But I....

I'm afraid of making mistakes. Deadly afraid of making mistakes. Deadly meaning my fear is killing me.

I can't even call the credit card company to ask them what's wrong with my card. I hate dealing with people constantly like this, like all of a sudden I've had to grow up and deal with the work sphere and I'm not even a real worker yet! What on earth does that mean? I don't know but all these things I've strove to do on my own, I can't take them anymore. I've gotta get out to New Hampshire and find a mountain somewhere, relax myself in just a t-shirt and jeans laying myself out a rock, looking up at the clouds, breathing and shifting my gaze to the mountains out in front of me, then rolling my eyes to the sky and closing them as I fall asleep, knowing the mountains are there to protect me. If nothing else is there the mountains are there to protect me.

The mountains.

What the fuck? I don't have the goal to hit number one. I just want a spot on the chart, the chart of people who get to love and have an emotional relationship. Fuck not being able to do that. Fuck it. It sucks so hard. It really fucking sucks.

Why are all the songs I'm applying to in places that have no mountains? Damn cities...

The coats in my closet are 多い (many). They number at least 10 that I enjoy wearing regularly. It's like I wear the closet outside. The gay closet... what am I hiding each time I'm putting something on?

Myself. Just gotta take it all off. And expose it for the world to see, or reduce the world so that it's only myself that's my world. And then I'll be satisfied that the world can really see me.

I guess I gotta get back to that world...

Love sucks

it eatsyou

right
up

Love

I've just got to feel it, I believe in... love! It's what we've got...

I may have just misquoted DDR. I guess this freewrite isn't necessarily going to be about love either. I'm tired and I feel like freewriting even though I could easily fall asleep now. "Easily fall asleep now." I could NEVER write those four words a semester ago. Or two semesters ago. Only three semesters ago would that have been true, in Japan. Damn, I miss Japan. But now I think that life spirit is coming back.

And I think I'm going to be shit-tired tomorrow. Happily, I have only 0 classes on Wednesday. Isn't that swell? Gives me a day to recover. That being tomorrow, when I also have to do a shitload of stuff. Um. Maybe I should skip my first math class. No. No mercy will be given from the teacher on grading if I do that. Well, it's math so it's different but you know what I mean.

My brain is starting to zone out and lose its awareness of physical space slightly. It's kind of freaky. I don't know if I haven't ever been in this state or if back when this would happen, it would be more of a constant lack of awareness. That is, back during times when I would be really, really sleep-deprived and only live on whatever nervous energy I had. I didn't even eat that much. How did I survive? It's amazing, the power of neurons. And of determination.

When you have something to live for. And boy, did I have something to live for my eighth semester of high school. I could feel the spring in February, groundhog out or not, I knew an end was coming to the madness, and I could feel the grass growing inside of me thanks to the light of the sun that it finally started to absorb! ...even though it was still snowy outside, and I had stuff to do, but that was it! I had stuff to do! And even if I didn't really participate in Ultimate Frisbee past a few pick-up games, I still lived! I lived life fully! And I was realizing it as it was happening and it was jubilant! And so nice.

That was awhile ago. But I'm feeling it again. I'm feelin' it again and it's wonderful!!!!

Let's make the world a better place.
Alex

Worry warts

Worry

Sometimes it's not something that makes sense. Sometimes I don't even want to write but I force myself to write. Like now. Sometimes you don't feel like doing anything and that's how you get somewhere, by forcing yourself to do something. I'm not even paying attention to what I'm writing.

11:17 PM and I haven't eaten dinner. Uh oh, am I slipping into this trend again. Rhetorical questions deserve periods.

I really shouldn't have had that conversation last night. Or should I. It was redeeming for me then but not now and I know I'm fucked for tomorrow. I hope my date goes well because I'm going to be tired as shit because I need to get a shitload of work done for a shit class... and that's so that I can go on that date. At least I have the date.

I hate how - I go back to Tufts and all the guys there are suddenly hot to me. Why is this? I don't understand it. In Vancouver there weren't so many guys out there trying to be attractive and stick out, instead just trying to be chill. And I liked being that. Chill. Maybe I should try to stick out by being chill. But people here overuse that word as a compliment - he's "chill." Nobody here is chill. Nobody. They don't make sense. The date should be better, hopefully.

All I need is to get out of here and to some place that's far more chill than this college's environment. Because it's driving me nuts. When I was in Japan I was far more sane than this. In Paris, only slightly more sane. Really? How could I have been more sane in Paris than here?

