I don't see the buses anymore

I know, my last post was a bit depressing...I'll try not to continue that trend. But I have to start off with this:

On my way to work this morning, and on the way to work every morning, I see the kids standing at the end of their respective drive ways, backpacks on shoulders, hair wet from the rain, some listening to head phones, others chatting, some on skateboards, others wearing clothes that are meant for people 5 times their weight...

And sometimes I get stuck behind a bus. Usually the wait isn't too bad. Kids are good about getting on and off buses, and most of the time I'm not behind the disabled bus. Thank God for not being disabled BTW.

I realized on the way to work that I soon wouldn't be seeing the kids in the coming week. Summer break is here. The last real summer I had was probably the best. The summer between 8th and 9th grade. And of course, here are my parents telling me to get a job...at 14? HAH. "Steve has a job". Well yeah, Steve worked basically illegally for family friends at the fruit market. Steve would come over and just hang. We would just sit there until something would come along. Bike down to thrashers? Great. Play basketball? Awesome. Toss the baseball if your dad can drive us to the Kirkland waterfront? Excellent. We get invited to ride on the jet skis of my neighbors? Wow. What a great time. What an excellent summer. All I worried about was mowing the lawn. Saturday? Ok. Mow the lawn.

Looking back now, I wasted so much time. Just sitting there. Watching TV. Watching at least 3 hours of TV a day. Hell. I had nothing else to do. I used to wake up to my mom watering the plants outside and just go sit out there in the morning sun in my boxers. 9:30 am. What a perfect time to wake up. And every night. Every night, it was mariners on TV. Dad BBQing. If I had even known that in a few years I would be working 8 hours a day while the sun came up and over my head, 70 degrees out and people going off the rope swing at Saint Ed's...if I had known that I would be stuck in a cubicle all that time I would've been going non stop those summers...because I guarantee I wasted about a quarter if not half of each summer I had.

So that's what I want. I want a summer. I want 3 long months. June 15th to September 15th. Sure, I'll go back after labor day. That's fine. I can compromise. June 15th to September 3rd or 4th...whatever the Tuesday is. In the working world that's what we would call a sebattical (sp) medical leave...am I pregnant? No. I just want the ability to just "hang". Maybe I should consider going back to being a poker pro...*heh*

Waterfights. July 4th. Baseball. Pick up basketball games. Girls in short skirts and tank tops. Washing and waxing the car. Sunsets at 10 pm. Ice cream. Tan skin. Sunglasses. Flip flops. Never looking at a calendar or a clock, no schedule whatsoever. Eating outdoors. Camping.

It's unrealistic. But it's a dream that I've lived before. If only I had known how good I had had it. Maybe some day I'll get another chance to experience that kind of freedom. That feeling of the last day of school. I thought I would get it before my 2 weeks of vacation at work...just wasn't the same.

It's late. I'm screwed for work tomorrow. Going to be very tired.

Detachment

I feel so far from everyone and everything

Today at work I maybe said 15-20 words to one of my coworkers

And that's when this feeling started to settle in, I'm hoping it will go away soon, but I'm afraid it won't. I drive to work alone every morning. Even if I took the bus, rarely would I meet someone that I could talk to normally on a daily basis.

I can't even hang out one on one with people for more than a few hours. I've lost a lot of my social skills I think. And I think I can see where it might be coming from.

Competition. Everything is a god damned competition to me. The simplest things become games in my head that I've got to win. If it has to do with something between you and I, I'm going to try my hardest to make sure that you are the loser. This attitude doesn't work very well in a casual social setting. I've tricked people in to making competitions of things by "betting on it". Something has always got to be riding on it for it to be worth anything to me. But that's not even it. I feel like it's enticing for others to "bet on it" against me.

Technology. The only time I talk to anyone outside of Michelle it's through email. It's someone reading this blog right now. It's the ICQ I send to my assistant manager who sits less than 5 feet from me. It's Nick chatting with me through IM. It's my cell phone. It's random people finding me on "myspace" and then trying to suddenly catch up on the last 6 years I haven't known them for. I'd say about once every 2 weeks do I actually get to spend quality time with a group of people, and this is important: When we're sober.

Alcohol/Drugs. Could I sit and just have a normal face to face conversation with the people I normally drink with, say, for two hours? I probably could. But it would be much easier if we were drunk or stoned. And to me, that's crazy. I didn't need that before I was however old when I started drinking. When I started drinking, suddenly, wow, I had an excuse to be the wild person I like to be. And most of the time, people are laughing?

I just now realized that wordpad doesn't have any spell check. And on that note, I will stop writing because I am afraid of grammatical and spelling errors. I would write more, but I am stopping. Because what I am writing is depressing. And I don't want to be uncomfortable socially. I don't want to have to drink to have a good time. I want to be able to talk to my friends in person. Short blog post, that's probably the only thing to be happy about. It's almost Tuesday.