The things I missed:
- My Brother, Brandon.
- My atheistic conversion.
- My World of Warcraft career beginning.
Starting with point one. My brother died before I was born, just a few days after his birth. It's led to me questioning everything about life in general and what we are doing in this planet. This whole event that I wasn't even around for, but am reminded of every year, has led to parts of my experiences with depression, and caused me to question my convictions and the meaning of life.
The answer to life, the universe, and everything.
What do I actually think the meaning of life is? To put it bluntly, to exist. To fluff it up, to better your "life" and the lives of those you care about. I feel as though this is everyone's meaning to life though, it's the general answer that everyone gives, or that most people agree upon.
I'm not entirely sure how I missed my atheistic conversion in part one. Probably because it was in a grey area of age where I'm not entirely sure exactly how old I was when I stopped believing completely. I've narrowed it down to somewhere between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. I still remember the day I told my mom that I don't believe in God. I can't remember what day it was, but we were just at my Grandparents and we were driving home. She made some comment about God's involvement in something, if I recall correctly, my cousin was in a car accident, the vehicle was totaled and he walked away with a few scrapes and bruises. I just responded, "God had nothing to do with his being alright." I got the typical "How could you say something like that." Of course, me, being the recently converted atheist with an agenda told her there is no God, and the only reason my cousin wasn't injured worse that crash is because the car fell in just the right way as to not injure him, any different and things would have been worse. I couldn't have let bygone's be bygones. She looked at me, with what appeared to be a mixture of rage and confusion, I wasn't sure what to think - I didn't know how badly atheists were vilified at the time, hell, I didn't even know the term atheist, I just know I wasn't a believer anymore.
Lastly, the summer between middle school and high school I picked up and started playing World of Warcraft, which would practically control my life for nearly seven year. Do I regret it? No, not for a second. I met some great people in the game, well I "met" some great people, and some of them still bother to keep in relative touch. I stopped playing the game last year, a month or so after the release of Mists of Pandaria and reaching level 90 on one of my characters and realizing I wasn't having any fun with the game at all. I mean, to be fair I had spent seven years playing the same damn game practically every day of my life, with a few month breaks here and there.
I miss those days, the Wrath of the Lich King days, where I joined this guild, only for the guild to splinter off and become a founding member of the guild I would stick with for the majority of my remaining time in the game. That's where I met my favorite people, but now that I don't play WoW I still have the need to role play, so eventually I'll be starting a D&D campaign. Likely using Roll20.net.
But now on wards to High School. The greatest four years of my life. Or so they were said to be. When High School rolled around, I had already fallen away from half of my middle school friends, and was no longer hanging out with them in my free time any more. I don't regret that either, there isn't much that I regret, there are things I regret, but more on that shortly.
I do wish that I made stronger bonds with some of my actual friends though. there's only three people from my High School that I am actually able to communicate with on a regular basis without feeling weird about it. I kind of wish there were more people I were able to talk with, just so it wouldn't feel weird to talk with them. That's one of the few areas that college has really helped with, my ability to transcend awkwardness and talk to people. But when there's only five or six people that I can actually call my friends in this world with straight-up confidence I feel as though somehow I'm lacking, despite the fact that I feel that that is how it is with most people. We tend to keep to are small circles and don't really break out into other circles unless jettisoned into them like in situations such as college.
By the way, if any High Schoolers are reading this, and you go anywhere other than a community college, High School does not prepare you for college - and College I hear does not prepare you for any forms of higher education, most even say it doesn't prepare you for the "real world."
I've always been an English nerd. I've loved writing reading, understanding the English language (though admittedly my grasp on sentence structure is no where near perfect - and I'm not super good with word play). Just the English language though, nothing else. The language just fascinates me, how it's so damn complicated, it's the hardest language to learn, and yet we insist we are superior because we speak English. As if speaking anything other than English made someone somehow inferior. I'm a weak individual, I can't win most physical fights, that's not opinion, it's fact - but I speak English, so by the logic of English superiority, some big Mexican guy stands no chance against my scrawny figure because I have the power of English.
My tangents are fun for me to write, but I have no idea how fun they are to actually read. But anyways, I've always preferred my English classes to my other classes. I've always had a mathematical mind and did well in math as well, but English classes were my home away from home. Then I went to college and discovered Film Studies, but that's part three stuff, lets not get carried away. My favorite teacher of all time was, you guessed it, an English teacher, my Junior year English teacher, whom I believe was let go in my Freshman year of college, along with all the other brilliant people teaching at the school. She wrote one of my recommendation letters, along with the greatest math teacher in the history of math teachers. If either of you are reading this somewhere down the line, I just want to say thank you for all that you've taught me, your'e amazing people.
Is this just a personal turn-on?
I started writing stories when I was a little kid, however I just don't have the ability to finish a single thing I start. I don't know what it is exactly. If it's some sort of inferiority complex I have, or just a serious lack of attention to what I'm writing. Perhaps once I get out there in that real world I keep bringing up I'll be able to finish something.
I guess if I had to choose one thing that I regret the most from High School it would be not spending as much time as possible with my friend who passed away this past summer.
My tribute tattoo to him.
That is the RC Cola logo yes. His initials were not RC, but he did sign my yearbook senior year, on the last day of school as "RC Cola." And that was the last time I saw him, and now three and a half years later, I'll never be able to see him again. So I've immortalized him in the way he was, the way I'll remember him, the way he'll never be forgotten. Twenty one years old. Fuck.
I guess that's where my feelings about everything comes from. You meet the people that dont deserve the things that happen to them, and still these things happen to them and there's no justfying it. One could claim it was God's test that he died, but God's test for who? Certainly not the victim.
It would seem as though the test would be for the victims loved ones, but how much sense does that actually make? Did God really decide to kill a friend of mine just to test the faith of others? What kind of justification is there for that. The "mysterious ways" argument has no real backing, Hell, I work in mysterious ways. There's no omni-benevolence in that, if anything, its malicious.
Don't misunderstand me, I don't hate God, I can't possibly hate God. I do however hate the religion, all religions, they lead people astray from the "truth" giving them a false confidence in the impossible. I get that some cope with trauma through religion, and that's all fine and dandy, but again its all false promises. People live their lives devoting them to their choice of poison. They believe things they cannot possibly know, just on the grounds that if it's true they reap the benefits. Some people even believe in fear of what may happen if they're wrong. It's heart breaking for me, and for them, how I live my life is heart breaking. At least the atheism aspect of it.
It's ironic though, because my first tattoo was a Celtic Cross and some words in Latin on my forearm.
The whole thing took roughly four hours to finish, and cost $240. I've been asked a few times if it has to do with my religious beliefs, and every time I respectfully tell them it's a heritage thing. The words aequitas and veritas mean justice and truth respectively. The words are most known for their existence in the Boondock Saints films.
One of the main things I regret about High School was my general inability to tell people, especially females, my feelings for and about them. I became somewhat of a shut in prior to High School and mostly kept to myself. There's a few girls who I'll admit I had some strong feelings for, but my insecurities kept me from asking them out, or even telling them anything emotional.
But ultimately I regret nothing about High School. I may claim to regret things, but that isn't entirely true. The regrets, the pitfalls, everything that went down in my formative years, and everything that will happen in the coming years, has and will shape the person I am and will become.
So yes, despite my qualms with my past, it all amounts up to who and what I am, if I were to regret that, I would regret myself. I don't, and if I did I give you, faithful reader, permission to hit me square across the face.
Blog's over homies. Watch the video, in honor of seeing Thor: The Dark World tonight, the video is "Everything Wrong with Thor." I'll see you next time.
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