Three Secrets

I think I'm gonna get real for a minute. I've been thinking about adding a bit more structure to this personal blog, maybe chasing down a few topics and digging deep on some ridiculous questions since, sometimes, it's just plain nice to write and have a bit of focus here and there. Needless to say, I've been making notes on what to focus on when my mind is blank and the urge is there to write away.

Tonight, the focus falls on this: Three Secrets.

There's no condition, and I don't typically have secrets, but what I have in mind are things I keep close to the chest and don't normally parade around for the world to see. These aren't ever things that I'm ashamed of, and these are things that I've worked passed, so mostly I don't bring them up because of other people's reactions. If you live for long enough, some fucked up shit happens along the way. I like to think of it as the hero's journey, and these trials forge the person I'm to become in fire. Anyway, without further tangent...

1.) When I was younger - right around 13/14, a friend of mine committed suicide. Shot himself in the head with a shotgun, and I saw the aftermath in person. I've shared this with a lot of people over the years, especially since it happened when I was younger and more open with my emotions - and even in some fucked up way, thought it gave me a one-up over everyone else in being weird. I wrote a short story about it, though I can't remember if I put on online yet or not, either way - I'll save the whole of the story for those more interested. I'd say that of the three, this one feels like it effects me to this day the least, but I was also really good at repression from a very early age. I didn't go to his funeral, and rarely spoke about him afterward outside of the suicide story. Quite literally, I shut down and shut everything out for a very very long time. Today, I'd say the most prominent effect I see is my desensitization to violence and gore, be it in movies or weird online leaks.

2.) I once came close to proposing to a girl I dated. I was 25, and the relationship was rounding on a year. All I knew is that I was madly in love with this girl (though in hindsight, we had more than our fair share of unhealthy problems outside my being a terribly shitty boyfriend). She had no idea. I was broke all the time because of student loans and saving up for a deposit on a ring that I never told her about that I just looked like an asshole. I never asked her to pay for anything, but it put a damper on going out with friends or just getting drinks. I can't say if that was the biggest strain on the relationship, the main crack that the fissures started to pour out from, but it was definitely an anchor in my head. In the summer, she left with her friends on a trip to Florida. Right before she left, we stood outside for an hour because she didn't want to leave. I guess she had separation anxiety, but I encouraged her to go, it'd be good and fun and summer and blah blah blah. I was pretty stoic, and fucking stupid, but I had planned on asking her when she got back. Once the week was up, I was so excited I couldn't contain myself - I'd put the deposit down and set up a payment plan and everything. It was the first real adult thing that I felt like I'd done. But while she was on the way back, her texts were mired in this distant voice and I knew something was up. I couldn't let it go and kept pushing until she eventually spilled it. And like the adult I actually wasn't, I curled up into myself. Watched her come and pack up all her things and leave. And never once uttered anything about a ring. To this day, she had no idea whatsoever, and to this point I think I've only shared that with about five people. It was the second most difficult thing I've faced, next to...

3.) I almost had a kid. Yep, me. Even earlier than that near proposal story. It was a bad, too fast relationship with a lot of details of those that were there know, but otherwise I feel too lazy and apathetic to fill in the blanks now. Only two things need to be said before going in: all of my friends hated her (the would-be mother) and the kid was mine (despite everyone thinking otherwise). Now, the situation wasn't just a pregnancy scare. The test was positive. I'd even thought I was smart enough to get ahead of the game and pick up some clothes and essentials here and there - so we weren't overwhelmed when the time came. I forget how far along she was. There's actually a lot of the smaller details that I've pushed out of my head because it was easier to forget as much as I could to get on with my life. Anyway, this one - pregnant - borrows my car to go see her ex play in a band in Cincinatti (while we were living in Lexington), and I (being the type to trust the people I date) say "go for it", but stay back because I had to work early the next day. That night, she cheats on me with her ex and I don't find out until a couple of days later, on my birthday, only because she left a window up on my computer with their whole fucking conversation. It was pretty rad. A couple of days later, I'm working passed it (you know, because of incoming kid) when she tells me that she's leaving me to move back home and get back together with her ex... also pretty rad. Now, at this point I have no idea what the hell I'm doing, I'm in a fugue state for weeks, until I gain enough composure to plan on how I'll deal with it when the time comes. It was summer at this point and the kid wasn't due until December at the latest. It must have been two months after she left, maybe three - but that September, she decided to drop a line through MySpace (hold your fucking judgments on my social media choices) just to tell me: "Hey, just thought you should know I took care of our little problem. I got an abortion." To that point and since, I'd never felt a maelstrom of emotion from (sadly) relief to extreme sick depression and devastation. And I rambled on and on about it for months, until my friends got tired of it and someone told me to get over it. (Sounds super inconsiderate and rude, but if that hadn't happened, I would have sulked into the bottom of a bottle at some point. So it helped.) But the most revolting development is that I found she had a kid that April (following the December that our kid would have been born), meaning that she vacuumed out that little spark we got burning, just to get pregnant again. It fucked me up for a while, I'd gain a little traction in sanity just to slip back down the dark mountain. All in all, though, I guess I avoided a lot of terrible days that would have laid ahead in dealing with this woman. Though I would've made being a parent awesome.

Three secrets. There they are. Now, Braille-Reader, you know more about me than you did before. And I got the need to write out of system, for now. I'm learning to be open and feel less guilt for some of the shittier things I've experienced. I'd like to stick with it and see what kind of a person it'll make me. I've been wondering about it a lot and hopefully I'll take it with me to the next where ever I go.