More than anything I feel alone. But more for real I feel bored. Bored bored bored. The biggest enemy in life is boredom. Baudelaire talked about it. Boredom is not a drug. He claims that it is. That's bullshit. But I sure am having a hard time getting off of it.

I'm hungry for certainty. Certainty that I'm doing the right thing. Fraternity that'll teach me that I can survive on my own. Life that speaks to me, breathes to me. Music that breeds confusion that arouses my senses.

Books that I can read that can tie me up, gag me up and tell me they love me and want me. Drawings that jump out of the page and pull me in. These things are absent. These things are no more. I'm no less the victim.

I could've stayed for the entirety of the Olympics. I really wish I did. That would've made things feel complete.

I'm not an enemy of the peace. The hazy, foggy, uneasy peace is an enemy of me.

Where to go?

Out

I need to get out of here. I can't stand being rejected anymore, and I know it's me who's doing most of the rejection. Just one thing from someone else can mean too much, far too much to me. I feel rejected even when nobody's rejected me, when I fear rejection. Being out is being free of self-rejection.

Out....

Vancouver isn't that bad of a place to be out. It looks like, anyway. I can recharge there. And talk to Dad about what might still haunt me.

Who knows.

Maybe.

Always maybe. That's what my hook-up guy who probably doesn't want to go out with me told me every time I asked him something. Maybe. Why always maybe?

How about definitely?

Definitely.

This show needs to get its ass on the road.

And math needs to stop being so difficult... and lonesome.

The Japan path I feared specifically for the lonesome part which renders things difficult. Matter of fact, I think it's the fact that math is so lonesome that makes it so difficult nowadays. But put in grad school and people who also enjoy math (which I do to a definitely nonzero positive extent but how much is "left to the reader to prove") and I think it'll all come together.

Who wants my passion?

I think math does. And it's whichever guy it is out there that wants all my passion who'll be the guy that becomes perfect, given that he's a guy I like.

I can see baseball in the summer. I can see spring. I can see summer.

Summer's coming out again.

Dear Alex

Dear Alex,

You never cease to amaze. Other people. Not yourself so much, and I want to know why that is. Let's take a second to think back about what you've accomplished over these past nearly four years.

Well, let's go back a little further than the start of college. Remember that summer? That was the best summer ever! You found yourself, you found your friends, you found your best friend from elementary school again, and you found your heart, gone or trampled on all those years by the pains and melancholy of being a closeted gay boy in an all-boys school. You had it hard and you got out of there unscathed. If not unscathed, renewed. You knew that college would have better times ahead.

Freshman year of college. You didn't know what to expect. But then remember that one night where you were freaking out over an IR outline and you didn't know why? You thought that nothing would ever be as hard as the Prep? Remember when your roommate said "It's hard being a Tufts student."...? You'd never instantly felt so much better in your life. Always remember to run to friends when it seems like the quicksand is pulling you down.

Sophomore year, that over. Not quite the same walk in fields of daisies, fields of yore... that yore was long gone. Brian, your precious former roommate had grown distant from your social life, which was never the same at Tufts from then out. And why do things like this happen? You don't know, and there's never a real way to know. Tufts was what you needed after the Prep, at least freshman year, but freshman year's a whole 'nother world. Nothing left from there, you took charge and had a 4.00 GPA semester first semester, and two A+'s in upper-level math the second semester. Awesomeness. But no guys. And yet you were afraid of getting guys, because you weren't circumcised. But what were you gonna do about it?

Sophomore year was long and hard; this is when things started going back and forth and decisions became much harder to make. Study abroad - where do I go? You ended up deciding at the last minute (as you did with so many decisions from here on out, including the one about dropping the Japanese minor that you're still regretting and that I'll get to later) and it was that last-minute decision that put you in the best experience of your life, followed by one of the worst. Shit happens. You wish you could've prevented it, but what could you have known about yourself and the world around you? Things aren't that predictable. I could start talking about the implications for later, but it's time to move on.

I remember saying goodbye at 4 AM to Justine and Galen. And then months of nothing... then a wonderful, blissful August in which Titus visited. But before that, a wild summer at Hope College that didn't completely persuade you to go into math. It showed you the hard side of being a mathematician, of doing something that can be rather plain among people that find the topic outright fascinating when you don't. But you found friends, one really great friend, and had lots of frisbee and beach fun and moved on, still unsure what the future was going to contain.

Junior year. You step on the plane... to Vancouver. That part was okay. You're in Vancouver. You step into security... you want to run out and start crying and wave goodbye to your dad again. How long has it been since you've talked to him about being gay anyway? But that's not the point- what the fuck were you doing? Going to Japan - it had nothing to do with your intentions as a math major or what looked like it was going to be a French major, and weren't you better off not doing this? You could be really alone and bored.

