Post One, Day One

I don’t want to set the tone by posting my first entry while depressed, or while having a bad week.  But, as in real life, not everything is happy and great, and that has surely been the case for me lately.  I don’t know what it is.  I think it has something to do with the end of summer, the last week of August and what that has always meant in the past – the dread of school on the horizon.  Nine months ahead of the same thing and the same people I don’t want to see.  Now, I have to figure out a new path.  Having just graduated ‘real’ college (UMD) in spring of 2006, I have yet to find a job that, frankly, isn’t a job I could have gotten without the degree.  And that is one facet of the depression.

 I went back to college with the intent of starting my life on a good note – doing something good to invest in my future, and psychology was the path I wanted to go down.  I knew that I needed another degree after the undergraduate in psychology.  Little did I know that the Masters’ in Social Work program is next to impossible to get in to, and almost everything has to do with your undergraduate GPA (unusual for a social work program – in the past it’s been more about your ability to connect and work with diverse populations of people).  However, this year it’s all about your GPA, and mine wasn’t good enough for what they wanted.  So now, while I find myself with a degree, I find myself with a degree I can’t do much of anything with.  It’s basically a high school diploma remixed for 2007.  And I had to take out loans to get it.  And now the loan people are hounding me like you wouldn’t believe.  So now, I basically know the meaning of flat broke.  I don’t have ten bucks to my name at this point.  Which explains the next depression: no prospects, no boyfriend, and no money to leave here even if I wanted to.

 I haven’t met anyone special since October 1995.  That lasted just short of a year, and for whatever reason my luck with meeting other gay men that I have some interest in (and they’re interested in me too) never ever seems to happen.  While Duluth might be changing demographically in every other sense, there are NO new gay men here.  None that I haven’t already seen or heard of, and none that even interest me enough to want to know about them.   Now, in Minneapolis, the scene was the same, because most of the gay men there lived and breathed the stereotpye which turns me off faster than anything else.  When I met Jeff in 1995, he was everything I could have wanted at the time.  At 21, I felt that this was the guy I was going to spend most of my life with, and I could relax and not worry anymore.  By September 1996, apparently he didn’t feel the same way because I came home to find him, his stuff and any piece of paper with his name on it gone.  I literally never saw him again after that, and since then, I have not met anyone special.  I am still angry for the reasons why he left, but I don’t regret meeting him.  I know what I want in terms of a relationship.  Little did I know that the options for finding someone gay, healthy, young, attractive, and fun to be around is so low that it’s taken over 12 years to find him.  I don’t know what conclusions to draw at this point.  It just grates my nerves to see people younger than me who not only have found that special person but have kids too, all in all they have everything they could ever want.  I have no idea what that would even be like. 

Which is difficult because I wonder what this is all for.  All these people I see that I work with have motivation to work hard and get someplace in life – they have significant others and children.  I have nobody.  I have no reason to really do anything because at the end of the day it’s just going to be me.  How do I feel good about that?  Realistically I have had to give up on so many dreams that would have made me happy (finding someone to love, possibly adopting or having children, the idea of a family) and it’s excruciating – having to give up on those things has been the most depressing, painful thing so far in my life.  But after 12 years of nothing happening, what am I supposed to do?  Wait another 15-20 years here for the one or two gay people who might show up?  Wait that amount of time believing the people who say ‘you’ll find someone’?  That hasn’t happened.  I’m lost because I don’t know what’s next, or how to alter my perception of what should be next.