Walling it Up

On Monday I will have mailed the check for my last graduate school application. I'm keeping Queens on standby because it's not an MSW program. In a way it'll keep with my coincidental "tradition" of applying to things in threes, haha (Molloy, Cathedral, and Holy Cross for high school; Marist, Siena, And Wells for college; and now NYU, Fordham, and Hunter for graduate school).

I have been incredibly depressed lately. Not having a full time job and having to deal with parents who reject you for being gay is tough, in addition to my inability to get over a romantic rejection (even though it's been four years, J's intermittent presence in my life kept the false hope alive). It's a cruel irony that friends never seem to be around when you have problems.

I don't feel like even going to Church tomorrow. I pray to God to slowly give me an open and compassionate heart for the kind of field I want to enter in a few years, but as far as love of my parents and romantic love goes, I feel my heart slowly closing. I know that sounds a little over the top, but the only way of stopping myself from having a total breakdown is by closing myself off to people who've hurt me so badly.

Hobo Shack

There was this shed on the north end of my college that my old roommate and I called the hobo shack. My other friend seemed to get offended and I understood why.

I'm not someone who's overly PC so I can see both sides, but it also got me to thinking about one of the "good guilts" my Catholic upbringing gave me: social guilt. I can't walk by a homeless person without feeling an intense sense of guilt I didn't do anything for them.

Sure, I always try to spare change when I have some, but I don't think that's enough. I feel like I should be finding them a place to stay or make sure they're sleeping with clean blankets or at the very least get them a coffee or bagel instead of dropping change in their hand and walking quickly so I don't catch any sick-making smell or have to feel uncomfortable if they seem severely mentally disoriented.

But I don't. Instead I daydream about the day I'm finally working and making money and how then I'll go out and help them.

I was thinking that maybe the lesson in this for me (my uneasiness) is that it's easy for a millionaire to give to charity as it is for a happy person to do good unto others, the challenge is being in darkness (material/economic or emotional) and still being able to do good despite it. That's my challenge right now: to do good despite my own obstacles.

Masks and Mentors

Halloween was fun. I had a little too much alcohol and half of me felt like I had missed out on most of my college experience because I barely ever went out and the other half felt great that I've always been a guy with my head on straight when it comes to being responsible and not doing stupid things even when I'm in that state. Be silly and loud maybe, but nothing stupid or illegal. I did enjoy the buzz, but I was frantically freaking out and worrying about everyone else being ok.

I ended up losing my costume mask (I was the Phantom of the Opera). Preferably, I'd like to think of it as a metaphor of me eventually losing my metaphorical mask to the people I still wear masks around, though I really lost the mask because I was just too...well yeah.

I went to the glbt church group again yesterday and one of the older men who I became friends with gave me this philosophical sci-fi book he wants me to read. I feel like he's kind of taking me under his wing since I'm still uncomfortable with the religion versus sexuality thing sometimes, so it's nice to have someone I can be able to talk to and kind of guide me. On the other hand, I'm very guarded because you never know what people's intentions are.

I feel very "green" among the people there because I'm one of the youngest members and am so inexperienced with life in general. Also, like I said in another post, I'm not generally that comfortable in settings that are exclusively glbt (the cliqueyness, the campiness, etc.).

The most important thing to me right now is getting my degree and being able to work in the career I've always wanted to be in. Everything else can fall into place on its own...

Frivolous Risks

Last night I went out to two bars (or a bar and a pub?) with my friend Michelle, her boyfriend Scott, and two other people from her college. I never really went out much during college, but was glad to find the lounge/bar environment is more my type of setting than a crazy club would be. I had fun and was happy to hear a lot of late 90s music (as if by telepathic request) played by the DJ/music dude. It's good to take a risk every once in a while and do something you wouldn't normally do.

