus junior powderpuff game, and the school bonfire. I even went to the homecoming dance. I wore Nikes, with a dress shirt untucked, a loose tie around my neck, and a fedora. If I could I would slap the ever living shit out of myself now. I mean really? A fedora? I mean the rest was bad but damn. I remember being made fun of at the dance by the "cool kids" of my grade and upper class men and ultimately going out for punch more than enjoying myself on the dance floor. This was also a big year for me because I had my first girlfriend, or at least I thought we were together. I will refer to her by her initials CM. We were both quite rotund so we were like two peas in a pod. I mean we did everything couples did, we even slow danced to freaking Fireflies by Owl City. (Talk about a throwback, huh?) In my young, naïve mind this equated girlfriend. We never kissed though. Or maybe we did, actually I think we did. She took me to my first club and I remember being enraptured by the chaos. I loved all the bodies, the heat, the beat of the music, and the pure sex in the room. I still have this love today. If I recall correctly, in the spring of that year we stopped talking when I cut her out of my life for talking to another guy. (I'm rolling my eyes at myself.) I also got my first job that year. Three days after my sixteenth birthday I went to the coffee shop on the Island, Tim Hortons and applied for a job, I had an interview and was hired on the spot. (The woman who hired me, Jaimie, may or may not have had a drug problem and was stealing from the company, so not much credibility there.) Soon after I was hired a group of seniors and juniors from my school all got hired and they took me under their wing. I became like a little brother to them, and I loved them all. They were the first really cool friends I had ever had. I'm still friends with half of them to this day and it's always a riot when we get together. I even had a flirtation with one of the girls, Stacy, but I never acted on it because I was afraid that she would say no. It was totally lame. That summer with my new older friends changed my life forever. They instilled in me a love for alcohol that I never lost. One girl who we worked with was older than us, in her early twenties, and that summer she had parties at her house pretty often. Suddenly, little 16-year-old me was partying with the college crowd. I smoked weed for the first time, and I drank the summer away. My tolerance grew quickly and I was so grateful for that because a running joke around work was that I got drunk off of one screwdriver my first time. I totally admit to that. But they always took care of me. Always. These parties were wild. This other girl we worked with was from Jersey so accent and everything, she threatened to slit these guys throats once and we all thought it was so cool because this was right when Jersey Shore was the biggest thing in the country. People passed out cold sitting up, people had sex by the pool or disappeared to do unthinkable acts to one another. I got my first couple dozen lap dances. One night, my friend Steven dropped me off two houses away from mine so I just sat on their lawn until I felt like getting up and walking home. I felt different. Included. I also started hanging out with guys who were in their mid to late 20s. Another co-worker of mine was in his early twenties as well, and all of his friends were older than him so I would go with them to a local bar weekly and it was cool to have older guy friends who had my back. I wish I would've stayed close to them.

