(This diary is the conclusion of Part One from yesterday. Part One can be found
here.)
So there I was, standing in the driveway of my parents' house, with nothing to my name but my bike and the things in my backpack. I didn't know where to go, who to go to, or what I would do when I got there. I did know that that night marked a point of very deep change in my life, but that wasn't something I was consciously thinking about at the time.
I did what I was, apparently, expected to do: I left. I rode my bike down a twisty country road known for its deadly curves, hoping against hope that some drunk schlep would spin out of control and put me out of my misery. I didn't much care if I took a tumble and broke my neck, or got hit by a car, or... whatever. That night, I just wanted to die.
I biked four or five miles in the rain to the home of someone I worked with but otherwise barely knew. I didn't go to a friend's house, because I wasn't certain who I could trust. No, strike that- I felt that I couldn't trust anyone I knew well. Having the trust in my family broken in the way it was also broke my trust in everyone else- if you can't trust your own family, my thinking went at the time, who can you really trust at all?
The following day I moved closer to school; I was just plain lucky to know someone who needed a roommate right then. Again, this wasn't someone I knew well; I had only been around her among a group of other mutual friends. I would live with her through to the following summer.
That was a very rough time, that entire year; about the only thing I remember clearly was the couple weeks after I moved in with her- I barely left my room and didn't go to class for at least a week- and the week or so right at the end, when she was tired of having living with her and we were sniping at each other constantly.
That last provided motivation for me to find a new place to live. I moved in with someone I had known for about a year or so, a bitter, dramatic drag queen named Reid. I only mention his name here because some of you may recall (why?) his appearance on a Rikki Lake episode titled "I hate what you do when you're drunk and I'm not taking it anymore!" That summer was quite an education in all things drag, and though it lasted only a scant three months, I did have some fun and it took my mind off some of my own problems. The amusement factor was at the least a fun distraction.
Throughout this entire period, I was working and going to school, but I still had a deep feeling of hopelessness: as a musician, I had to practice daily; Often I couldn't because of work and other classes' coursework. The music major left me very little time to socialize, to just go out and have fun like most other college kids. I was under a lot of pressure from my family to keep a job and keep my grades up, and I knew if anything happened to jeopardize either of those things, I could lose their help with paying for school. They had, in fact, been threatening to do exactly that from before I ever started school in the first place.
The summer with Reid ended and I started looking for roommates to take his place. That was when another penny dropped: one of the roommates who were going to sign the lease skipped town the day before he was supposed to sign. I couldn't find anyone else to move in on such short notice and the landlord was saying she would charge me $25 per hour I was there after the lease ended- an amount no court would have enforced, but what did I know?
It was time to leave, and find another place to live. I learned then the hard way why advance planning for such things is so necessary; for the following two weeks, I lived with friends in dorm rooms, showered in common bathrooms I wasn't supposed to have access to, slept under trees on campus more than once, and carried everything I owned in a little plastic bag.
Well, not everything I owned. My father had helped me put everything else- furniture and whatnot- into a storage facility. In other words, both he and my mom knew I had no place to live, and after two weeks of that (!), they "let" me move back in with them.
That was an error that I will regret for the rest of my life. I never should have gone back. I honestly thought the past was behind me. I honestly thought I'd be allowed to pursue my future unhindered.
I was wrong.
After my grade report that fall came in, my parents informed me that a 2.6X was too low a GPA for them to continue to support, and they were cutting off the portion of school they were paying for. The "agreement" was that I would pay for half and they would pay for half (sure, on a gas stations clerk "salary", I'd pay for school, no problem with that). The nastiest part of this was their timing: the application period for student loans had ended; the college would consider their income as well as mine because I was living with them. Therefore, even if I had been able to extend the loan I already held in the first place, 1) the money just wasn't there (as I understood the situation) and 2) I didn't qualify for what I needed to pay for everything, because of their income.
I dropped all my classes and did what they said: I got a "real" job. Temp services were the order of the day, and in the following months I did everything from data entry at a bank's North American headquarters to working on a printing press in the unheated, unventilated warehouse of a pet food factory. At no point did any of the jobs I held use any bit of creativity on my part.
Then, one day, my mom saw an ad in the newspaper for the job I've had ever since. It was for data entry at a remote encoding center run by the US Postal Service. I knew I could do data entry, coding or whatever, simply because I already had done so, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to take that particular job. Pressure from my parents, however (who obviously just wanted me out of the house by that point), built up to the point that I took the job just to get them to shut up. Also, I wasn't sure that they wouldn't kick me out again if I didn't take "such a wonderful job that pays so well" (their words).
I took the job and moved back to the town I ran to when they kicked me out the first time. It was always my intention to go back to school and finish getting a teaching degree, but I felt I needed to build up some money to pay for it first (of course), and I wanted to live on my own for a while and get myself straightened out some.
It didn't work out that way. It's true I had (and have) a good job... for someone else. I very quickly learned that this job was not for me, and became progressively more and more depressed. I had my own place, finally had a "decent" car, and a good job, but again, none of these things were "me". I very honestly felt like I was living someone else's life.
I knew I wasn't going to go back to school ever again. It was impossible to get ahead, and I do have to admit that was my own fault: I was so depressed I was getting out of work whenever possible, usually to go hide in my apartment and sob on the couch. It was around this time that I met my first real boyfriend/relationship/whatever, and of that there's not much to say other than the guy really did want to "help" me, which is to say, change me into the kind of person he thought I should be. We were together for about three years, and then broke up and moved into our own places.