That didn't happen. Japan semester. This was the best semester of your college career, hands down. But again you felt the pain of loneliness. Common's "I Want You" lingered in the background while you did your homework, thinking of Trey (shh!)... and you realized that listening to music was actually getting kind of boring. Uh oh... was something about to change? You had no idea. You started the semester with a blog post debating whether to stay or go for the second semester, continuing that debate all the way up to the time when you absolutely had to make the decision, and you told your mom to send the tuition to your study abroad program in France. This was a mistake? Maybe. You learnt something from the Paris experience and it got you started in the world of love, as rough and as unfortunately wrong of a start as it was. But back to Japan - was there anything wrong with that experience, apart from being single? You made friends who will last a lifetime, had the most frisbee fun you'll ever have in your life, and had a genuine, fully interactive feel-at-home language and cultural immersion experience that everyone should be jealous of, especially students at Ivy League schools who don't get to do this as they're hiding in their ivory towers of certainty. And you were in the physical shape of your life. And you learned to get along with a family that you didn't 100% gel with.

Back to Vancouver - wow. What a ride. You felt infinitely satisfied, even though it was all over, and then you were ready for Paris.

Back home. To Paris. Whoa, this is different. Not sure you'd like it here... almost no guys. And you can bet that you won't be living the same culture of biking every day, wearing whatever you want... why the fuck did you put yourself here? Yet it was looking like it was gonna be all right. And then you went and did it - you put yourself out there in the porn, well, "art book" section of the gay bookstore and you got a guy who you knew was American, thought was your age (he was significantly older) and thought was single. He was not what you thought he was. That put a downer on the whole experience, except for a few conversations that you really are glad you had. But was that really a friendship? You're not convinced.... since there's nothing much left. You were okay with there being nothing left after that bullshit that hit in April, when he defriended you on Facebook.

Shortly after that, however, you went to Japan. Japan was wonderful and yes, everything you needed, again. Two weeks of pure bliss. You finally got to explore Hirakata for yourself, without work. And you realized - wait, you're realizing this just now, as you write this - that it was the lack of work that made Japan a whole different place. Even during the school year, the fact that you didn't have too much work to do made it all much better. Regardless of your waking up every morning really early! In fact, that was the one time in your life where you enjoyed waking up every morning early! You had something to get up for!

Back to Paris. You were re-energized and ready to go. Others were not. They were actually bummed out to be back in a city that they liked but you didn't? Well, they knew things were coming to a close, too. And oh, boy, you knew this. And you finished up and got out of there, victorious. Victorious of what? You can't be sure in the end. But of your dignity, you were victorious. No, you didn't have that summer research spot that you had hoped to secure, but you took a wonderful Japanese history course over the wonderful, wonderful humid and warm summer, and had a wonderful-looking guy to look at during the class. And you learned a lot, though you don't remember it. In any case you got social sciences out of the way. Bingo!

Back to Tufts. This wasn't what you wanted. But you were back, living relatively alone in your single, sequestered from other seniors but in a dorm home to juniors and sophomores that you would come to know and love. And you had one horrible semester. You got a music class out of the way, YOU WROTE A SONG! that you still listen to, got in A in comp-sci, your first grade under an A in math, and you fucked up the GRE subject test. And your chances for the Japanese major when you dropped the class without telling the teacher why. You regret this a lot. No excuses, but you know that you've gotta help yourself out here - that time was stressful. You weren't getting any guys, and the end of the year turned out to be a double-edged sword that didn't help you out too much. Still, you got laid for the first time and that says a lot considering you didn't have to do much to entice it, unknowing of what to do. And now you're here, unable to do your first major problem set of the year.

Look at what you've accomplished!

You've learned Japanese. You've become outright fluent in French. You've become a professional mathhead, and continued on playing piano and developed your voice, kind of. You've flirted, you've played. You've played with extremes. You had to, at some point, or you wouldn't have lived. And you did it. You may have to wait again, but how many other lonely gay and bi guys are there out there who have to wait? Just think.

One day one of them will find you. And he'll be the right type. And you'll keep him.

Regardless of how far out that day is, one day in between there you'll find someone who you vibe with and who will keep you revitalized for a long time, even if you break up with him. That's what you've gotta shoot for.

And remember, a primary goal may not necessarily exist. Meaning go for it here, go for it there. Build yourself up.

And don't be afraid to be your pure, honest, embarrassed, naked self. The naked part's the only thing you can't be in public.