The Fallen Phoenix

Ok, well this is my first blog post in a very long time. To make this very clear from it's outset, this is not my first Blog and I doubt it will be my last. Every time I run into a snag in my life I seem to have a need to outlet it somewhere and due to a number of issues I have with people, I cannot open up to them.

I found out when I was thirteen or so that I liked guys. I hate labels and to label myself gay or straight would, I think, do me a great injustice. I just seem to like guys. For now thats all I'll say. Suffice to say that as a 13 yr old, I had absolutely no idea what that meant and only with the introduction of the internet several years later did I actually determine that this was considered a "problem" by the rest of the world. I found this confusing, but as it turned out, I would find out later exactly what the concequences of this little abnormality were to be.

First a little on myself. My name is Steve, I am currently nineteen, drawing closer and closer to my twentieth birthday with every passing minute (25th November). I live in a small town in New South Wales Australia, although I currently attend university, where I am studying teaching. There is so much to write to talk about my history, and I'll try and get through all of it, though doubtfully in some ultra-post tonight. For now, we start with begginnings.

As I said, I live in a small town, occupying a flat in the backyard of my grandmothers house. My mother concieved me when she was 16 and she and my father, whose name I am not even familiar with, never married. To the best of my knowledge, he split not long after my birth. My mother tried her very best (at least this is what I am told) to look after me in her condition and although my memories of that time in my life are not particularly clear, I do not remember much happiness.

In my fifth year, my mother had too much and sent my to my grandparents for the weekend, never returning to pick me up. I remember that life after this point changed dramatically and I have been blessed by two of the most caring and loving grandparents a person could ever ask for. These two wonderful people shaped me to be who I am today and although I recently lost my grandfather to cancer, I will fondly remember him as a strong and caring male role-model, loved by his community and his family.

My mother did not show herself too much more in my life, appearing breifly not long after my 13th birthday (which I incidentally spent in hospital with gastro) informing me that I had two half-brothers. I was too young to feel much for them at the time, and I remember only slight connection with them. Today, having not spoken to, or heard from my mother or brothers in several years, I feel a great sense of emptiness and loss over this. Unfortunately, my mother is an expert at not being found and although, I have, as yet made no attempt to locate her, my grandmothers attempts during my grandfathers illness were in vain.

To get me to this point in time, I must first explain the issue of friendships, which are the primary concern of me writing my thoughts down. I have an uncanny knack for finding and making a few close friends, begin to trust them, and have it all blow up in it's face. To explain, lets start with primary school. At the start of my 3rd year of school, I made friends with two boys, Nick and Simon, and we were good friends for 3 years. At some stage at the start of Yr 6 I was unsubtly told by the two of them that they no longer liked me and that I could leave now. This shaped my view of people in a somewhat negative way for the rest of my life and left me somewhat cynical, despite my best efforts against it.

I was lucky enough to be picked up (be it out of sympathy or not) by a group of people who, looking back, could only really be described as populars. I took an immediate shine to a boy called Jarrod within the group and he and I really hit it off. I began to make friends with his friends and we became quite close. I can honestly say that as we entered high school, I was quite happy. As I started my first year of high school, we made a circle of friends, Myself and Jarrod, Jassi, an Indian boy whom Jarrod had been friends with throughout most of his life and David, a boy of below average intelligence whom I befriended in a History class after I made him laugh. This formed the basis of my friends for my junior high life.

In a tragedy we all saw coming, Jarrod's parents did to him what they had done to his older brother and sent him to boarding school in Sydney, which is about 8 hours drive from where we lived. This totally shattered me, but I didn't let it show, I wanted to be strong for everyone. I can honestly say that Jarrod was the first person I ever really liked at high school, I guess he was my first crush, and seeing him leave really did crush (excuse the pun) the life out of me.

Soon, and almost inevitably, Jassi and I began to grate on each others nerves. Jarrod was somewhat of a peace-keeper between the two of us, and with him gone things got ugly quickly. I am a somewhat quiet manipulator, dealing with things behind the scences, and I dont like to lead, rather I like to be sort of a second in command, and deal with people through others. Jassi was, and still is, a natural leader, and quickly dominated our group of friends.

The addition of two new people into our friendship group, Anthony and Guillaume, two boys we met through extra-circular activities, made things more complicated. Jassi and Anton were immediately close, sharing a love of politics and media, and Guillaume and David took of as well, leaving me as somewhat of an outsider. Things continued with relative security, until a somewhat atypical misjudgement from me blew the entire world I knew out of the water.

As a fifteen year old guy who had never been in a relationship and never been touched before, my hormones were totally racing. I guess they were the soul motivation for a fateful maths class where I asked David if he'd be interested in some sort of mutual experiance with me. For starters, and with the wisdom of hindsight, I really shouldn't have picked David of all people. He said nothing about it, went home and rang Guillaume and it was all over school the next week. I was totally shattered.

