Old Horizons - In the beginning...

 I often say I'm going to start a journal, or a blog, or some such, but I never do. Or at least I never follow through beyond one or two posts. Recently however, my life has taken a turn for the better. Some might call it a turn for the surreal. Most might call it that actually. In this newly surreal state I feel that perhaps now is the time for me to finally start writing down the squishy bits of my life, if for no other reason than so that I can come back and read what I wrote later and wonder what the hell I was thinking. I suppose some background might be in order, otherwise it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense when I claimed to finally feel like I am actually part of the human race for a change.

 When I was born two months premature, the doctor told my mom that she probably didn't need to bother naming me because I wasn't going to make it. I suppose things don't get much worse for a new mother, I don't know being as I've never married and don't have kids, but I can only imagine. Oh wait, they can get worse: the reason why my mom went into labor two months early was because she caught my paternal father in bed with another woman. I suppose it could have still been worse - I could have instantly burst into flames. But I didn't. I survived. Two months later, about the time I was supposed to have been born, my paternal father decided he couldn't handle being a dad right then, so he decided to do what was best. He sold most of what we owned and leased a corvette and left us.

 I grew up as a very bright child, I became relatively fluent in ASL before I got into school at all because my mom was taking it in a college course and I would watch and learn while she practiced in the mirror in the evenings. By 1st grade the teachers wanted to sedate me, or - more accurately - hop me up on ritalin. Thank dog my mom told them to shove it. So instead of getting all my work done for the day in the first 15 minutes of class, and then disrupting everyone else, I got to copy pages of the dictionary.

 By 2nd grade I was placed into G.A.T.E. (Gifted And Talented Education) and shipped off to another school every morning on a short bus with the other kids that were too smart for their own good. We learned spanish and higher math, and how to write checks out of a check book, art history, creative writing. You know - the stuff they teach in high school now days. If you're lucky.

 We moved around a lot when I was young. My mom switched jobs a lot, switched houses a lot, and generally did anything she could to make a good life for us, always keeping me at the top of her priorities list. You couldn't ask for a better mother. Really - I mean that. It did however cause some interesting social issues for me. I changed schools more often than grades. Significantly more. It seemed that every time I finally started to make a few friends and fit in somewhere, it was time to go elsewhere. Well, for some that would be fine, but for someone who was generally disruptive in class, a bit of a clown, had an exceedingly wild and active imagination, and was significantly smarter than all his classmates, fitting in quickly and making new friends wasn't my #1 skill. I often identified with and had better rapport with my teachers than other students.

 My mom met my dad (step) when I was around 13 if I recall correctly. He is an awesome dad. We moved to Missouri. And believe me when I tell you that the name of that state is pronounced "Misery". Although, I'm sure if I moved there now it wouldn't be so bad, I've grown a lot since then. But as a kid who played D&D and hated wearing jeans, moving to a really really small town of mostly farmers and bible-thumpers wasn't my cup of tea. I still almost exclusively wear blue-jeans to this day though, except when I'm wearing my 20-holes and all black wardrobe, which I'm still trying to expand on. But jeans are now my comfortable daily wearers.

  When we moved back to California 8 months later, I was relieved, but then had to figure out how to fit into a new school with only 2 or 3 months of school left in my 8th grade year. Believe it or not, I actually did. I made a few friends, mostly skaters, got a crush on a girl, my 4th or 5th ever, which didn't work out, but was still fun, and generally had a good summer vacation before starting high school. For the sake of brevity (too late) I'm going to skip high school for now. But it wasn't too bad. I still didn't really fit in anywhere, and was an outcast, but I was a very well known outcast thanks to a variety of factors.

 After high school, I moved to LA for school, which didn't work out as planned. While I was in LA for a year or so, my parents moved to Olympia, WA. So when I needed to move back home for a wee bit to get my feet under me, home was now an extra 2 states north. C'est la vie. I went through some rough times up here, but I feel I've been on the up swing the last few years. Most especially the last few months. The upswing started a few years ago when I got a job as a graphic designer. I ended up dating one of my co-workers for a while. That was upswing #2. She was awesome and we're still friends to this day, I hope that will never change. She introduced me to a few people here and there, and a few new cultural scenes that I'd never really dabbled in, but found that I seemed to fit in rather well and quickly. Then I had a bad spell, we broke up amicably, and things were generally not bad, but not super great either.

 Then my upswing got even better. I lost my job. You may ask "upswing"? Yes. For the first time in my life since high school I was in a position where rather than feeling the need to get another job, I felt ready, able and willing to go back to school. So rather than seeing this as a bad thing, I chose to view it as a blessing in disguise. And so far I've been correct. I also used the fact that I was unemployed to go back to dying my hair odd colors. Only now, I finally got to dye it the color I'd wanted since High School. Bright Blue!

 I met some amazing friends a year or so ago when doing a theatre production of Romeo & Juliet. These friends introduced me to some friends of theirs and we all got to hang out at a really big convention, the size of which I had never been to. After the con was over I immediately started community college on unemployment, attempting to take advantage of the worker retraining program that is offered in this state. I am now in school, and I'm finding more out about myself now and in the last few months than I did for the first two - or possibly three - decades of my life. Some of the people I met at the con have taken a liking to me, and I feel like the shiny new toy in this group of friends. I'm really enjoying meeting new people and making new friends and being, in an odd sort of way, popular for a change. I fit in to this group. They are intelligent, have very similar senses of humor and interests. There is one in particular of whom I am rather fond. We seem to be very much on the same page, very often.

  So when I say that I am finally feeling like I'm part of the human race, I guess what I mean is... well, I'm not sure how to put it into words. I can only imagine it must be kind of like when a grown up who never knew their biological parents finally meets them. Not so much with the crying and the "I've been searching forever", but more along the lines of the person who already has kids of their own, and a husband or wife, and is more or less happy and complete and content, and then stumbles upon their parents, as if in a dream. There's no major out-pouring of emotions, just a vague sense of finally knowing what home really feels like when you've been searching for it and didn't even realize you were missing it this whole time.

I guess sometimes it takes a village.
A really weird, gothy, geeky, intellectual, mixed up & wonderful village.

Now we just need to see if I make any more posts after this one...