Right now I'm talking to my brother in the Dominican Republic online. My parents want me to move back in with them because my job isn't going to make me enough money to both support me and pay any bills. It sounds terrible but I rather take on frivolous debt than go back to living with them and have to re-closet myself, more so in a country that isn't as accepting or understanding. I love my parents but I can't go back to being 16 and scared to death again.

They were against me moving away to college and I ended up going away anyway and having four of the best years I've ever had.

This motivates me even more.

How To Build A Spiderweb

I've been busily working on my graduate school applications and am glad to say I'm almost there. I'm trying to get them all done before Halloween so that I can forward the recommendation forms to my professors.

Right now I feel pretty heartbroken that my religious vocation to the brotherhood thing didn't work out. I'm also heartbroken in the "regular way" because in the middle of all that, I'm trying to get over a literal person I spent four years pining over. That naturally ended up sabotaging my religious discernment because there was no way I could begin any official application while still dealing with this.

On the other hand, while working on my graduate school applications I felt a deep sense of joy while writing my personal statement because if there's one thing I've been most sure of, it's that I've wanted to enter this profession (clinical social work, counseling) since at least 8th or 9th grade. I think it's truly a gift from God to be able to see so clearly what feel called to do with our life. I want to help kids in high school because most of my hardest (and by consequence, formative) years were there along with the beginning of college.

I was telling my friend that the hardest thing about graduating college is that when we live in such an insulated environment like a residential college, our support system is as sturdy as a spider in the middle of a spiderweb. We're so interconnected (or threaded...lol) to other people on so many different levels (I can think of my cafeteria ladies, professors, RAs, friends, and campus ministry people) that when we trip we just end up bouncing up because the web is so sturdy.

When we leave, we're no longer in the center of the spiderweb but either at the periphery (hanging by whatever few "threads" or connections are left to the people we knew) or completely fallen off from it.

I think that's the main thing I'm working on now. When I went to visit a brother friend of mine at my high school the other day he told me I needed to focus on rebuilding my social network. In other words, not to go out there looking for a relationship, but rather, go out there and look to be relational. As much as I would like things to fit my timetable (must meet career goal by 25, meet someone by 30, etc.) or make up for the lost time of high school and college, we can't make things fall into place on our own time.

Don't Fit In

I'm back from my discernment retreat (I was on a discernment retreat for men interested in priesthood and brotherhood this weekend).  It was mostly a good experience and I was grateful for the hospitality of the novices and the sense of fraternity among both the candidates (us) and the novices.  

I had kind of been avoiding meeting with the vocation director most of the weekend, but bumped into him (which I don't think was a coincidence since I had just come down from my room after a frustrating attempt to focus and pray, and just feeling deep desolation) and we had a talk.  We both decided it was best to not discern at this time.  I don't know if he was only putting my application on hold for now, but I think my intention by that point was to completely terminate it. 

Recently, I started going to this religious group for glbt Christians and while many of the people there are generally nice, I feel I don't fit in with gay people in general: the obsession with youth and beauty, people who were a little too upfront about their past sexual experiences, and the general campiness/flamboyance in public places was a little too much for me, more so in a religious setting where I was expecting less of it.

It's kind of a lonely place to be, because I feel I can't completely fit in within the Church nor within a gay environment.  

I don't have the energy to write more so I'll just leave it there.

Laughter Came From Every Brick

Today is the feast day of Teresa of Avila, Spanish mystic and Carmelite nun. This is a beautiful poem attributed to her, though when I double checked it appears to be a poem based on something she wrote since I can't find an original Spanish version (I'm going to look for it because if it's not hers it'd be a great disillusion!). Nonetheless, I love it:

Just these two words He spoke

changed my life,

"Enjoy Me."

What a burden I thought I was to carry -

a crucifix, as did He.

Love once said to me, "I know a song,

would you like to hear it?"

And laughter came from every brick in the street

and from every pore

in the sky.

After a night of prayer, He

changed my life when

He sang,

"Enjoy Me."