It's no coincidence that I met someone else right around that time. We quickly fell for each other; I found he had a daughter, an angry ex-wife, and a very huge problem stemming from his stepson and that woman he was married to. It seems little Johnny (not his real name) crawled up with dad while dad was sleeping on the couch, and dad's hand flopped over onto the kid's crotch whilst sleeping, and the angry ex-wife saw it.
I think you can imagine what happened to him next; suffice to say that life for him became enormously difficult in a great many ways. It should have been thrown out: according to the court papers I've read about all this, the stepson testified that his stepdad- the man I was now seeing- was asleep when the 'offense' occurred. This was no hurdle to the judge or the prosecution; after using access to his daughter against him ("plead guilty and you'll still have custody," they told him at the time), he pled guilty to 2nd degree CSC involving a minor under twelve.
Now, this is Michigan, land of the draconian list, but he didn't know and was not made aware of the registry at the time. That was his ex-wife's crowning glory: while in jail for the sex charge, she divorced him, and he wasn't able to get out of jail and across town in time for the hearing. She walked away with literally everything but the clothing he was wearing at the time.
All this happened a couple years before I met him. Can I say honestly that I would have gotten involved with him if I knew then what I learned later? Perhaps. I can say I saw a grave injustice, and I guess I decided if I can't help myself, I could damn well help someone else.
I know, I know. It makes no sense at all. I guess, after getting kicked around by so many people I cared about over and over again, I simply couldn't do that to anyone else. Thus, we were in a relationship for six years, and though we do currently still live together, we're no longer a "couple". Our respective problems, emotional, social, or whatever, tended to feed off of each other, and after one particularly bad night when we got into a literal fistfight, we both decided that we could live with each other, but not date. There is, however, something to be said for being single....
As of now, we have just moved into a two bedroom apartment (with a nice big wood fireplace, no less) and I'm still working for the postal service. I will be honest- I do not like that job, it's not "me", and the instant I'm able to quit I will do so with no notice. As for the able part, well... that's more than a little problematic.
Between the car and the credit card I ran up during all those lost years between then and now, I still owe quite a bit of debt. I'd definitely still like to go to school again, but that's very much off the table until I'm free of debt, which could take several more years. Other bills don't help very much, but they have to be paid, and that's just the way it is.
I haven't performed anything in public in over ten years. The piano I paid for half of remains in my mom's house, untuned (despite an IOU to do exactly that, which she gave me in lieu of a birthday gift when I turned eighteen or nineteen), unplayed, and unopened. A couple months ago, I tried playing my oboe again, and couldn't make it do anything other than squeak. My Proteus keyboard needs repair, but I'm not in any hurry.... I'm not a musician anymore.
I'm trying to learn computer modeling and animation; I'd love to work for, say, Pixar or Square, but I have the feeling these are pipe dreams. I'm getting older now. By the time I graduated with a degree (assuming I go to a community college or something of the like instead of a place such as Full Sail), I would probably be 35 or 36 if I started now, today, and that's a hell of an age to be starting a first career. I'm trying to learn as much as I can on my own, but that's not even a substitute for actual classes.
=
So Where are we now? What, exactly, do I have to show for the work I did all those years ago? What do I have to show for what's happened since?
All I have are lessons, things my life taught me. I don't have many photos or writings; the fragments of scores I wrote back then collect dust in the attic, incomplete and almost embarrassing in their simplicity and lack of sophistication. I've lost contact with pretty much everyone I ever knew, save for my family. Mostly, I just want to be alone.
I learned that trust is something earned, not given, even to family. It's a fragile, brittle thing, easily broken and not so easily restored. I learned that truth will get me hurt and lies will keep me safe. I learned there's no such thing as "unconditional" love.
I learned talent means nothing if there are people close to you determined to keep you from using it- my parents knew I was talented in music by the time I was five, and never once clued me in on it until I found it for myself. I learned that artistic talent means nothing compared to athletic ability. I learned to hate that I ever even tried.
I learned that if I have to ask myself if someone I know is ready to know I'm gay, they're not. I learned that it's very dangerous to believe people can be trusted with that information, that there are people out there who will happily ruin someone else's life to feel superior to them, and it is truly worth everything to me to keep such people as far away as possible.
I'm still haunted by my past; I'm constantly being turned back, reminded of what happened even though I don't want to be. I still feel, to this day, that a big part of who I was died a long time ago, and the rest of me is slowly getting pecked to death by the echoes that still reverberate through my psyche. Time does heal, but there's too much scar tissue.
There isn't much left to say; that's what my life has been like after getting the closet doors ripped open. Every nightmare I had about coming out came horribly true. The only thing I didn't do was kill myself, and even that hurts: I haven't done much of anything with my life since. I look forward, and all I see are hurdles that other people seem to be able to clear with ease, but that look like will bonk me in the head were I to try to jump them.
I guess the only thing I can do is try to learn what I want to learn on my own, get to school again when I can, and other than that, just try to live as best I can. I'm tired of searching for something I already found (and lost again), tired of agonizing over it, tired of being eaten away from the inside out. I don't want to be the "old me" ever again, and I want to leave the "new me" behind.
Other than that- que sera sera.
Fin.