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 ^{(it's beta!)}

I have a problem.

An issue of sorts. I am in a conundrum. There is a tiny, insignificant, minuscule, dull, and possibly distant tear in the seam that is my life. It is only describable in this way because I cannot find it. I have no clue where the issue begins, ends, if it will end, will begin to manifest fully, has affected me, has been conceived, where or why it was conceived, who conceived it, what conceived it, what I did to deserve it, if I deserve it, if there is more to come or if I owe whoever did this to me a gigantic hole in the head.

I don't know what my problem is.

Ever since seventh grade I have been less than a star student. This is not an understatement. I was not by any means ever the worst student in school. I was average. Maybe less that average. Sometimes more. That's not the point. The point is that I was not performing as well as had been expected. I didn't study, I didn't try, and I was most definitely not the same student who had come out of sixth grade with bright eyes and several little papers proclaiming me to be an honor role student. One of those papers even won me free trips to see the Astros play in Houston. I don't know that I've ever bonded with my father as well as the few times I've gone with him to a baseball game.

As I type this, my roommate is telling me stories I don't care about. He is unknowingly and unapologetically annoying the fuck out of me, as he does constantly and without fail every day.

None of these things are the problem.

I have never had what I would consider to be a romantic relationship with a girl. This is not to say I have never had a girlfriend. I simply never treated or regarded my girlfriends as girlfriends. They were friends, who were girls, who I happened to spend too much time with and grew too accustomed to. To this day I am still not sure, in either account, who made the assumption that the next step in our relationship was to date. It was probably me, being naive. In the end, I actually think I'm better for it (better is of course a relative term, to what I was like then, and even in this case, only from my perspective. Looking back I am not proud of the person I was. I was a tiny, sniveling, socially-retarded, lonely little boy. I had no confidence, few friends, and I was determined that none of it was my fault. I'm only thankful that shit changed before I met anyone else like me, lest I add to the ranks of people I today can't stand. It is probably because I used to be like them that I can't stand them. I went through several trying situations and tried many things I at the time was leery about to become the person I am today - a person who is not yet the person I want to be but is by and large a much more confident and experienced person than I was when I was not. I was able to do this when I did, though I should have been able to do it sooner or, even better, not have had to do it at all, and yet I still meet people my age and older with the same issues I had when I was like them. These people sicken me. My roommate is one of these people. There are obviously some differences, as there are with the other people, but every time my roommate opens his mouth, I see a little of my past self in him and I want to punch him in this face. I don't do it because he could easily take me [as could most people] and also because I haven't been in a physical fight with anyone since junior high and that was when I was not who I am now. None of these are my problem). When I say I am better for it, I am mostly referring to my first girlfriend, whom I met at my church.

She was not very religious, and was actually a kilt-wearing, smoking, skanking, punk-girl atheist. I only met her because her mom is a Sunday school teacher and one of the nicest women anyone will ever meet. We both helped out at bible school. I had known her for years before this, but I had never really talked to her. And when I got a chance to talk to her, I was blown away. This girl was by far the most interesting girl I had ever met. The stories I could tell about her could fill another piece (keep your fingers crossed). I had a four month long relationship with her in which we never had sex, kissed, or even told eachother "I love you." She broke it off because she felt I wasn't ready. This is to her credit, partly because she was right, partly because she is now engaged to a guy just as faithless, just as kilt-wearing, just as smoking, just as skanking, and just as punk as she is, and partly because that was the moment in which I realized I was not the type of person I wanted to be.

And, as I have mentioned I now believe myself to be an overall better person than I was at that time, but I am still far from the person I want to be. I am not entirely positive what the real difference is but I can infer that the root can be found in the fact that I know I am not the person I would like to be.

I suppose I could be happier if I were unaware of this.

Maybe that's my problem.

