The variables that comprise my life are countless. Whether or not it is significant, every sensory perception that I experience has an impact on the structure of my personality. However, only through the gift of memory is it possible to appreciate these events. Every experience in life teaches me and conditions me, memory is the soil in which I grow. Quite often, memory is taken for granted, all these experiences behind us are often considered completely removed from our lives. Modern thought suggest that the past seems dead and distant, and that all emphasis should be put into the present or future. However it isn’t right to shove old memories out of the picture, they are just as much a part of a person’s life as those events yet to come. Memory and experience are things that can be continuously learned from. By reflecting upon past experiences with people, places and emotions, all of us can discover how these things have effected our current condition. Like all other people on this planet, who I am now is a result of my past experiences. Although it is impossible to account for every single experience I have had, I will mention a few prominent memories and experiences and proceed to explain how they have helped shape who I am as an individual today. I believe each and every memory and circumstance that I will mention has a significant role in my development as a human being and together unveil how I came to be the person I am today.

I grew up in a family of four. My mother worked as Orchestra and general music teacher for an elementary school in Highland Park (a slightly more urbanized suburb ten miles away) while my father worked middle management for a moderately successful stereo installation company. We were not rich by any stretch of the imagination. My family raised me in an extraordinarily utilitarian fashion. Since we didn’t have too much more money than was required to pay the bills, we did not spend much (if any) money on frivolous things. Unlike many children my age, my brother and I never had a Nintendo system for any part of our lives, it was seen as an unnecessary waste of money, time and brain cells. Thus, we did not own it. For similar reasons we never had large televisions, expensive furniture, fancy art, designer clothes or large quantities of toys. In every purchase we asked ourselves three questions: Do we need it? How much is it? Can we get the same thing for less? Using these strategies we were able to have the things we need, and live in the ideal community for my brother and I to grow up in.

The first thing that played a major role in my personal development was the place in which I grew up. I grew up in a moderately sized house in a northern suburb of Chicago called, Lake Bluff for the first thirteen years of my life. Lake Bluff is a small town, bordering somewhere between five and six thousand people. In this upper-middle class community, neighbors know each other, children play in the streets together and families mostly don’t have to worry about locking their doors at night. Early in my life, this was the entirety of my world. Everything was like this safe haven through my eyes because I had never truly experienced an environment to make me think otherwise. The peaceful nature of my environment enabled me to have a certain degree of freedom in where I could venture without parental supervision. Often my brother and I would stroll down the block by ourselves to buy candy from a gas station just on the corner of a busy street. We had no worries about ever being abducted or hurt by anyone. We had both been taught about the inherent danger of dealing with strangers, but had never been in any situations demanding caution.

My brother Marc was three years older than I, however despite our age difference he was also my most faithful playmate. Every day that the weather was pleasant you could find us outside in the back yard, our safe haven and escape from the real world. In my early years I clung onto my brother like life itself. He was my guide through daily adventures running through the
small forest behind our house, or further back into the mystical marshland. It didn’t matter to us that it was filled with waste from a local concrete plant, we would trudge through muck and jump off of large rusty oil drums. Since our back yard expanded into this “free space” it all seemed to belong to us. Nature provided an atmosphere of stress relief and constant interest. We didn’t associate nature with anything having to do with chores, stress, other people or negative emotions. These feelings of release while in the natural world followed both of us for many years to come, motivating us to go camping, hiking, skiing, mountain climbing, spelunking and river rafting when we were older.

Another reason why Marc and I so frequently made use of the outdoors was the fact that our house was full of stress quite frequently. I have memories running all through my childhood of my parents fighting, arguing and screaming. Over everything. Money, responsibilities, miscommunications, lack of communication, difference in opinion, ect. I did not know it then, but over last ten years of my parents marriage, a gap had been exponentially growing between them. Thus brings the next earliest influence I can think of of how I came to be the person I am today.

No matter where I was in my house I could always hear them. Resonating through the air ducts and seeping into my room no matter where they were. No matter how much they tried to damper their conflict, Marc and I always knew exactly what was happening. We never knew then what they argued about, nor did we care. We just wanted it to stop.

