backyard crowing
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let's play hide and go fuck. ninja style, with your penis.
I feel so lucky to have a guy who's hot to trot all the time. I guess that's typical, for a man, but remember Joe #2? Yeah, I never actually wrote about him here, we were in an 8 month relationship and never actually had sex. I cheated, twice with two different men, but that is for another entry.
Joe was ~3 years younger than me, a virgin, and he could make me laugh for hours on end. A great guy in many respects, and he had by far the most amazing family of any potential in-laws I've ever had, or will ever have. His dad had a master's in American Lit, his mother a master's in Psychology, and together they had 4 sons. Really though, it was more like five sons, because the family adopted one of Joe's first cousins when he was in high school, due to weirdness within his own immediate family. Joe had an older brother Matt, a younger brother whose name I can't recall, and a much older half brother who had two kids and a wife. They lived in Louisiana, but I met the whole clan, really.
Joe's grandmother had I believe a doctorate in pyschology. She was pretty famous, apparently, and could calm even the most unruly of inmates during her work. I can't quite remember the story, but she quieted a man three times her size, who was out of control one day -- without laying a finger on him. Magical. She was a sweet lady.
I remember opening up to his mother and grandmother one day while all the guys were in the basement watching the Superbowl. His mother was talking about one of the four brothers, and how she was worried about him, about his future, his choice of major, that sort of thing. Then she spoke of Joe. She admitted maybe mass communications wasn't the most ideal of majors, but she knew he'd turn out alright, knew she didn't have to worry about him.
It hit me hard, then, how much I felt my own mother's dissapproval, even with her miles away. I didn't understand then how much I wanted my mother not to have to worry about me. I still have trouble, terrible trouble, believing she thinks I'll turn out alright, that I'll do something worthwhile. Not finishing college is one of those things she may never get over, I believe. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's become something I will never get over.
Joe's mother turned to me then, no idea that my eyes were welling up, "So, what are your plans, Z?" I stumbled over some sort of answer, and she asked a bit further, but I couldn't hold the tears in.
I was taking an online course, working at a minimum wage job, stressing over money, and not really progressing at all, academically. I was procrastinating in school, and in life. Of course, I didn't tell her all that, but it came to pass that I was scared. I still am. That's the one thing that doesn't change. I can put on a mask of strength, but when it comes down to business, I am freaked out.
What if I'm not good enough? What if I can't do this? If I do badly on a paper, am I wrong, or is the professor? What do they want out of me, anyway? What do I want out of me? Am I going to be like what my roommate Kitty aspires to, a 30-year-old happily making $12 an hour?
They say (no, not just my mother,) that you never regret a diploma, and I believe it. But I believe you can also regret time wasted on an endeavor that doesn't fulfill you.
So, will having a degree fulfill me? Fuck yeah, it will. I will be ECSTATIC. I have daydreams about walking to get my diploma, looking up at my family, saluting them and winking. Or maybe I'll just flick the whole crowd off. No matter what, I'll be crying the happiest tears ever.
11:37 pm - Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013
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