Friends

Mood: Pensive
Movie on the the Background: Garden State

Hrm, It seems like I only get on here and write something when I'm feeling bad. Ah well, I guess we all have our own ways of venting.

When I was in high school, I had my first and only best friend to date. He was a great guy that I always got along with and had the same cynical outlook as myself. We could talk about anyhting and usually wound up with the same conclusions.

I don't really know why we drifted apart. It was a bunch of things, I'm sure. For one, I was going through a really deep and brooding depression, which I'm sure didn't help. Ont top of that I was in a relationship with a girl that, while at the time I thought she was helping, was really, really was a major part of the problems I had. And for him, well he was raised a Southern Baptist and had only recently started coming to grips with the fact that he was gay, so he had his own set of problems that I can't even begin to comprehend.

And I guess when we both finally started college we just stopped hanging out. I really don't know why, though. Hell, I could walk to his house rightn ow if I really wanted to. But every time I try talking to him it just seems like it's a chore for both of us to spend time together.

I dunno.

After high school I became very good friends with another guy. He's a really logical type that I've always relied on to help me put things into perspective. I'd been hanging out with him for a while, but we probably didn't actually become good friends until we started going to college. We were never as close of friends as I was with the first guy, but we always could have a good time hanging out and debating the state of the world.

Now, though, he's gone of to grad school at another college and it's only now that I realize how good of a friend he really was and how much I depended on him just to have someone to hang out with and shoot the bull. I've never had a very wide circle of friends to begin with, and now that this guy has gone off, I feel a lot less, I dunno, motivated to interact with others. I dunno why.

But he came back this past week to spend Easter with his family, and before that I got to hang out with him for a couple of weeks over Christmas. Now though, as I see him head off back to Texas it just makes me realize what a good friend he was, and how much it really sucks to not have someone I can really consider a close friend around anymore. I mean there are people I could call and hang out with and go see a movie with or something, but there's really no one left that I can just drop by unannounced and debate philosophy or argue over who's hotter on "That 70s Show" Jackie or Donna (I'm so going with the redhead).

I guess in the end what I'm getting at is be thankful for the people around you, because you may rely on someone more than you realize.

PS If any of my other friends are reading this (Jeff, Brian, Tater, Bethany, Doug, Jacob, Katie, or anyone else that I'm forgetting because its 3:30 am and I'm really not running at 100%), plz don't take it personally. You guys are great. I'm just airing out my feelings.

A Discourse on Love

Mood: Frustrated, Wistful
Music: Perfect Orange
Song: "Remember That Night"

"There are Monkeys Everywhere..."

...at least there must be, because it certainly does seem to be raining shit on me lately.

The girl I've been dating for the past few months brought up the "L" word this past week. Now I know plenty of people that will say that word in passing without thinking about the magnitude of it, or will even lie about it just to get some chick in bed.

But that is something I take very seriously. I can't just flippantly say something like that, especially not after a few months. I haven't even really thought about it in regards to her because we haven't been together that long. We didn't even do anything on Valentine's day because it was just too soon.

Love is very important to me. If I ever accomplish anything in this life, I hope that I can love a girl, and be loved by her. I really don't think that there is anything more meaningful, and all the striving and achieving and competing we do doesn't mean anything if there isn't someone to go to at the end of the day who will care about you no matter what. Someone that you can talk to, someone that you enjoy being with, and, if necessary, provide a shoulder to cry on. A person that will never ridicule or scorn you, and someone that you can share your deepest thoughts and fears with. A person that you will always find beautiful, even as you grow old. A person that you want to hold, and a person that you want to hold you. That is what love is to me: pure selflessness.

But I didn't feel that for her, at least not yet, and as I reflect I don't think I could have. We were just dating, having fun, being college kids. I'm not looking for the person I want to spend my life with.

That's not to say that I wouldn't stay with them if I found them tomorrow or the next day. I would. But what I shared with her was hardly love, I know that. At least I hope it wasn't love, because I guess I'd always jsut hoped that love is more than what we had.

I dunno.

She kinda ended it officially last night, though I sure wasn't expecting it to survive. So now I'm single again, I suppose. I've never really had a bad breakup, and certainly never been left. It's kinda a new experience for me. With a couple notable exceptions, I've always just had mutual breakups in the past where we both just kinda decided that it was time to move on or that we weren't getting anywhere. I've retained at the very least amicable relationships with my exes, but I guess there's a first time for everything.

It just bothers me that, even though I didn't do anything wrong, someone can be mad at me. Now I give lots of people plenty of reason to be mad at me every day (hell, if you read the Beacon you know that to be fact), but this is different because I wasn't at fault, and I certainly wasn't trying to make her mad. Instead, I did the admirable thing, the right thing: I was honest.

Honesty hurts sometimes, though. But I think it would hurt alot more to lie about love. The concept of love is too important to me to not be totally honest about. I didn't love her, so I'm certainly not going to say I do.

Is that wrong?

