The Move

My body aches from making this move. Stress has taken its toll on me this week. I haven’t made it to the gym in 2 weeks and my arms are hurting because I haven’t taken the time to massage them. I can’t wait until I get settled back into a “normal” routine. That will probably happen after I get all my stuff out of my old apartment and start working towards my goals.

Though, this move is part of that. So I need to accept the sore muscles and frustrations as part of the process.

All three of my new roommates are actors. Two of them are gone with touring theatre companies until April. The third roommate is here in NY. He is 22, fresh out of school, and straight. I make that point because one roommate is a lesbian and the other is gay. He says to me, “It is so good to have another straight male in the house. It is so refreshing.” The person I replaced was a straight woman, bur from the accounts I have heard so far, not too fun to live with. We are a diverse household as well. One roommate is 2 black, one white, and I guess I make the token Hispanic. (Well, ½ Hispanic).

So my roommate that here, let’s call him Joey (after the Friend’s character), is basically “young, dumb and full of cum.” A typically horny 22 year old looking for the next acting gig and next party. When I say “dumb” I don’t mean that he is unintelligent. Already, we have had some in depth conversations regarding politics, the arts, and life in NYC. But boy, he has done some stupid things in his life. Recent stuff, too.

Part of me just shakes my head and says, “That boy ain’t right!” I’d like to think that I had my head on more straight at 22 that he does.

I look back at between 22 and 23 and I remember the fun last months of college, graduating, moving to NC on a wing and prayer, and getting a low paying job at Greensboro College’s Financial Aid Office. I spent most of that year soul searching.

I read through every spiritual book I could get my hands on. I read the Bible twice. I was already having problems with organized Christianity during my senior of college. After college, through my academic research, I was really having a crisis of faith.

Perhaps, the “crisis” was there because I was thrust into the “real world” after having the structures of college to define who I am. After 5 years at Greensboro College, I really knew who I was and where I fit in. So rather than just blindly going into the workforce to have a midlife crisis later, I set out to find who I was. And that meant questioning every aspect of my life: my faith in Christianity (which I will touch on in future posts), my friendships, my ideas of love and infatuation, the pain of the problems those ideas caused.

Many weekend nights found me reading, searching or playing guitar rather than out partying. Also, in part because I was living on a tight budget that couldn’t afford many a night out But a large part because of the driving thirst to know who I was outside of the boundaries of college, family and religion.

I don’t know if everyone who lives on their own goes through similar thoughts. I have friends who moved back in with Mom and Dad after college. I have a friend who lived with his parents, got married at 24 and then lived in an apartment in the basement of said parents house with his wife until getting his own house two years ago. (He is going on 30 now.) Did those friends go through the same soul searching I did? Or is it just postponed until later in life because the structure of family is always there?

Does everyone go through this? Or are there people who really live unexamined lives for their entire time on this planet? (That would explain the Bush Administration SOOOO well!)

Again, I am thrust to take the time and find out who I am without the structures that were there. For five years I was in a relationship and I could define myself as “boyfriend to my girlfriend.” Now I am single and have to redefine myself. Not that this is bad, just something new. . . and exciting.