Junior Year. My transformation into a douchebag was in the works. This was the year I had my first inner slow motion walk down the hall. What I mean by that is that even now when I look really good, I kind of picture myself walking in slow motion with a really cool song and everybody stopping to stare at me. This actually happened to me on the first day of my junior year. I woke up that morning and I realized I had pretty much lost a lot of my friends because I ditched them for my older, cooler friends. The problem was that most of these friends either went away for college or were too busy for me. They still hung out with me when they could, but mostly I ran to them with all of my problems and questions, as my high school gurus. I had also discovered American Eagle and style. I was dressing a lot more like I do now, you know, regular. At least regular for me. I was also skinnier than I had ever been before that. So on the first day of eleventh grade I was walking to one of my classes upstairs with a smile and looking forward. Something I had never done as I had usually frowned and looked at the ground. My hair was cut, I wore new glasses that fit my face and I didn't look like myself, puberty was good to me that summer. Other students went as far as to tell me how different I looked or how great I looked. They even smiled or waved at me. On the outside, I was cool but on the inside I was on Cloud 9. 2 weeks later, after 6 long years my braces were removed. Another slow motion walk ensued. There was this kid in my first period English class, let's call him Billy Fields. You see, his initials are BF and we are not friends anymore. It got nasty, I'll save that for the next year. Anyway, he sat behind me in English class and we got to talking, and soon we were best friends. It was really quick actually. We realized that we knew some of the same people and next thing you knew, we were a group. Our little group was like any other group of teenage friends of both sexes, everybody was in love with everybody else. I mean none of us ever got together but that's besides the point. The point is I had friends and my list was growing. As I cut ties with my old acquaintances, the outcasts, I felt awful because they showed me kindness when others wouldn't and I was turning my back on them. I never became friends with any of them again. One of my friends from work was the captain of the rugby team, and come spring he was advocating for players. The "gay rumors" were starting to stir again, I think it was from the scorned outcasts. So I thought, you know what, I have never played a sport, why not play the roughest, manliest sport? I joined the rugby team. Boy, I got in shape quicker than a speeding magnet train. I lost weight like crazy, I could suddenly lift weights and run for extensive periods of time, and I had a ton of new guy friends. I bonded especially with three other guys including Billy Fields, as we grew closer than ever. I got contacts for the sport and I pierced my cartilage on my left ear. (I had pierced my left ear the year before, to some slight ridicule from my peers.)  After training for the last half of winter and the beginning of the spring, it was time to play the first game in our 4 game season. Coach put me in the game in the second half because I have to be honest with you, I don't understand rugby! I just don't get it, the rules, the concept, how to play, nothing. So I went in with the idea that I would just tackle the opponent and that would be that. I mean there were other things I had to do but I can't even explain to you what those are because I have no idea how to even explain it. I left my contacts at home, and so when I gave the water boy my glasses and cartilage ring, I swallowed hard and ran out onto the field blindly. When there was only a couple minutes left of the game, we were tied and I knew then I wanted to be the hero, I wanted everyone to see me even though I could literally not see at that moment. I decided my game plan would be to go after the largest blur and take it down, I saw myself as strongest on the team, physically and at the time I might have been. Ref blew the whistle, my blood was pumping, everything got tuned out and I ran at the biggest kid I could make out, as he went down, his knee went up and slammed into my collarbone. I didn't let go, and we both came crashing down. I don't remember what happened after that, but I think we lost. I just remember feeling off balance. There was something wrong, I thought it was just a bruise. Funny thing was I prank called my mom that night on the drive home and we told her I was in the hospital with a broken arm. Pretty damn close. At practice a few days later, I was trying to do a push up and fell face-first into the mud. I couldn't push myself up and it was freaking me out. The next day I skipped school and got X-Rays done. My collarbone was broken, and I hadn't even noticed it because I thought it was just bruised. I was in a sling and out of the season until the last game where I played again for the second half. During my time as a cripple, I bonded with a boy who broke his hand in the second game, we became extremely close and, let's call him Maynard Housing (initials), Billy Fields and I were an inseparable trifecta. Maynard is the kid who rides horses in the Caribbean, by the way. I also met Morgan that year. She sat in front of me on the bus and one day while I sat with my Fall Out Boy playing she looked at me, made a motion to take out my earphones, and asked me why I don't ever speak. We haven't stopped talking since then.That is one thing I will always be grateful for, because I know we're both in it for the long haul. Literally forever. Fast-forward. It was prom season and I was not going to miss my first prom now that I was a cool jock. I asked a girl publicly in photography class, and she said no because she thought I was joking. (She's a lesbian now, so I guess it's okay.) The second girl I asked was this girl from Mexico that I had a crush on and been friendly with since fifth grade and she said yes. Then she said no. Apparently she had already told some guy from her church, whom I hated (the reason for that hatred was tacky: in third grade he took one of my books and put it through a paper shredder and I was done with him) that she would take him. He didn't even go to our school anymore. I ended up going with a freshman who I'm still very close with and whom I will be seeing next week. Actually she was one of the friends I went to the hookah bar with a little bit ago. I asked her through a note I wrote and gave to New Zealand to give to her. We had a blast. I HATED her dress, and she found out about this disdain two years later, and I apologized profusely. We even messed with who I thought was my ex-girlfriend CM and her new boyfriend. We danced and danced and it was the first time I had ever grinded or dirty danced with a girl. I also danced with most of the junior class, including another one of my six year crushes. At some point a group of friends and I went around and defaced our exes lawns with silly string, eggs, and forks. I had also stolen my car that I wasn't allowed to drive that night. (I did that a lot actually, I lied to everyone about having my license from the time I was 16-and-a-half, until the spring of my junior year when I finally got my license with my broken collarbone. I was only supposed to drive it to work.)  Billy Fields was there of course and there was one other guy we bonded with that night and he and his twin soon joined Billy, Maynard and I. That summer the 5 of us became inseparable. The twins and I have been extremely close up until the past few months, and I don't know I guess we're just drifting apart. I can't say that I'm that upset though. Day in and day out the five of us were together, playing video games, basketball, swimming, seeing movies, you name the lame things teenage boys did, I'm pretty sure we did them. We were like a cult. That was a problem, but even more so of a problem was the fact that they were all straight-edge. They never drank and they didn't smoke. Ever. Comparing that summer to the previous ones, I felt as if I regressed. I was happy, for what I thought were true friends, but I needed to let the caged beast out. That was where my older friends came in. When I could get away from the five-some, I was with them. That summer I also joined the football team. Never had I ever played football, but there I was. I wanted to prove to everybody that I could do it in my last year of school. The gay rumors ceased forever. I mean, you know aside from one or two assholes. 