Skipping forward again, I spent a lot of time alone for the remainder of that year, stronger than I was the previous time, which had sent me into clinical depression, but this time more bitter and cynical than ever. I began to beleive that there was no-one in the world that I could trust and that it was me against the world. I have litterally only just gotten over that little mindset this year.

I was introduced to Ned through the same extra-ciricular activity which bought my old group Anton and Guillaume. Ned was a year younger than me, which in my old school was social suicide, but I figured I couldn't kill what was already dead and we became friends instantly. He and I clicked on so many levels and he bought me into his group of friends, all a year below myself. Ned and I remain good friends.

Throughout the rest of my time in High School, I met an absolutely gorgeous girl in my Drama class called Tammy, and she and I clicked as well. She was the first real female friend I had ever had and she kida forced me into her group of friends as well. From that stage in my life, late year ten, onwards, I must admit I have had great friends in Tammy and Ned, and although I am not as close to either as I used to be, I will always love them both.

Thats a fairly brief overview of my history... now lets get into my thoughts.

At the moment I am totally in a rut. I can't focus on anything and it seems like everyone has a complete hold of thier lives and are powerful forward towards a bright future. I should be the same, but I cant seem to find a focus.

I have a love for psychology and although I am no trained shrink, I have helped many people get over intense personal and family problems. So why can't I help myself? I have several theories for why I could be feeling this way and I'll share a few of them now, mabye in future posts I can go into greater detail.

First of all I am lonely. I dont know what to think really, but my appalling lack of charisma (I am not exactly unattractive, but I could look better) isn't helping. I really want to be in a relationship, I am the only person I know who is my age and has not been in a serious relationship by this stage. I haven't been in a relationship... period. The only people I have ever liked have turned out to be homophobic, totally straight or worse, have played with me for sex and left me totally broken in the process. Worst part is, I am still "friends" with all of them.

I consider myself an intelligent person, I really do. But for the life of me, I dont know what to do. I just want to find someone who I can spend the rest of my life with, and I am too paranoid that my liking guys will get out and destroy my life and the lives of people who I care about again to go out and do anything about it. In all seriousness, I don't want to see the looks on peoples faces when they find out that someone like me likes guys. I dont want to see the looks they will give my grandmother, a respected member of the community, when they find out that her grandson, the one she raised, the spawn of evil, likes guys. I just don't want people to go through that.

So I have to stay alone and will probably have to live with that forever. I can't see another way for it to end. The town in which I live is so small and desolate that the people who are like me are going to run for the nearest city to make life easier at thier earliest convienance.

Lets discuss my lack of trust for other people... if my friends are so important, why can't I speak to them about this?

Ok for starters, I don't want to bother Tammy anymore with my insignificant issues. She has her life now and a wonderful boyfriend whom she is already completely convinced will be her husband some day. Quite frankly so do I. She has her life now, almost five hours away from a home she never visits anymore. I just want her to be happy, and worrying about me wont help to acheive that goal.

Ned is a little more complicated. Both of the aforementioned people know about my preferences, and Ned even fits into the category of people who I've liked and who have screwed me over for sex. He remains one of my most trusted friends because although he shattered me at one time in my life when I really didn't need it, it was deserved, because I had never been entirely truthful to him either. He is, as ever, great fun to be around, but quite frankly, all the time I spend with him kills my soul a little more. I fear I am slipping further and further into an old mindset, further into the notion that I will forever be alone and that I can do nothing to change this. As far as I am concerned, it's me against the world and there is very little I can do about that.

This brings me to my current dilemma. Without going into too much details, I fell hard for a boy who is several years younger than I am and despite this, we remain good friends. He does not really know about my preferences, although we have on several occassions had "hormonal romps" as he calls them. This served to make me even more smitten than I already was... except that not only is said boy not interested, he is a total homophobe.

Life goes on I guess and he's recently just doused whatever fire I have left in my soul. Hence the name of this Blog. I have always admired the tenacity of the mystical Phoenix, a figure of such undeniable fiery will that he could not be quenched. Every time he fell, he would rise again. In a way, I identify with the phoenix more than any other, and have adopted it as my handle and my totem.

At the moment, I am certainly down for the count and between not wanting to hurt people, people not knowing and my own stubborn refusal to look weak, there is not a single person on this wide earth who I can talk to with any depth about the topic at hand.

So I guess at the moment there are two real issues which challenge me, my lack of focus, and my focus on that boy.

I really need to work on exactly what I can do with each problem... I guess I was right to a certain extent, it really is me against the world isn't it...

Nothing has meaning until it changes what we think or who we are...
-Unknown

FallenPhoenix