Decisions

So after giving it some thought I finally decided to go to prom. Paid for my bid on Friday and everything. It was a pretty tough decision because since I've been out of a job for about two months now my finances are just going straight down the drain. I haven't gone out with anyone for awhile now. Turns out that I'm going to have to pay for my deposits out of my own pocket and pay for prom myself as well. It was a really tough decision to make but my friends kept insisting that I go. If I really do have to pay for my own deposits then I'll be flat out broke by the end of the month.... haha I don't even have a date either not that I need one or could get one. I mean who'd want to go to prom with a guy that's thinner than them right? Ah and more financial problems too cause most of my friends are either driving there or catching a limo and they don't have any space. Found a really good deal on a private sedan though. $250 and a Lincoln Town car will bring me to prom with a two hour tour of waikiki before and after prom. I just wish I had someone to share that with but oh well prom should be special none the less. I also saw my friend old friend Carl at the community park today. We grew up together at the Boys and Girls club and man it really brightened my day to see him. I haven't seen the guy for like 5 years but that happiness in seeing him kind of faded as I noticed how faded his life was. Carl used to be hilarious we go and pull pranks on other people all day and laugh about it man those were the days. But the first thing that I noticed when I walked up to him was that he was smoking. My eyesight is kind of bad so I didn't notice it until I came up close but it was still good seeing him none the less. We started talking about old times and what we're up to he got a kick out of how thin I am cause he's a lot more muscular than I remember. Turns out though that he dropped out of school when he got to 10th grade. Its crazy how we have so much in common and yet we turned out so differently. Carl was in a situation pretty similar to mine. His parents were always treating him like crap no matter how well he did and that just made everything harder for him. That's one of the things that made us really close as kids the fact that we were treated like crap like everyday the only thing we didn't have in common was the way we dealt with that pain. How did he deal with it? By making others feel pain he could ease his own. He would pull pranks on others, make them feel like crap, steal from them, you know whatever gave him a good laugh. I was different though the way I dealt with it was by keeping it bottled up inside myself. I was always ashamed to tell others of my problems because of the fear that they would just laugh or judge me just like how it always was at home. It wasn't the healthiest way to deal with that pain but it was a way that worked for me. After a couple of years though Carl started to come to the club less until eventually he stopped coming and I lost contact with him. Turns out that things got so bad with his parents that he turned to drugs to relieve that pain. He told me that the more he did drugs the harder school got but it was one of the only ways he could escape the pain of going home. He said it got to the point where he was failing all of his classes and then he just gave up after that. He was talking about how he wished he turned out like me but I just laughed. It turns out that keeping my pain bottled up all these years are finally starting to take effect on me. I told him that yeah I'm doing great in school and people think I'm really smart and all but I have this social barrier between myself and other people. I was telling Carl that because I've gotten used to keeping my problems bottled up I never really learned how to make connections with other people which was always leaving me at a distance from others. That's why whenever I talk its only about work because I never learned how to make a real conversation with others. I'm not sure how to talk to others about my problems because I've been bottling it all up for 17 years now and I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to make that connection. Its weird how we share the same pain but a few decisions made us turn out so differently. Found out that he lives somewhere in Waianae he just came to visit the community park to reminisce about some things. I guess after all these years we still have a lot more in common than I thought.