She took the Midnight Train goin' anywhere.

Welcome back! So its been a while since I sat down and wrote out a blog. Tragic I know! But the deal was, with Gail.. my other cohort in the “Gsquad” here at work.. that we would blog when we worked together. Apparently this means once a week. Exciting no!? So since I picked such an awesomely deep topic, it was Nehnay’s turn and I think she’s matched me for the week… So without further ado.. here we go…


Three pieces of advice you’d give your high school self. In honestly, this was actually was really hard for me. Since a lot of high school I spent running away from a lot of things, I think there were few enough times I had to stop myself and regret what I was doing. Looking back, there were probably a lot of places where I would have liked that pause button and some advice.

Tell him the truth, before it was too late. He’ll never read this blog. Never. But there was a point in time where I was hopelessly in love with someone I was spending a whole lot of time with my Sophomore year of high school. He wasn’t the most ideal person in the world but he had a great personality, he had an even better heart. He was everything that I could have wanted out of a guy. He made me laugh, he was attentive. Hell he knew I crushed on him so hard before I’d even said anything, but by the time I worked up the courage, it was beyond too late. I had fallen somewhere in the ‘best friend’ category. Somewhere in the “No Fly Zone” and while we had remained close, my chance to make him happy, to love him more than just that, had gone far, far away. I think my life would have been a shit ton different if I had just said something back then. Back when he really was mine. Sure years down the road he admitted that he had crushed on me as well, but he wanted something more solid than just that sort of high school puppy dog crush. I suppose he found it too. Now he has a wife, had a kid with her in high school. From here, he seems reasonably happy. I just wish I hadn’t missed that boat, wherever it had led to.

Be honest about your problems: ..I think that a whole lot of my masochistic phase that I have now as an adult is because back then, I wasn’t honest about my problems. I took all of that pain that I felt, all of that pressure and angst and I internalized it. I took a lot of that in and bottled it up. More so, I took all of that and I used it to made myself smaller, feel more insignificant, and I hurt myself so deeply with it. I think if I felt like there was someone I could be honest with, someone I could talk to then maybe it would have saved me. I was so fixed on being everything that was ‘okay’ that I couldn’t see that there were people there all the time that were worried about me. I was so interested in the mask that I put up that I didn’t see what it was in front of me. I didn’t see that I didn’t have to be that way, that I didn’t have to hurt myself. I think hearing that, knowing that someone knew there was something wrong inside of me, that I was lying,.. It might have stopped me from hurting myself in ways that I never thought possible, even now.

Its okay.. no matter what happens, its okay: I spent a lot of time freaking out about things. Grades, friends.. my parents. I never really stopped to believe that it was all going to be okay. I spent a lot of emotional pain on freaking out. I think just knowing somewhere that someone knew it was gonna be okay and hearing that. I think I would have smiled more. Its that knowledge of the future, that security that somewhere someone knew that it was gonna work out. My parents got divorced. Its okay. My friends were Gay, it was okay. My life felt like it was going to suck, but its okay. I think that more than anything would have lifted a whole lot off of my chest.

I’m sure there are other things around that I would have told myself. “Watch out for the slidding glass door” “It’s a mistake not to stick to college” “Watch out for that second one”… but none of those pale in comparison to those three lessons up there. Those three I think would have changed things drastically. In the end, better or worse, I’m me. Every step I’ve taken on this path has led me right where I am (Sitting next to Gail for an hour of my day). And if changing any of that meant that I wouldn’t wind up right back here, I don’t think I could change it.

I may not always like where I am in my life. Sometimes, I may down right hate myself, but I wouldn’t trade me for the world.