Senior year changes everyone. It's the year where you decide what you're gonna do for the rest of your life and with who. This was the year I changed. This was the year I hated myself. This was the year I fell in love. This was the year I ran supreme, and this was the year everything changed forever. The five of us began our last year of high school with such an over abundance of confidence this was our year. That's what we thought, boy were we wrong. Football had me lean and on amazing terms with the football guys. Who would've thought that the chunky little emoboy would be a skinny and sexy football player? The divide among the five began. I think Billy Fields may have initially been jealous of my influx of popularity especially after he was the only player cut from the soccer team. Maynard Housing was trying to find his place in the school and the twins were busy with soccer. Billy started to lose it. He was so consumed with making senior year perfect and getting his perfect girl that we were constantly clashing. For the rest of this recollection, I want you as the reader to remember that I have grown up a lot since then and this is not who I am anymore. I could never go through with some of the shit I pulled back then. By October, I had, had it with Billy. I caught him in lie after lie and his personality started to grow more vindictive, evidently so did mine. By this point I had convinced pretty much all of our ever growing friend group to dump the kid. I convinced them all that they didn't want him ruining their senior year and that he was a snake. I was faced with the opposition of one kid in particular who told me not to ruin someone else's senior year. The dumping was put on hold. Meanwhile, my popularity was growing to such levels that the entire school knew who I was and it warped my thinking. It made me think I was better than everyone to finally be on top and I began to refer to myself as "The Prince." I had become a social media mogul as well through Twitter throughout Grand Island High School. Everyone began calling me The Prince, it caught on extremely quickly. I slowly became involved with a ton of school activities as well, and knew the hot gossip on everybody I crossed paths with. One of my favorite things back then was to find something out, tell somebody who I wasn't supposed to tell and watch the fireworks go off. I had become a warped version of Cady Heron. November led to the excommunication of Billy. We all harassed him over social media, and mocked him. I encouraged all of it. It was like people just wanted to do whatever I said so that I would be friends with them. Everyone except for the outcasts who stood firm in their opposition to my rule. I had transformed into the very people who made my life a living hell a mere three years earlier. Very quickly we had a replacement for Billy. We'll call him Double A. The guys had started hanging out with him while I was away at Disney World for a week. This was when I took the reign to another level and became friends with a group of sophomores who were friends with my junior prom date. I later became friends with a huge chunk of that grade and spent most of my summer with them. I also became extremely close to one of the people who used to make fun of me at the beginning of high school and I still consider him one of my best friends today. (In his defense, he made fun of everyone) Eventually spending so much time with the sophomores, I began to fall in love with one in particular. Double A had already said that he wanted her, so I backed away. The thing was, she didn't want Double A, she wanted one of the twins. They had a weird flirty thing before New Zealand revealed that she also liked that same twin. He had been in love with her since 7th grade and they're actually still together. I guess I was next in line. We'll come back to that. By winter, there was a schism. Billy Fields, and his group of friends following the excommunication, brought Maynard over to their side. He still tried to be friends with all of us. (His definition of that is talking shit about the other with the other and hoping he doesn't get caught. From that point, despite our reconciliation towards the end of the summer and going into college I have never trusted Maynard Housing. He is a snake.) This took me by such surprise that I was scorned because Maynard had become my right hand and I never thought that he would do this kind of thing, I thought he was trustworthy.The two sides grew further apart and their side had a new alpha. He was of Indian descent and we'll call him Raj. Their group had these hot, slutty, blonde twins in it that every guy in the school drooled over, and most girls in the school hated. Then the Winter Ball school dance drew a pretty clear line in the sand. For weeks I had told people I wasn't going to the dance, when all along I had a ticket for me and for my date. I got a girl I worked with to go with me, a girl who graduated the year before. She was a good friend of mine. I thought that the best way to be the center of attention and have all eyes on me would be to walk in fifteen minutes late with her on my arm, and that's what I did. Halfway through the dance though, my date caught me staring at the sophomore I had growing feelings for. She said "go to her, it's obvious you're heart is with her." I asked her how she would get home and she said her sister. That was all I needed, I scooped my crush into my arms and swung her around, and we danced until there was no more music. After the dance, the twins and I, our dates, (mine was now the sophomore) and a seventh wheel all went to the Applebee's Billy Fields told them to go to after the dance to meet up with their side to try to preserve the friendship. He told them the wrong one, and we set off to the right one. Before we got there both twins asked their dates to be their girlfriends and I was silent. Walking into the right Applebee's, my girl laced her fingers with mine and I was beaming. I still didn't ask her. The two groups were outrageously awkward and any chemistry any of us had was gone. They continued their night and didn't invite us, furthering the wedge. In late January, Billy Fields approached me, and it was the first time we had really spoken in months. He asked if I still wanted to be his partner in the business competition we had made it to States in as a pair. We had signed up for the partner event and won our last round despite our growing separation. I remember