We never knew any different though. Our environment had always been like this. It never registered within us that parents were supposed to get along with each other. We never knew that there were much more constructive ways to deal with a disagreement rather than shouting it out. This atmosphere taught me that parents usually didn’t get along, and that the American family dream was only just a dream. Up until just a couple years ago, I had always thought that a functional relationship between husband and wife was impossible. I thought that no matter what, there were always underlying feelings of tension and disfunction underneath of any elaborate disguise that adults displayed for the world. Although this view might seem like it, I never felt cynical about it. To me, this was just the way things were. Love died after a while, the only reason why married couples stayed together was because of their legal binding.

Eventually this theory about marriage was slightly altered after I met a few happy married couples. I met a husband and wife two years ago whom, after 25 years of marriage, still love each other just as much. After four children and all those years, they still are madly in love with each other. These two, along with a few others really gave me a sense of hope about my possible future in monogamy. The introduction of circumstances outside of my own family gave me more sources of reference to make an opinion about marriage and the world. Thus, I revised my prior idea that all marriage was figurative imprisonment. I realized that, even though it is rare, there is hope for a long and healthy relationship with a loved one. Although for me the idea of marriage is still very frightening, I know that there is hope that everything doesn’t always turn for the worst.

My father was a repressor. Whenever there was an issue with my mother over anything he would withdrawal into denial and avoid the situation until my mother exploded at him. He always took the subordinate role in their relationship in that respect. In a way I am grateful to my father for his weak spirit and terror of approaching issues. I am thankful because I learned from his mistakes. Even as a child I saw him repressing and knew that I shouldn’t emulate that quality he has. Through him I taught myself to be better at attacking issues when they are small and insignificant, rather than letting them fester until they boil over.

One of his techniques for repression was working at the computer for hours and hours during the week. Avoiding his problems by focusing solely on the illuminated screen in front of him. At this point in time computers had just started being affordable for the general public. So my father enthusiastically purchased one and worked at it as a stress reliever for the tension between him and my mother. As a young boy I felt slightly threatened by this machine, it took away time that he could have spent with me and I resented that. However, instead of getting angry at the computer or my father, I would question him about it. I would ask him to show me how it worked because it seemed to be  a nice compromise to our predicament. Eventually over time I became quite adept with the machine. I had mastered the functions that I needed and felt quite proud of myself for that at such an early age.

Eventually the computer became an interest for me as well. This interest guided me to several levels of graphic design and technology courses several years later in high school. I learned how to program HTML, design graphic interfaces and assemble web sites from scratch. I also became skilled with video editing software for independent films. In middle school I was even an important member of our local “Robot Club”. Thus through my father’s repression and my reaction to that, I was opened up to a whole new world of creative outlets. The technological world was for me an escape from life’s problems, but balancing that out was a new art form and source of creative energy. Technology for me became a constructive activity rather than a withdrawal from reality.

My early years in school were never something that I enjoyed. The earliest memories were not filled with happy memories of the playground or any sort of excitement for learning new things. I was a quiet child, I mostly kept to myself up until about tenth grade. I was always that person whose existence was only known because of the physical space they took up. I had a few friends, good ones at that, however I never felt a need to make my presence known to many people. I moved silently through the hallways of all the schools I attended. I almost never was stopped by anyone to talk because very few people extended interest towards me. I wasn’t an attention-getter. Often I would sit alone during recess on the least favorite piece of playground equipment where no one bothered me. I would watch the other kids play and interact. I’d wonder why I wasn’t with them, what made me different, if there was anything wrong with me. For many years in elementary school I was often made fun of because of my long hair. I excluded myself from social situations in fear of additional retribution. I kept my hair long for many years though, it was important to me because my brother had long hair at that time too. Because I was still in a time of emulation, I looked up to my brother’s individuality and strove to achieve something like it. I saw strength in how he purposefully differentiated himself from the masses and wanted to strive for something like that. However, one thing that was different between Marc and I at this point in our lives was the fact that he defended his appearance with witty comebacks and occasionally physical fights (which he would win). I just absorbed the verbal abuse in silence and went to sulk off in my corner of the playground. This developed into a terrible self image problem over the years. I never thought I had any sort of value, I was just another social outcast who wasn’t really special at all. Eventually in order to try and alleviate my self image problems, I cut my hair and went through a few years of strict conformity, this happened in some of the most cruel years of schooling... middle school.

