A post I've been meaning to make for a while.
I've really needed to update this thing lately, but I never had much of a chance to, due to work and church obligations and the like. But today was my last at Subway, so now I'll have a bit of free time on my hands until I need to start packing and getting ready for school. But first, my thoughts on the sandwich artist experience: It was ok. It was a minimum wage crap job in the fast food industry, so what else could I expect from it? I'm definitely pleased I won't be coming home smelling like various vegetables anymore. I will admit, I did like my coworkers quite a bit, even when they were moody and somewhat rude towards me. It didn't happen often, and in general there was a pleasant atmosphere about Subwayland. Plus free sandwiches everyday didn't hurt. That's one aspect of this particular job that will be sorely missed. It sucks having to pay for food. If by next summer I don't have an internship or something along my "line of work" (put in quotation marks since I don't actually have one yet) ready for me, I'll probably return to Subway. The new owner was so nice and accomodating, I wouldn't mind working for her again.
Enough of that. Now my thoughts on returning to school. I've been looking forward to going back since the moment my dad and I drove off the campus in May. I've missed my friends from there terribly, I've missed my dorm room, I've even missed going to class and doing homework. I'm so excited that in just *counts* 11 short days I'll be back in Hellish Spokane moving into my dorm and seeing all my friends again and getting ready for the academic year to begin. I'm also setting my hopes dangerously high on starting a band with Ju once we get back. I want this to work out so badly. I've been wanting a band of my own since I started playing guitar 5 years ago, and I feel ready now for that to happen. Playing with the band at church this summer has taught me so much about cooperation and stage presence (even if that doesn't show too well at mass.. believe me, I have learned), and I really, truly value being allowed to opportunity to play with all those wonderful musicians. Now I'm hoping my experience with bands can continue into the school year and perhaps much longer than that.
On a less optimistic note, I recently got a call from my good friend Steven, the brother of my--at one time--best friend Amanda. The last time I saw her was in Seattle when she took Priyanka to the bus station then took me back to her cave where I determined that she had officially gone insane. Apparently, she's been getting more and more into harder drugs like she was back in 10th grade or so, drugs like ecstacy, shrooms, acid, and even cocaine. Steven said about 3 (now, I guess, 4) weeks ago she ODed on something and went to the hospital. She was given some sort of catscan and found out that she had 2 hemorrhages in her brain: One the doctors believed to be from a car accident her mother was in before she was born, the other from all the heavy drug use. These were so serious, in fact, that she was told if she were to ever do any hard drug again, even once, she would certainly die from it. Needless to say she's been clean since. But how long can that last? I'm sure the shock won't wear out for many weeks more, but I mean.. she's gotten herself into some serious problems here. Drugs are addictive. She's going to start craving them sooner or later and I don't know how well I trust her ability to control herself. I've known this girl since 1st grade. She was my confidant, my sister, my best friend, my everything. She was like a second daughter to my mom. And now she's killing herself. But she's not that same Amanda I knew before, and somehow that's keeping me from feeling worse about this situation than I do now. She's not the person I grew up with and cared so much for anymore. I don't know what to think about it all. I guess all I can do is pray for her.
My mom lost her job at Olson's Tack Shop on Friday. She was planning on quitting at the end of September, and when she informed her boss, Mike, of this he said, "Why don't you just leave now?" So she came come crying that morning. She's been there for 8 years, and on an impluse was just thrown out. She was the only person there who knew how to do any of book-keeping, and now everything's a mess. She has another job at church doing basically the same thing, but her loss of this one means of a loss of $1,000 a month in income. Hopefully the second job has some hours opening up for her. I feel so bad. Mike was someone she not only considered a coworker, but also a friend. And he just discarded her like she was nothing to him. She described her feelings about this to me as not being so sad that she was, technically, fired, but how it all happened. Poor Mom.
This is a somewhat old topic, but I've finally found out for certain that my dad has picked up smoking. My brother caught him doing it in the backyard. *eyeroll* My dad has about as much stealth as an elephant in Times Square. This is mostly just annoying to me, as it means we're going to be wasting more money we don't have on cigarettes and my dad's soon-to-develop cancer. It may sound insensitive, but I really don't care much for him. It's not like he's ever been mean to me, he's just been apathetic. He thinks so little for the rest of the family and almost always makes the wrong decision. He's a recovering alcoholic, has gotten 2 DUI's and went to jail for a month because of them, cheated on my mom, and has shown such a lack of interest in his children's lives. Right now I think of him as being very irresponsible and I'm just.. disappointed in him. It's hard for me to understand how I can love one parent so much, and not the other at all.
What else is there to say? Oh, well this is relatively big news, but not necessarily new to some people. I've decided that I hole myself up too often, and that I need to be more open with my friends and people I meet about who I am. So I'm trying to take some initiative by telling all you on my friends list that I'm gay. Since about 10th grade I thought I was bisexual, or at least I knew I was attracted to girls. But in the past year at Gonzaga, I discovered that if I was to be truly honest with myself, I would say I was gay. I had a few opportunities to be with guys, both before college and during, and always turned them down. In some cases I felt worse about it than in others, but generally I knew that it wasn't going to work for me. Brett admitted by the end of the year that he wanted to date me, and while I was flattered he was attracted to me in that way, I still wanted nothing more than to be friends with him. So there. I said it. In the most impersonal way imaginable, might I add. From now on, if any new person I meet wants to get to know me, I'll tell them everything up front. Ok, maybe not everything. I'll spread it out. The hardest part is telling those who already know me as someone a little different. I don't know how I'm going to tell my friends from high school. So many of them were conservative and homophobic, but were still my good friends. I can't imagine losing them because of this. And I know, if they were my real friends they wouldn't think any less of me, but.. I'm still worried. I probably just seem like a coward. The only person it would be harder to come out to is my mom. Almost a year ago exactly (it was right before I went to school) she out of the blue asked me if Liane and I were dating. So that eventually led to me telling her I was bi, which seems like it would make coming out as gay all the easier, right? NO. She took "bi" to mean "straight" and still harasses me daily to get a boyfriend and get married and have millions of children. The last thing I want is a boyfriend, let alone children, but I don't know how to tell her that without breaking her heart. She's so sensitive and takes EVERYthing personally. By saying to her, "I don't want to get married and have children," I'm basically tell her that I despise all that she stands for and wish she was dead. I know, it makes absolutely no sense. Me being gay has nothing to do with me being disdainful towards her. But that's how she'll take it. Sigh.
That being said, I don't feel that I'll ever be able to a.) handle a relationship, and b.) even start one. There are very few gay people at Gonzaga, being a relatively conservative university, and I get so busy and wrapped up with schoolwork I wouldn't have time for a girlfriend. And once college ends, where am I going to meet anyone? Bars? Not really my thing. So while I've finally admitted I'm gay, I've also quietly resigned myself to a life of solitude (aka, sheer lonliness).
I'm sure there was more I needed to talk about, but if you've read this far I'm impressed. Please stop wasting you time now and find something better to do.