In case you haven't completely kept up thusfar and yet are still muscling through this, I am currently at the point in which I am considering the possibility that my problem is that I know I am not the person I wish I was. Of course, if this is true then I am nothing special. Hundreds, thousands, millions, as far as I know fucking everyone has this problem, at least at some point in there lives. It is true that no one is perfect, and indeed no one is as good a person as they could be had they done something different at a given point in their life. In most cases and, I'm sure, in the grand scheme of things, this is nobodies fault. Even Jesus, I believe, could have been more successful in spreading his word had it been less obvious he was looking for trouble.

And so I will leave this hypothesis be for now, understanding that I have no completely thought it entirely through and that it could still be a possibility, but as of now I think it is not.

I do not believe that to be my problem.

Before I continue, I want to point out something. I am not writing this for sympathy. I am not writing this so that someone will pat me on the shoulder and tell me to just stick through it and everything will be okay. I generally assume that everything will be okay, no matter what, but that's just because I have relatively low standards on exactly what constitutes a situation worth labeling "okay". I am writing this tonight because I have found myself in the mood to write this tonight, and I am putting it in a viewable medium for others because I don't have any confidence in myself to use this information to my advantage and I don't want to see it wasted. I am not sure what any of you will do with this, but I am happier knowing it now has more possibilities than being promptly forgotten when I wake up.

I mentioned that I had two girlfriends. The first one, the atheist punk-daughter of a nice old sunday school teacher was the first and to me the most meaningful. The second was a girl I met my first semester at junior college. I won't go into the details with her as they are few and uninteresting, and I have already outlined the most interesting of them in a cryptic and altogether vague piece some of you may have already read and forgotten about. The point is, it was another case in which I did not treat her or wholly consider her as any sort of relationship partner, and all "dating" did was almost ruin our friendship, which I was thankfully able to save after breaking up with her. Yes, this time I broke up with her. I still see her from time to time and I have on a couple of occasions almost asked her out again, but I am glad that I haven't.

I have recently decided that I don't want to date anymore. Not for a while anyway. I am not entirely confident in myself. I am not worried about not being able to treat it as a relationship, as I feel I am a better, more confident person than I was when I last tried dating. The truth is, I am not entirely comfortable yet with who I think I am.

I'm going to go ahead and spell that out, as I feel I come off really vague sometimes. I am bisexual.

I have known this about myself for a long time. Years. Maybe even a decade. I can't be sure. I even considered for a while that I was gay, and that may still be the case, but last time I checked boobs still had an affect on me. It would seem, now, that I should be completely comfortable with this by now. The fact is that I am not. Nobody important in my life knows that I am bisexual and this is the first time I have mentioned it in text. I don't know if I'll ever tell my parents, or even my closest friends. They know me for being straight, and I wholeheartedly believe that, while they may not admit it, they will see me differently if I were to tell them. I don't want that. I am very attached to the friends I have, and I am not ashamed to tell you, people whom I have never met in person, that I have had secret crushes on a couple of my male friends. I have even briefly considered coming out to some of them, but I can never build up the courage. I am too fond of these friendships to put them in jeopardy. But I'm not sure how long I can live with myself knowing that I have kept this aspect of myself a secret. This is one thing I wish I could change about myself. I wish for everyone important in my life to know that I am bisexual. It is important to note, however, that this is different than wishing I could tell everyone in my life I am bisexual. That is a much different and potentially more disastrous option.

And this may also be the issue.

I have mentioned that I do not want to date anybody at this time, and that the reason is because I am secretly bisexual. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what those two things have to do with eachother, but I am going to assume that the answer to that lies in the possibility that my subconscious is afraid I'd be lying to myself, and I know how much I hate to be lied to, by anyone, especially myself. That is bullshit. How the hell do I think I can get away with lying to myself. So of course I try to avoid that as often as possible. Obviously, I am not completely adverse to lying to my friends and family. That has been the case since I was in junior high lying about my grades.

But, and I can't explain it, I don't think this is my problem. Maybe I am thinking in too broad a scale, but I think my issue can be blamed for this issue. This is not the tiny, insignificant, minuscule, dull, and possibly distant tear in the seam that is my life. That remains to be found.

I don't know what I'll do when I find it, but I can assume that if I can find it, I will also be able to deal with it.