answering him very shortly, confirming that I was still in. It meant going to Rochester for 3 days during the school week. And I got to wear a suit. Priorities. While in Rochester Billy and I became friends again, and I started to reclaim a little bit of my old self. Being away from that school helped immensely. Two of my sophomore friends also went to this competition and we explored the city together. The one who went was the one I was falling for. Being away felt like being in a dream with her and I knew I had fallen head over heels in love with her. It was all consuming, she was everything to me. So much so that I asked her to prom as we explored the city. Once again, I couldn't seal the deal. Even though there was an obvious sexual tension and attraction between us, I couldn't ask her to be with me. I felt like she would say no, even though I knew she wouldn't. A month later I had my wisdom teeth removed, and I was prescribed painkillers. I wish I never was. Three days after the surgery high on the meds, I went to work and realized I was in no shape to work and I told my boss I had to go home, and she tried to force me to stay and I had some choice words with her and then put her on the phone with my mother who told her I was going home. I never went back, not to work anyway. I had a ton leftover painkillers after I healed, and instead of disposing of them or keeping them for when I would get hurt, I took one every morning before school and would take another when I felt the first wear off. I stole my mom's painkillers out of her nightstand and took her when I ran out. I also sold hers to a friend I worked with. (He's now in the Army and doing big things.) I cut communication with the girl I was in love with because I heard that she was getting back with her ex-boyfriend. And really, I had no right to behave the way I did because we weren't together. Following this heartbreak, I turned to more drugs and alcohol. I would seek out parties or any excuse to take pills, smoke weed, or get drunk. I looked for it. It was also rugby season and I didn't go back to the team because a ton of my ex-friends were on the team. I know the twins especially were super worried about me, because at that point of time they still had never touched anything like that. I was an addict. Then one day I looked in the mirror and I dint like what I saw. I had burned so many bridges. I had made my mother cry due to my actions more than once, I had gotten into a brutal fist fight with my brother when emotions ran high and we both said some things we didn't mean. He also heard me talking smack about him with my friends. I will forever feel bad for how I treated my brother and we're still not as close as we used to be. We're just getting close again now. I mistreated my grandfather, and my heart shatters into a thousand pieces when I think about it because he passed away the next year and I had so much less time with him then I would've if I had been myself. I had hurt some people at school. The only good thing to come from a lot of this was that I was slowly finding myself again and becoming friends with new people who liked the me I was working on becoming. I stopped doing drugs. I still drank, but only in moderation. My grades also had to be fixed. I was extremely close to repeating twelfth grade. By spring, I was almost fully myself again, the me I should've been all along. There was still that divide though between my friends and them. By prom, we were okay. Speaking of prom, when I stopped talking to my love, I had to find another date, (she ended up going with Double A and hated every minute of it) but my date found me. Morgan. One day in study hall, she turned to me and asked and I said yes. No cheesy "promposals." It was so us. The night before prom I went to downtown Buffalo and went bar hopping with some of my old Tim Hortons friends. You see, Girls Gone Wild was in town. I drank half a bottle of UV Vodka that night. Morgan was pissed. I was half a zombie the next day. We went through the ringer with our prom group. Simply put, they sucked. They consisted primarily of the "church kids," and refused to let me play explicit music, on the limo, I did anyway. By the time we were sitting at our prom table for dinner we were all really tired after pictures and so this mutual friend of ours broke out caffeine pills and around the table the pills went. We each took like two a piece. My heart was beating so fast. Both of us had also put in our names for Prom King and Prom Queen, not actually thinking we would get it. A few hours before prom Morgan told me that we had won, and that our class advisor had told her. The couple who everyone thought was gonna win were literally Ken and Barbie. It was one of those slutty twins, and her boyfriend who had sex with the other twin whilst his girlfriend twin was drunk on the couch in the same room. Gross. I will never ever forget the moment, they made the announcement and Ken and Barbie, started to walk forward and then Morgan's name rang out throughout the dance floor, followed by mine and then for me everything went silent. I don't even remember what song they played, I just remember dancing with her and being so happy and her being so happy and us just smiling like idiots while everybody watched us dance. My mom cried when I got home. Graduation day was a sunny, perfect day. I hated it. I don't know why but I was angry all day. I was a complete dick that day. I think I was sad and upset that it was all really over and I don't know, I was just seething. When it was over I ran to my car and didn't look back. I wish I would've spent more time with my grandfather and mom that day, they were both so proud. I hate myself for not giving them quality time that day. Right after that, I went with my cousin to Toronto for the night while she went to some Gay Pride thing. I explored the city in solitude wishing that some of the friends I just walked away from were there with me. That summer is a blur of grad parties, alcohol, making out with lesbians, Canadian adventures with the reunited fivesome, (We only lasted until September when I sent Billy a long paragraph about everything I hate about him.) not being able to go to my dream school because I couldn't afford it, (I later realized how bad that school would've been for me and how good Buff State has been to me) and one night where I smoked 3 grams of weed with snakeboy Maynard. I haven't touched weed since then, not really anyway, not my thing.

