Graduation is over and I’ve said my goodbyes.  What else is there for me to do?  I mean, besides stay at home and wait for college to sweep me off my feet like I’m some sort of damsel.  What’s the point of seeing people again after I’ve already sent my last regards?  I said them yesterday for a reason, didn’t I?  You just don’t say goodbye to people and then see them the next day.  That’s just not right because a goodbye is permanent.  Well, at least it is in my world.  If I wanted to see you the next day, I would have said until next time or see you later or just bye.  Goodbye is forever and it shall always be.  I have made that my number one rule.

I only go out to town if I really need to.  Exhibit A) if I get cabin fever and exhibit B) if I need something like Frosted Mini Wheats or the necessities for making a sandwich.  I know, I’m a simple kid, and I’m not ashamed of it either.  A simple life is a good life.  Who really needs the extravagant?  Yea, everyone likes nice, expensive, and shiny things, but that doesn’t make me happy.  As a matter of fact, what does make me happy?  Have I ever really been happy?  Maybe I’ll find the answer in college.  Yea, maybe I’ll stumble upon another simple kid who’s searching for happiness as well.  We’ll become friends and maybe a little bit more along the way.  Could that possibly have the potential to make me happy?  My first real and happy relationship with a simple person like me sounds too optimistic for my taste.  Forgive my pessimistic aura.  It’s the only thing that keeps me on my feet.  I’m gay by the way (didn’t mean for that to rhyme).  I mean, if you still haven’t caught my drift.  I don’t intend to shove it in your face or anything, but it’s been 18 years and my parents barely figured.  I assume they’d missed the hints when my tomboy phase didn’t die after 13, or when I’d shop for t-shirts and jackets in the men’s department.  The only thing I didn’t shop for was men’s jeans and undergarments.  Perhaps it was because that would make things too real for me.

Who in their right mind leads someone on and then says something that contradicts everything they’ve ever told you?  Oh I know, this girl I flirted with in July.   I’ll use some common mannerism and not state her real name, but since she left a bad taste in my mouth, I’ll tell the story.  I’d known the girl a good half a year before we started to “get comfortable.”  She identified herself to me as bisexual, so naturally I kept that piece of information filed in the back of my mind in case, you know, if the opportunity ever revealed itself in the future.  Naturally, the opportunity did.  The girl said she had a soft spot for me and that she liked me.  You know, that sort of mumbo jumbo, but she felt that I was “too young” for her.  It was only a two year age gap.  I guess that was the oh so deadly “ flaw” between us.  That still didn’t stop us from talking. 

We still sweet talked each other.  I sweet talked her good.  Every girl likes to be told that she’s unique and beautiful.  All you’ve gotta do is be creative and poetic about it and then she’ll be all over you like a cat and catnip.  I’m not saying that I played her, because I didn’t.  I actually meant all of what I said.  She was special and pretty.  She wasn’t exactly THE ONE, but I still felt something for her.  The boys should all take a page from my book because I’m a damn sweetheart.  When I take the time to know a girl that I really like, I keep a mental file on her because it makes for good little gifts of affection, and overall it just proves that you really care for her.  It kills me to see boys not give a damn about their girlfriends.  I always make it a goal to be better than them when I get a somebody of my own.

Anyway, back to the story.  As I said before, we sweet talked for a while.  A while was approximately two months.  Exactly two months come to pass, and then she posts a whole bunch of erroneous balogneous on her social media.  Stating things like she “wasn’t gay” and that she has “strong Christian beliefs.”  I gave a large amount of my time to her only to be told that she didn’t care about me by a social media platform and not to my face.  She played me like any other boy would play a girl.  We stopped talking to each other for a long while.  The last time she ever talked to me was a brief text that had absolutely nothing to do with an apology.  Thus ends that bitter chapter in my life.  That month I realized that girls could be just as heartless as boys.

Straight girls can be known to be a lesbian’s kryptonite.  It’s 25% their fault for leading us on, and 75% our fault for letting them when we absolutely know better.  Why oh why did I succumb to such a cliché?  It’s the oldest trick in the book, yet,  I still fell for it.  Maybe it’s because I’ve always wanted to date a feminine girl, but never could, because all the gay women I knew and saw were all too butch for my taste.  Nope, that wasn’t the reason, but I wish it was that dumb and simple.  I was actually in love with this young girl.  Straight as a one way and I knew it too, but I didn’t care.  She was the most beautiful thing in the world to me and still is.  I wanted her more than anything.  I would have given up anything to be with her.  I desperately wished I was a boy. 