Sigh, oh well. Hopefully I'll sleep tonight. And hey Brian, thanks for calling and getting me out of the house. I needed that, bro.

Words Can Hurt

If you haven't read the story before this one, then this won't make any sense.

For the last nine hours I've done nothing but dwell on what was said to me earlier today. I'm sitting here with my stomach in a knot and my chest in a vice. I'm even having trouble breathing. I know I'm letting this get to me, but it just doesn't make any sense, and it hurts. I don't recall feeling this bad in a very long time.

I am a liberal, a progressive, and an idealist. Equality is the basis for my reasoning. I spend evey second of every day trying to make the world a better place for everyone. And the mere implication that I could be a racist makes me start to wonder why I do these things. I feel as if Children's Hospital is mad that I could only give so much bone marrow or only one kidney.

Its this kind of treatment that makes me wonder why I should suffer so much if the people that I suffer for are just going to step on me. I'm despied in the majority of the circles of middle-class white America. I can't even spend time with my own people. And forget being able to get a job in that sector. I could have been a lawyer, or maybe a cop like my parents, but now I've got a file at both the local police department and local FBI office (despite having never committed a crime) all because I chose to speak out against the government and the system (thank you Freedom of Information Act).

I spit on everything that the people around me hold dear because the system we live in is descriminatory and I know that it's only blind luck that I get offered opportunities like law school or even to be born white, male, and middle class. So, I choose to fight. I fight for the rights of minorities, women, gays, non-Christians and everyone else that is descriminated against in this country. And what do I get in return? Kicked out of the white circles and descriminated against in all the others.

I know I'm taking this too seriously. I know that there was probably some confusion or misunderstanding involved , and I'm sure that most people regardless of race or background, would be confused at the very least, especially people that know me, but the mere implication that there could be any doubt about the kind of person that I am is disheartening. It's as if a hole has been burned into my soul.

Sigh...I'm going to have to meditate on this for awhile. I'm sure that in the end I won't end up changing my mind about the world or the path I've chosen for myself, and that I'll always be the overbearing liberal progressive fighter I've always been, but I have learned something: sometimes, no matter what good a person does in their life, they can never gain respect with some people. They can only lose it.

Racism Works Both Ways

I know I promised not to delve into politics on this blog, but I'm so pissed off right now that I kinda have to. But don't worry, I don't even mention republicans or conservatives. This one's all about the left and how stupid their beliefs can be sometimes.

Apparently, I'm a ractist. Despite all of the work that I do to promote equality, despite everything I do to point out the desparity between wages of minorites and whites, despite everything I have done to show white America that minorities ARE NOT equal in this country, I get called a racist.

Why, you ask?

Simple: I don't like rap music.

I got into this discussion with a black guy in my class. I said that if there wasn't descrimination in this country, rap music wouldn't exist, at least not in the form that it's in today. He berated me about rap and R&B being an expression of what being black is. My only response: being black is defined around demeaning women to the point of sexual objectivity and the worship of money?

Though the discussion went no farther, mainly because I took extreme offense at the insinuation that I was a racist and left the situation after calling him a hypocrite, I cannot help but wonder what reality he thinks he's living in as far as rap music goes. My only reasoning is that he must believe that white people dislike rap because its supported by black culture. Well I've got some news for him as far as rap defining black culture. 90% of all rap music sold is to white people between the ages of 13 and 29. 85% of all rap music makes reference, often vulgarly, to sex. 80% of all rap music is in some way related to money, and a large majority of it is using the influence that money grants to get sex, etc, etc, etc... Are these numbers at all reflective of black culture? Well, I'm not black, but I think I can say with a high degree of sureity that they are not.

Now I'm not gonna say all rap/R&B is like this, nor am I gonna say that I dislike all of it (I own "The Love below", which does both of the things I mention earlier, for example). But this dislike of me because I dislike rap is inidicative of the problems with progressives: we fight each other too much to fight the real problems. I don't dislike people because they like rap music, but, apparently, I can be disliked for not liking rap. That seems a little fucked up doesn't it?

Disliking rap isn't a race issue in my mind. I'm all for equality, but when women are objectified, they are given unequal status. And what happens when money becomes the sole motivator? Well you get America as it is today: a class system based on one's income, not one's talents, skills, education, contribution to society, or necessity of the job performed; and rewards are paid out disproportinately to those that agree with the system.

But those aren't even the issues here. The issue is that disagreeing with someone on even a single idea can earn you a label. I'm unpartiotic because I oppose the war in Iraq, too. Who's fucked up view of patriotism is defined on an unjust war? Writing my congressmen on a regular basis, voting, paying taxes...none of this makes me a patriot? It's all based on violence? By the same token, fighting for minority rights or fair wages doesn't make me a progressive, but hating rap music because of the ideology presented therein makes me a racist?

What's next, disliking Broadway musicals means I hate gays? WTF? Where's the boundary? Where does it end?

Well, I've got news for anyone that would define their identity solely on a single issue (like rap music): racism works both ways.