So that is the story of how a loner grew up and became one of the most pompous, arrogant assholes, how he lost himself and found himself again, and of how he started making strides to the man he is today. A LOT of stuff happened after high school and maybe one day I'll write about that too but right now this is where I came from and this is what I left. So now you know everything. I'm sure I might've forgotten an event or two and if so and I remember it, I will add it to a later entry. But this is a pretty thorough retelling of half of my teenage years. If you read all of that you rock and I love you immensely.  

OCD and Jelousy

Thursday January 15

I swear I have the weirdest form of OCD known to man. It comes in little spurts, but when it does it's all consuming. Today, I decided to clean my rooms. I'm your typical undergrad student living in his mother's basement. It's cool though because the basement is like a mini apartment or dorm room. I have a living room and then my bedroom, or had would be the better descriptor. 

During my last manic OCD attack, I converted my living room into a living/bedroom, and my bedroom was changed into an office/walk-in closet. Luckily both rooms are mildly spacey. (Speaking of "spacey," more specifically Kevin Spacey, I have to get back on Netflix and re-watch House of Cards because that is some prime television, but I digress.)  

I decided to clean because I had a whole day off and nothing of the social variety planned so that left me open to become a slave to my laundry and pick up the random dishes and garbage strewn about, not to mention the ginormous pile of clothes in the middle of my office/closet. The funny thing is that despite these messes I generally know where miscellaneous items are located underneath the clutter. Today's ultimate objective though was to get all of my clothes into some kind of order and so I took to labeling my dresser depending on what was in each drawer. I also discovered eleven half-empty to full water bottles all over my bedroom. Literally this is because of my sleeping habits. You see I wake up at least once a night usually around 4:30, why? I don't know, but I do and I'm always ridiculously thirsty and so that usually leads me to grabbing and chugging a water bottle and bringing it back down to my room. In my half conscious state I usually fling the bottle in some random direction. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