Though I never got to be hers, we were still good friends.  We both cared for each other deeply and always had each other’s backs.  I decided that she was the last person I’d see before I left for college.  She was the only person I wanted to see.  I had trouble contemplating whether to say goodbye to her or not, so I concluded that I’d let the answer come to me over my last dinner with her.  What would I say to her?   Should I have told her that I still loved her?  No, you should never leave a person hanging on a cliff like that.  It will bite you in the ass later in life. 

I ended up taking her out to Chili’s for our last supper.  Chili’s is great because it’s not too fancy like Olive Garden, but at the same time not too cheap like Whataburger.  It’s right smack in the middle.  I didn’t over achieve or underachieve.  Although, she would have been contempt either place.  That was one of the things I loved about her.  She wasn’t very picky as long as she got fed something.  We had a nice dinner that night.  Things didn’t get awkward like I had originally thought.  We reminisced a lot on old memories and good times.  When it came to the farewell portion of the night, I failed to say the word goodbye.  I substituted that word with a goodnight and a kiss on the forehead.  She didn’t know it was the last time we’d see each other until the winter, but I had a feeling she got the message when we locked arms.  It had been a long while since we hugged each other like that.

Free at last, free at last, God almighty, I’m free at last. The person that came up with the “it gets better” slogan knew what he or she was saying. Life at the university was fantastic. The environment was peaceful in The Woodlands. The scenery was beautiful. Population on the campus wasn’t scares, but it wasn’t overflowing. That was great because an abundance of people makes things too hectic, and a hectic environment creates chaos. Obsessive compulsive individuals, like myself, hate chaos.
Aside from the wonderful setting of the university, I really enjoyed their LGBT program. It was there that I met some really great friends. Back at home, it was extremely hard to communicate with other people like me because southern traditions run deeper than valleys. It’s always the northern parts of states where the people are more liberal, and I’ll never understand exactly why this is. Nevertheless, I hope to witness the day when the tip of Texas is as much liberal its panhandle.
In late September, I met the acquaintance of this lovely girl named Ellie. To my surprise, we hit things off really well. We had many similarities, but not to the point where we’d practically be the same person, because I wasn’t interested in basically dating myself. I was the boring kind of intelligent and she was the fun and interesting kind. I was an old fart at heart, and she was the young free spirit that made my old soul sing a new song. Was she the one for me? No, and time would only justify the reason why.
Ellie and I weren’t exactly the perfect couple. We argued and fought constantly behind the curtain. Things never got too abusive. Although, I did return to my dorm with hand imprints on my cheeks or scratches on my arms and neck. It wasn’t long before I realized that Ellie was a possessive person. When she obtained something, it was hers and only hers. She’d have problems with me conversing with other women even though the dialogue was innocent. Being partners just wasn’t enough reassurance for her to stop being paranoid that I wasn’t officially hers. Despite the bruises and scars, I was reluctant to let the relationship die. We continued to date, and my body continued to take a beating.

Society makes the loss of virginity seem like it's magical. It’s NOT magical whatsoever. It’s embarrassing and really disgusting when your “first time” becomes a reality. My first time was everything in-between the words awkward and terrible. I didn’t know how look at myself after such a terrible night. I’m surprised that our relationship didn’t end because things were just so terrible. I wished things would have ended then and there to be honest, but things continued as they were. Yes, the vicious cycle continued despite the clear sign that we just weren’t meant for each other. I went back to my dorm crimson in the cheeks and bruised in the arms.

Despite all the beauty that can be around you, there is always a hint of ugliness somewhere in the mixture. My neighborhood has always been a pretty place to me. It’s quiet and filled with trees. My neighborhood had lost its quiet beauty when I brought my girlfriend home for the holiday. No blood was shed, thank God, but there is something way worse than spilt blood, and that is a lack of acceptance. Hostile faces were shown in attendance at the Thanksgiving table. Grandma, grandpa, mother, and father all displayed a face of discomfort, embarrassment, and shame.
You are just in a phase, my mother said. Was it all those years of arguing between your mother and I, my father said? No, was my answer repeatedly. Then verbal shots were fired between them. They blamed themselves for something that wasn’t even their fault. They raised me no different than any other straight kid in my neighborhood. It’s heart breaking that they failed to see that. Homosexuality isn’t a phase, an illness, or a choice. Homosexuality is just a damn label that is put on the people that fall in love with the same sex. Homosexual is a word that shouldn’t exist. Love should just be love. The day homosexual became a word was the day when people made the word love become taboo. Love shouldn’t be defined as straight or gay. Love should have but one definition. It should stand independently through action, not gender.
The fighting continued and I needed to get out, so I did. I left the blue neighborhood. I left Ellie and my parents. I hit the road back to The Woodlands. I didn’t leave them without a final word. Stuck on the fridge was a yellow sticky note with the word goodbye.

