One of Them.

Everyone has a day where everything seems...different. We all have our small grudges, loves, responsibilities we choose to avoid, and so on. For myself, it's almost exclusively the latter; although some of the former two are also present most of the time. Happily though my grudges and loves usually have an off switch, or, if nothing else, a numbing switch. But lately, and especially today, they've been piling on. It started a few days ago by simply over-hearing a conversation. It didn't involve me in any way, but it involved someone I care about and that can often times be worse. When it's you it's controllable. You can allow it to get to you or you can let it go as easily as trash in a dumpster. When it's someone you care about though, there's the urge to protect. That's when it's bad because for all your trying there's very little that you can do. It's out of your hands as much as you may want to help or even take on their problems for them.

This is the day I'm having. My own issues have combined with the lives of people around me, building up into a kind of crescendo. I guess it's the switch malfunctioning; which tends to happen every once in a while. Despite all this, the reaction that occurs when this happens is what is interesting to me right now. For myself, whenever this happens it is a singular experience. Nothing else effects me the same way. I usually run away. That's just how it work. For better or worse. When the problems around me; both for myself and for people I love, become too much I run away. It's not something I'm proud of and I'm actually finding it hard to write, but it's true. Ask my friends or my friends that aren't anymore.

I'm not sure when it started exactly, but I imagine it happened either when I was 13 or 16 years old.

When I was 13, my best friend was Mark Metzler. He was a straight arrow and thus not very cool at William Byrd Middle School, but I still liked him. Granted I wanted to be cool and I held this against him to a point, I guess, but he was nice and I thought his mom was great. I thought so much of her that I even called her "mom". No joke. He and I played tennis like we were possessed and played video games all the time; just like we were supposed to at that age. That year though, Mark had gone to a doctor and they found a brain tumor. I hadn't been aware of any testing that he had been going through and neither had my parents based on their reaction when I told them. I remember being called into the guidance office to be told what my friend was going through and I remember not thing much of it. They seemed concerned, but for some reason--I guess ignorance--it didn't affect me. I remember going home and looking in our Encyclopedia Britannica for "brain tumor" and calling my dad when I couldn't find that term, specifically. He came home as soon as I told him (probing more for a definition than sympathy) and we went out to eat and I guess that's when I began to understand it a little bit. Soon after, Mark had surgery to remove the tumor. I visited a couple of times and then I never went back. I didn't talk to him, I never called his mother "mom" again. The next time I was around him was at his funeral two years later. I felt so guilty when I saw his mom and even more guilty when she talked to me without any blame in her voice.

It wouldn't be fair to say anything about Mark without including the fact that he was steadfast in his belief in God. Personally, theology has never been a big part of my life, but it was everything to Mark. He went though multiple surgeries and years of chemo-therapy before his body became so frail that it died and I'd be willing to bet all the money in the world that he never stopped believing that he was going to go to heaven when he died. I don't know about heaven, but I know that I've never met anyone with as much faith in ANYTHING as he had in God. That takes more power of character then I think I'll ever have. And for the record, I do regret not being brave enough to keep going back to see him.

My story of being 16 is much more simple, I guess. It's the same story that everyone has at that age. You meet a girl, fall for girl and then everything goes bad, blah, blah, blah. Relatively speaking, this is nothing compared to abandoning a close friend, but being selfish as a teenager is about as simple as breathing and I was no different. My problems were great in my own mind and you couldn't tell me different. I fell HARD for that girl. She was blonde with really red lips and pale skin and I couldn't have been happier that she liked me. We had been friends for about a year up until that point, but I liked her and I'm sure as was obvious as hell about it (the word "sly" has never been in my vocabulary). One night we kissed and we ended up doing that for about a year, off and on. Her parents didn't like me and my parents didn't like her which at any other age would give pause, but we were dumbass kids.

To be honest, I do believe that I did love her and she's always been able to make me a little bit jumpy whenever she's around. That being said, the bitch broke my heart. Just conjure up the image of the Death Star blowing up Alderaan and you'll have a vague notion of what it felt like at the time. I know it's not pretty and it doesn't look good on paper, but after that shit, I just kind of shut-off for awhile. I stopped being nice or trying to accomodate others; even my friends (God only knows why they stuck around). I became the very definition of a jerk for three years. I easily abandoned others and would let them know why without pause.

That's where I think it happened. Granted, I've become much more approachable since then, but I've kept dragging that same emotional vacancy around with me for the last ten years. When things get bad, I go away. The reason I mention all this is because I'm starting to feel that itch again. It's been three years since I last ran away from my problems and friends and started over, but I'm aware it won't be the last. What's worse is that I've kind of resigned myself to it. Now, I just hope that I never do it to certain people, while knowing that I'll definitely do it to others.

Not to be too short, but this is where my day has left me. Not with all of this hindsight; that came with the writing, but with that vacancy beginning to show itself. It's just part of my personality now. Another trait along with having an unwavering love for film and music, a deep loathing of belly buttons and being tickled, self-loathing (thanks mom!), and all the others. I hope this particular idiosyncracy stays under wraps, but my optomism isn't so strong when I think about all the friends I don't want to leave.