Free at Last! Free at Last!

As of ten minutes ago, I am officially done grading those friggin finals. I have been dying to blog and have been experiencing a kind of cyber-constipation. But I'll be damned if I am not free and clear to blog to my heart's content.

Gee, where to start. This may be long so bear with me. Not that I need to be asking for forgiveness on that.

I drove down Friday to do laundry and planned on seeing some of the kids, especially since some of them were bugging me about not hanging out with them anymore. I ended up visiting a slew of people. I called up Jacob and what started as a trip to Joffrey's turned into visiting three groups of people we called: The Teens, The Queens, and The Sex Machines.

The Teens

Actually, I really didn;t glean much from this visit, although Jacob did. We were both shocked as to how things had changed within that drama club subculture. And it wasn;t until I talked to him that I realized how truly different it was. My beef came from simply realizing that I did not like half the people in the room. Granted, they are only teenagers, but my despite recognizes no age limits. People are people no matter what and it enraged me to see how much some of them had chanegd (fror the worse) and how some were fake, and how some were truly just nasty and awful human beings. Yes, they will learn and grow, but my god, I have no desire to have some of them around me. I have this need to surround myself with people who have a modicum of common sense and SOME kind of intellectual capacity. Some of these people are parriahs and juvenile morons. It surprises me how some of them have such a narrow and illogical perspective of what real life is. To be naive, gullible, and for lack of a better word, FUCKING STUPID, at 18 is just pathetic and sad. When you can;t see the forest because you refuse to open your eyes then you are just sociologically impotent. I feel sorry for people like that because when they finally wake up and see what life is about they will be destroyed. I feel even sorrier when they drag other people into their sick little circle as some kind of "saving" mission. Fuck that. Understand, I am not being pessmistic about life. I am being real. There is a fine line. I recognize that life has its ups and downs, but I am sure as hell not going to be fatalistic about it, nor will I be naively optimistic about every friggin thing. Life is NOT a Disney movie. Hmm..maybe I DID glean something. At least I got to see JeJe! WOO!

The Queens

We next visited a mutual friend whom we had not seen in about a year. He used to be straight and then one day just came out of the closet. It was quite a shock for us and was the one time when my gaydar was OFF. Although I always had my suspicions. It was interesting because it was amazing to see how MUCH of a queen he had become. If human sexuality can be plotted on a circle, then he has become so gay that he may very well hit being straight again. And when I mean a "queen" I mean a QUEEN. It was in one respect funny, and in another frightening. It makes me wonder if the way people act is really determined by those stereotypes we see enforced day in and day out. Actually, I know they/we are. How much of who we are is an act; a fabrication of the things and people we see, and how much of it is real. I know that I, for one, am very careful about showing the real me, and there are VERY few people who know what I am really like. I don;t do it to be duplicitous. I have two sides to me, and most people only see one. It is up to them to discover the me underneath. I know it sounds like I am being fake, but I don't pretend to be some other persona, I just choose not to let both sides be seen. Yes, it is a defense mechanism, but it is also a way of proving to myself who my real friends are. I have a friend who is precisely what I describe. He lacks a personality and is in fact an amalgam of whomever he is around or whatever he sees. It;s really weird and I never really thought about it until now. There is no sense of who he really is as a person, but a complete outer choclatey shell that does not melt in your mouth OR your hands. I wonder if people are more afraid to face themselves rather than having others know the real them. What is it that makes us feel that we are not good enough sometimes?

The Sex Machines

Ah, the last stop was to visit some older friends that we still keep in touch with. It was so odd seeing some of them drinking and smoking (keep in mind I knew some of these people since they were 12 and some even younger). It always amazes me to see them grown up and I always have to remind myself that they ARE grown up and not to switch to automatic parenting mode. In any case, the entire place was seething with sex, or rather a weak attempt at people trying to mack on each other and lay down their game. It was rather sad, but what was even weirder was how much weight these people had gained! My god, and we are talking like four people. It was SO weird. I am not Adonis, mind you, but I seem to be losing it while they seem to be gaining it. Regardless, these are also some of my closest friends whom I have known for a while and even though I don;t see them on a daily basis, I know they are always in my life.

It is the last group that made me really evaluate something (and you thought I was going to talk about sex, eh?). I always joke with people that I have 9 walls that I surround myself with. They work as my comfort zone and my defense against duplicitous people. I use them in a healthy way, trust me. I am not misnathropic, but I have become VERY selective about the people I call my friends. I used to meet people left and right and call them "friend" when I was younger and I was totally fine with that, until I started realizing that there is a fine line between "friend" and "acquaintance" and I got myself in trouble emotionally and mentally because of that gullibility. I changed all that and while I still do have a large group of friends across the spectrum, I am very careful about who I let into my life. This leads to a higher level of skepticism when I DO let someone in and let the guard down. Besides, the walls do and don;t have anything with getting to know me. I have a couple of friends who know me VERY well, but know nothing about me. One does not equate the other although one DOES explain the other.

Anyway, I am not averse to meeting people and making friends at this stage in my life. I think it is something I will always do. However, in light of recent events and a betrayal of a close friend I realized that I may be too forgiving sometimes about letting people in. When I start letting the walls down, they usually all come down eventually. This marks the first time when the walls came crashing back up. Part of that must have been a reflex, but I think part of that was also my realizing that I was allowing myself to be used and become nothing more than a friend of convenience. A flavor of the month if you will. It has been a LONG time since I have been someone;s doormat, and I have gotten over being angry with myself about this instance, because it was this that just led me to my new revelation. I am finally able to control my emotions when it comes down to stuff like this. I don;t get carried away or paranoid, and while I am still honing and refining, I feel such a sense of empowerment by being able to say "Fuck you and Fuck off." without actually saying it. I find that I don't care, and while that may seem more dangerous and negative, I don;t think so. I am not becoming emotionaly impotent, but emotionally smart. My not caring occured in the context where I realized I was the only one doing the caring, and friendship is NOT a one way street, and I refuse to drive down that lane. It's like an escape clause or an emergency shut down button. I guess what I am driving at is that I really have no problems getting to know people and letting them in (although, God knows I enjoy making it a challenge, and always will), but I am certainly going to be able to allow/disallow those people who want to get closer.

Not sure if any of this makes sense, but it does to me. So HOOPLA!

I am going to go make a fabulous dinner, and watch some TV and veg out for the rest of the evening. I feel fulfilled and accomplished in so many ways. And I leave this blog by saying one simple phrase: Fuck You and Fuck Off.

btw, that is not directed to everyone :)