This is kind of random, but I've really had it with people. Okay, there's this kid I cannot stand and we used to be really good friends but now I can't even be in the same room as him without my blood pressure rising. The same effect happens with Instagram pictures. I really only follow him to hate him, (I actually do this with quite a lot of people, and I KNOW some of you do the same.) and today he posted a picture of him riding a fucking horse in the Caribbean! Excuse my fucking French. Not only that but last I checked he had 40+ likes on it while I'm fighting for 11. Oh my goodness, I've done the whole Caribbean thing, so that's whatever, but a horse, come on and oh my goodness he just looks so basic in the picture and it just makes me upset. I just really don't like anything about the kid, and I affectionately refer to him as a "snake among snakes." The explanation of that history dates all the way back to my junior year of high school, and that is a tale for another day. Tomorrow, to be precise. You guys deserve something really juicy. Tomorrow I will recant the second half of my high school experience and be prepared because it's something straight out of a teen drama, I swear. I'm too tired tonight to type up that essay. Just be ready for it.

Hookah

Tuesday January 6

I had a bright and early shift today which I love because literally I was done by two and had my whole day ahead of me. Which of course meant that I had the entire day to mostly laze around while my right hand woman was off in Orlando. 

That night I reunited with some old high school friends of mine, who were all sophomores when I was a senior. I had some weird attachment to their class as a senior, I don't know. The four of us decided to go to a hookah bar to catch up and blow O's. I was a little apprehensive about the whole thing because the last time I smoked hookah, I felt like I was gonna pass out, it just gets you really dizzy and lightheaded. The first hookah bar we went to was closed because the other hookah bar in Buffalo owned by the same people had a shooting last night. Some D-list rapper or something was in town and initiated the shooting. The funny thing is, we actually did make it inside the bar, following closely behind a news crew. It was then that the owners kicked us out. With only a few options left, we opted to head to the Habibi Sheesha Lounge in Niagara Falls. 

Half an hour later, we finally sat down on the couches that may or may not have various stains of bodily fluids. The verdict is out the window on that one. All three of the friends I went with moved away for school. The one moved to wherever the hell Alfred State is, the other to boondocks Cortland, and the third of which I am insanely and infinitely jealous moved to New York. I tried my best to represent "B-Lo," and I was pretty pleased with how much I actually enjoy this city. We split the hookahs two and two and in one we had some kind of sex flavor, "Queen of Sex" maybe? And in the other, we had a fruity mix. The waiter asked us if we also wanted bubbles and although none of us understood what he was asking, we all eagerly said yes. The bubbles were some liquid that if you blew the smoke you take in, into it you produced smoke bubbles that bounced and were reduced to vapor when you popped them. It was insanely cool. Cue Instagram pictures and Snapchat videos. 

Hearing about everybody's lives was so fascinating because we were now all adults in the world, it's just such a cool -- okay really quickly, my mom is doing laundry downstairs right now and all I hear coming from her phone is the Dawson's Creek theme song, you know, "I don't wanna wait forever to be over..." Oh my god, I am dying right now.  So yeah, yada yada, it was great to see everyone and although it killed me to ask, I had to find out how New York was so I asked all the questions I had about living in the city, and that particular friend of mine gave me the okay to sleep on her dorm floor anytime. Which did I mention, is in the Upper East Side! XOXO Dan Humphrey. (Spoiler Alert) 

By time we left, it was close to midnight and we were super hungry. Luckily there's this local taco place open ridiculous hours of the night, and we ate in the dark of the car driving home. After I got home, I did my usual look in the mirror to make sure I didn't look like shit all night, and there was buffalo sauce all over my shirt. I scowled at myself and went to bed. 

Self-Image

Saturday January 3

Target was pretty dead tonight, it was a nice welcome in lieu of the chaos that was yesterday. There wasn't anything too out of the ordinary tonight. I mean of course apart from the occasional rambling crazy person about God only knows what, questioning my credibility, which in retrospect is actually pretty common. It's almost like some customers only want to start problems with me simply because I'm giving them the answer they don't want to hear so obviously I must not have any idea what I'm talking about right? Right. On the opposite side of that spectrum however, a kind Canadian man gave me some words of encouragement once he heard about my academic pursuits. He said: "You are very bright, for you to be able to handle all that you do, don't ever settle; your better than that." I didn't catch his name, but I won't forget his words anytime soon. 