Middle school, for me and many others as well, was hell. This was a time of senseless cruelty between people of the same age group. This era of changing hormones and attitudes sent me into the greatest social withdraw of my life. Instead of just finding myself socially withdrawn, I made a distinct effort to stay away from the people around me, save a few good friends. At this time in my life, I was criticized for the most mundane things: the way I dressed, my posture, the amount of hair on my legs, my abilities in gym class, my abilities in any class, what I did for fun, how I talked, how I presented myself to the world, etc. I was under constant scrutiny by the more aggressive classmates. However I never was expected to change how I looked, that would be seen as more weakness that they could take advantage of. This constant harassment took it’s toll on my psyche. In addition to building upon my self image problems, I started becoming paranoid. I would talk to myself as I walked down the hallways. My head was constantly filled with thoughts of how everyone was out to make fun of me, how everyone hated me and wanted nothing more than to see me suffer. Obviously these thoughts weren’t accurate, they were just being stupid middle school brats, but I never knew any better then. Eventually things got to a point where people started noticing my behavior, it was then that people started making fun of me for being a “paranoid freak”. My reaction to that level of scrutiny was a total reconstruction of my being. I figured if people were going to be jerks no matter what I did, I may as well be made fun of for being myself, not a conformed version of myself. I started growing out my hair again.

My academics up until 10th grade always left something to be desired. I had frequent attendance problems due to my not liking anything about school. Obviously the environment wasn’t a favorable one to my mental health, so often I would fake illness just to have a chance to sit around all day and avoid work and stress. Because of this I got left behind with homework assignments and study habits. My inability to keep up with school work only added to my own self disgust. Not only was I a social outcast, but I felt unintelligent as well. I took on a defeatist attitude at a very early age and never thought I could achieve anything beyond c’s d’s and b’s (at best). Although these existential feelings of academic frustration have never entirely left me, I have realized that my difficulty with school under a direct correlation with the effort that I choose to put into my work, not because I lack the ability to do well. I realized that it was all about the choices that I make, not my inherent ability as a person.

There were two people I learned valuable life lessons from at an early age. When I was young, very few of my peers made any permanent impressions upon my character. After all, there isn’t too much you can learn from your friends in elementary school. We were all just children, we had virtually no life experience whatsoever. All we knew was what we experienced in school, home and the playground. We had no other source of knowledge at that point. However I did learn valuable lessons from two distinct individuals while I was very young.

The first peer I learned from was a girl named Holly Yates. Our friendship spanned from roughly second grade through fourth grade (until her family moved away). We were best friends for these two years. I was a frequent playmate on the weekends and often came over to her house to watch disney movies and play games with each other. Our friendship was a spectacle of innocence. I never realized until years later the importance of that friendship. My relationship with Holly was unique mainly because she was a girl. It is extraordinarily common at that age for boys and girls to separate themselves from one another. There was a constant competition between the genders because it was something that made individuals different from each other, each group would point out the other’s flaws, make fun the the other, or accuse them of having “cooties”. For some individuals, this separation leaves a distinct impression. I know people my own age who do not voluntarily communicate with the opposite gender unless they want favors or sex. However, because of my close relationship with Holly at such an early age, I am capable of befriending a female without such intentions. Holly taught me how to appreciate all people despite their gender, and treat them all the same.

The other peer I learned a valuable lesson from early in my life was a boy named Billy Uhlig. Unfortunately I can’t say that I learned this lesson in the greatest of circumstances, I learned the most from Billy, in his death. Billy was a close friend of mine for many years up until his untimely death in sixth grade. Billy was struck by a car while walking through traffic merely fifty feet from his front door. He was hospitalized for two days before death caught up with him. I attended his wake, and staring into his placid, white face, I became familiar with death. I had been to a funeral before, but never a wake with an open casket. And certainly never the ceremony of someone so close to me. Billy taught me to appreciate life at an early age because I found out that any of us could die at any point in time. Death spared no one, even the young. Later in the week after his funeral service I wrote a poem about death and the appreciation of life. It is a quaint, short and to the point poem, however being written by a sixth grader it bares the message of early awareness.

My illusion of stability in my family was shattered when my parents, in the February of 2000, announced to my brother and I that they were going to get a divorce. Up until the end of eighth grade, life for me was relatively stable. Although my parents were arguing with growing intensity, I was getting by reasonably well in my own little world. I had a good set of routines established in both my family setting and at school. One day they took us down into the family room of the house and with great emotion told my brother and I of their plans. Marc and I sat there quietly as both my mother and father went on long elaborate explanations for their actions, like they had to justify what they were doing to us. As if we had been deaf for all these years. Throughout the whole thing my mother was very quiet and serious, my father broke into tears, now and then removing his glasses and wiping his eyes with a tissue. Both of my parents felt the need to apologize continually throughout the entire experience. Marc and I just sat there and listened without expression or emotion. After the episode in the family room had finally come to a conclusion and my brother and I ascended the staircase to our rooms, he turned to me and said in a quiet voice, “It’s about time.”. “Uh-hu.” I replied.