Thanks to my full scholarship given by the university, I didn’t have to be fully dependent on my parents financially. I figured a small university job would compensate for the money my parents had supplied me with. So, I got a small job on campus and my life went on from there. I got rid of my phone, changed my look from head to toe, but kept my email. I had a few people that I wanted to keep in touch with. My only concerns were finishing my first semester and finding a person who would let me stay at their place for winter break. There was no way in hell that I was going to return home.


Winter break came around sooner than expected. It’s crazy how fast time flies once people get older. Childhood seems to take its sweet time. Perhaps that’s because children don’t worry about it. They don’t anticipate important deadlines or plan their days accordingly in 10 different planners and write mandatory events on jumbo desk calendars. Once the teen years begin, childhood ceases to exist and we turbo charge into adulthood. I like to call those the Peter Pan years, because that’s when we wish we’d never grow up.


I stayed at Andy’s house after the first semester. He was a fellow musician and his parents were very understanding and sympathetic about my situation. He is the youngest in his family, just as I, and all his siblings already had established lives, so I had two rooms to choose from when I lodged for a few weeks. I chose his brothers room because it was painted navy blue, which is a nice warm color that I particularly fancy. I figured that it’d be easy on my eyes; all dark colors are.


The room wasn’t crammed or clammy; it was more comfortable and cozy. The square room was filled with images of solar systems and NASA banners. I automatically assumed his brother pursued a career in any type of space science. On the right side of the room, there was a nice size desk with a desktop computer, lots of astronomy books, and dispersed throughout the shelves of the room were models of spaceships. Though he didn’t live at the house anymore, I was surprised that his parents hadn’t torn down his room. They had kept the room just as it was when he moved out, or so it looked. It made me wonder what my parents did with my room.


I had a nice stay at Andy’s house. Never would I have thought that I would celebrate my 19th year at someone’s house other than mine. I didn’t tell him or his family that Christmas Eve was my birthday. Despite the warmness in their hearts, I had to remind myself that they weren’t my family. Therefore, the day of my birth wasn’t their priority or concern. I spent the day in the room I had occupied, and rarely left despite an agonizing trip to midnight mass.

Nothing special was happening. My life at this time was a constant circle. I felt like a hamster running on its wheel; running from nothing, but running towards nothing. I mostly focused on my studies while balancing my job. Day to day it was like that. Though occasionally, I’d hear about bits and pieces of people’s lives through the friends I kept in touch with. For example, the girl that led me on the past year was getting married to some low life.


I could sense she was miserable. An individual who gets married to someone they really love doesn’t exactly have to justify why. She had written a lengthy post on Facebook about why she adored this yuppie scum. I sensed the vibe that she had wrote that for her sake as much as it was intended for the people who thought she was dumb for getting engaged so young. I felt as though she was trying to convince herself that the marriage was logical through her own persuasion. What better way to hypnotize oneself into believing in one's choices, than to write it permanently for everyone to see.


Aside from that news, nothing much was going on in my social life. Ellie was out of it for good, and I wasn’t in the mood to look for a new relationship. It’s hard looking for another person to love when you are scarred from a bad relationship, and I mean this in not just a psychological way, but physically too. I couldn’t stand to see her, so I quit going to the LGBT group meetings. My internal pain didn’t go away. I still had hauntings of the beatings I would take from her.


I never stopped her from beating me because I had felt that I needed to be. I felt ashamed of my homosexuality due to my Christian/Catholic upbringing along with some deeper internal shame. Every bruise and scar that formed on my torso, arms, and back was what I thought I deserved. Leaving her and accepting myself was almost as hard as leaving my family. Like my parents, I said goodbye to Ellie. I was never to talk to her again, and I never did.

It’s six thirty in the morning and as much as I want to hit snooze I find the strength not to. Every morning except for Sundays, I follow the same work schedule. The only variable that changes from week to week are my patients. After I graduated college, I obtained a paid internship at an asylum as some old geezers doctor assistant. Now, when I say asylum, don’t get confused with the image of some raggedy or shady run-of-the-mill horror story facility. The place I worked at is much more sophisticated than that. I’d even say it's a pretty legitimate job. The patients there aren’t current or ex-delinquents of the law, they’re just mostly young adults that have trouble thinking for themselves.