The song of the night was one of my most favorite songs ever and so my ride home probably made it look like I was having an epileptic episode to other drivers. That song is.... ready for it? Sexyback by Justin Timberlake. Nobody will ever understand my love for that song; hell I don't even understand it. There was one other thing I was doing that might have been incurring the looks I was getting at the red lights. I was throwing one dollar bills around my car and dancing with them. Honestly, this is semi-embarrassing and I can't believe I'm writing this, except that I can because my level of shame is almost nonexistent but one of my big dreams in life is to be a stripper on a stage for just one night where they play all the good jams and I just have a good time in my underwear and women and men (if they're into that) throw singles at me. It's such a bad dream to even have but I really just want to see what it's like, but I definitely feel like I would start giggling uncontrollably in the middle of my routine.   

Which brings me to the big thought I have had all day today: I have to get into shape, and quickly. My mom told me a few days ago that we as a family are all going on a cruise in the beginning of May. The timing is perfect since I'll just be wrapping up the semester. The cruise is leaving from Orlando and going to Costa Maya, Mexico, Cozumel, Mexico, Belize, and Honduras. So that gives me four solid months to turn my flab into abs. Challenge accepted. It's gonna be hard but hopefully I can stick to it, honestly I've had to tone up and get into shape for years and this cruise is the perfect incentive. Growing up, my weight was always an issue. It was an issue to the point that my childhood pediatrician who I will refer to by her first name Usha ( Pronounced Oooo-SHA) because it's fun to say, referred me to a nutritionist whom I never saw. Usha would tell me visit after visit that I had to switch my habits and that I was on the track for diabetes, and then one day I was about 250 pounds. At age 15. I was in XXL shirts and 40 waist pants. I had to have ultrasounds done on my heart and blood taken because my cholesterol was so high that it was effecting the way my heart was working. I was 15 and I was terrified. And so I decided to make a change at all costs. Being a young, stupid kid I took what I thought was the easy route: I started to starve myself, and run/walk on one of those Gazelle workout machines we had in the basement. It was the summer before my sophomore of high school by this point and I would sleep all day, wake up at night and work out on that stupid machine, and barely eat enough to get by. I would usually chew gum instead of eating.  So I started my sophomore year like this. At this point in my life I would often be made fun of for a number of reasons. Reason number one: there were always rumors circulating that I was gay because I never had a girlfriend. This was because of my extremely low self-esteem. Due to this I often questioned myself and it made my teenage years all the more confusing. I was made fun of because of my weight, and I was made fun of because of my race. I went to a predominately white high school so the kids were generally insensitive towards what I was. They would make little jokes about my skin color or say something about black people and then say "oh sorry! I forgot you were there,"'or "I forgot you were black!" I blame the parents. I mean I'm only half-black, but damn! There's a whole list of things I could write about what people said about or to me leading up to my junior year, but that is something for another day. Tangent over, sorry those happen extremely often. Where was I? Oh yeah, so I noticed that I wasn't losing or gaining anymore weight, I was stagnant. I realized that this was because of my extremely low level of physical activity. I lost the weight by playing sports for the first time in eight years when I joined the rugby team at age 17. I joined rugby specifically because it was a "tough sport" and slowly those nasty rumors started to die down and the reinvention of myself began. I've been steadily losing weight since, (aside from a brief stint in my freshman year of college where I was eating fast food daily as a result of acute depression; but again, different story for a different day.) and am now a size M shirt and a 32-33 waist in pants.  Now the time has come for me to tone that shit up.

If you're still with me, I really appreciate it. Somehow my basic notion of getting in shape became this tirade about days long past. It's just that people are constantly asking me how I lost the weight, well that's the ugly truth. I realized what I had to do, I went about the wrong way, then the right way for the wrong reasons, and ended up where I am now. There isn't a lesson to be learned here, nothing is that black-and-white, but this is the truth.

Sitting here now as today becomes tomorrow, I'm watching my little brother Eli play his video games and I see so much of myself in him it's surreal. He'll be seven in a couple of weeks and I hope he'll be one thousand times stronger than I was and I'll definitely be here for him to help him along the way.