At the facility, I got acquainted with Cole, another intern. My initial thoughts and observations of Cole were completely faulty. At first glance, he is clean cut, looks completely intelligent, and sane. Cole didn’t stack up to my first impression. Not one bit. Cole, like me, is a survivor of abuse. Although, his abuse was from his father, and the type of abuse he fell under was child pornography and rape. He was stripped away from his parents at age 14 only to be put in a corrupt foster care system. It’s ironic that a person with a devout passion for helping the mentally ill can be just as ill as the insane he’s helping.
Because of our similarities, Cole and I became good friends. Our friendship went as far as living with each other. We’d work together, eat together, and go out together, but unfortunately we would not die old together. His death was the most significant event in my life. Cole is the only person to have said goodbye before I did.


Before Cole’s death, he played russian roulette with his life. He tried to drink himself to death, though that didn’t work. It just turned into a sleepless night of constant nausea and the endless sound of the commode flushing. The following week, he had tried to overdose on Methadone when I was working a late night. I had found him on the floor next to the sink when I returned home. Foum and drool covered his mouth, pants, and shirt. I quickly called an ambulance and they rushed him to the hospital. They ended up pumping out his stomach, and had to stay hospitalized for nearly a month.


Instead of reading the signs that God had spared his life twice, he took matters into his own hands. If poison wasn’t going to guarantee him death, he’d put his life in the hands of a pistol. Right after being discharged from the hospital he took his life officially. Once again, after a long shift at the asylum, I went home only to see a note on the kitchen counter and a young man on the floor of his bedroom covered in blood.


"This pain that I have harbored for the past sixteen years has become a sickness that I cannot bare. Living with such pain builds a thick wall between one's self and their conscience. I understand that I am young and haven’t yet discovered, traveled, and conquered the pathways that contain the best and worst years of my life. Though, I’ve made the decision not to. I am done. The way I see it, I am a living victim of abuse. The physical bruising and bloodshed is over, but my mind still inflicts psychological punishment. Nobody really loves me and I clearly don’t love myself. Thus, my life has no meaning. Goodbye family. Goodbye world. Goodbye Tess."
Cole J. Zukerman


Cole’s passing resurrected my soul. His death forced me to look in the mirror. My reflection showed a completely different person compared to when I was 18. I looked like hell. My hair all short and messy, my cloths all dull colored; faded like the life I had left behind. It was time to admit that I couldn’t stay isolated forever. As much as I didn’t want to go home I had to. I had a good life when I was surrounded by friends and family. I had a life that was colorfully vibrant with good times and happy memories. Having a family to fall back on is the best thing a young adult can have. I should have never left in the first place.

As much as I want to hit the snooze button, I find the strength not to. Today is the day I drive from Dallas, TX all the way to the Rio Grande. I’ve finally bottled up the courage to see my family again. What will they think of me? What will they do to me? What will they say to me? Unanswered questions flood my mind as I get ready to leave my small apartment. Before I departed, I looked around one last time, not just to make sure I wasn’t gonna forget anything, but because this moment in time is what Cole would have wanted me to do years before he had died. This monumental moment would have made him proud.


Nine hours is a long way to be stuck in a car. Even though traveling with another person or group of people can be annoying, it sure keeps your mind from wandering into black holes. A person in the passenger seat would have kept my mind from starting to regret the trip home. I had nine hours of staring at the road ahead, and it’s really hard not to think of nothing.

I don’t have a lot of money, but I’ve got to stop driving. It’s 11pm and I can barely keep my eyes open. I have two options. I can either rent a cheap motel for the night, or I can pull over to a gas station and sleep in my car until morning. Based on the fatness of my wallet, I chose the latter. I pulled into the back of a nearby 7/11 and hit the sack.


I awake at 3am to a knocking on my drivers side window. It scares the shit out of me. I see a tall large scruffy white man looking right at me. I can do nothing but thank God my doors are locked. He’s asking for a ride and I’d be stupid to give one. One good lesson that my dad taught me when I was real young was to never let people hitch hike you. People are unpredictable, he’d tell me, and in a world like this, you can’t trust nobody. I started the car and drove off as fast as I could. I drove for about two and a half more hours and then stopped at a nearby rest area to sleep until I felt well rested.