Another experience in my childhood that had a large impact on me as a person was when my mother told my brother and I she was a lesbian. She explained that a reasonably sized fraction that played a role in her divorce with my father was the fact that about five years prior, she had discovered that she no longer found any man attractive, that her biological inclination had switched over to women rather than men. Even though this may seem like a foreign concept for an eighth grader to accept, it was easy for me because I had had a few inclinations that she would come out to me. Although I did not consciously anticipate her lifestyle change, I wasn’t surprised by it. I saw certain books laying around the house in obvious places, books entitled Women loving Women  or Are you Gay? 10 easy steps to self Discovery. I may have been young... but not stupid. My mother’s coming out to me did not effect my outlook upon her terribly much. I lost no respect for her that I had had, I did not feel betrayed or abandoned when she later moved in with her partner, in fact, later when I was talking with Marc, I said “It’s about time she told us.” His response was, “Uh-hu.” We didn’t even ask many questions about it or doubt it. We accepted it as a simple fact right away, our mother was a lesbian.

Later on in high school, around the middle of my junior year, I too began to question my own sexuality. I believe that the origin of those feelings arose from seeing my mother’s liberation through redefinition of her own sexual orientation. While thinking of her, I wondered, “Could I like men as well as women?” At that point in my life I didn’t know my preference. So I joined our local GSA (gay-straight alliance) in order to submerse myself in a possible alternative culture of high school youth. I found that I was extraordinarily gay-friendly and supported them as much as I possibly could. For me, this was both a means of self discovery as well as a personal effort to reestablish the fact that I approved my mother. I had to prove it to myself that I wholly accepted her lifestyle by being an active participant in this group. At the same time I discovered a slight interest in the same gender, however the required attributes I demanded in order to take serious interest in a male where so specific that I never really got any experience with my own gender. It is still hard for me to determine whether or not I ever was (or will be) a true bisexual because of these strict guidelines. Some people understand my need for specific personal attributes, however some people also say that by making these strict guidelines I make it impossible to find a male I’d take interest in, and that it is all just a sham so I can call myself ‘Bisexual’ because it is a ‘trendy’ thing to be these days. My general response to this is, “Hmm, good point. Maybe you’re correct, I don’t know.” It doesn’t really matter to me what label I fall under, I’ll be with whoever I want to be in either case.

High school started out very poorly for me. I suffered from an awful depression for the entire freshman year due to a mixture between my parent’s situation and the fact that my grades were extraordinarily poor. A great deal of my depression arose from my inability to adapt to my new surroundings and my lack of a good work ethic. I believe I had no future in this world, that I was a failure as a person and had no talent whatsoever. Because of this awful depression I often pondered suicide. I honestly thought that the world would be a better place without my presence in it. I never attempted to commit suicide, I decided that before I ended my existence I should at least try to get some help. So I told my parents about my emotional status and the severity of it. I was given a therapist and medicated with an antidepressant. At first I sensed no change in my mood, life dragged on as it always had. Although I was medicated I was still depressed. This probably derived from the fact that three days after my mother moved out of the house, my dad got a girlfriend, Vicki. The presence of this women definitely took a toll on my mental health. She would continually invade Marc and my territory, trying to “bond” with us by giving us books and baking (really shitty) cookies for us. We felt that this woman was stealing our father away from us in the time which we needed him most. My father would often spend somewhere between three and four nights at Vicki’s house, leaving Marc and I alone in an empty house. We felt abandoned and unloved, put second behind this women. As the weeks and months went on, Vicki continuously pushed her presence into our lives. Eventually my father felt the need to live with this women and talked to my brother and I about it. We denied her access to our house. We unanimously decided that her visiting here was one thing, but her living in our territory was unthinkable. Also we refused to move into her spacious dwelling. We would feel homeless in that act, we could never live in a stranger’s house. Marc and I thought that we had won the battle by declaring these two things. However my father came up with an option that would make everybody equally miserable: sell both homes and buy a new house.

Although my home was full of constant emotional trials my mood eventually became more stable. Adapting to my new environment with my father, Vicki and Marc was definitely a challenge even greater than I had ever imagined, but luckily I didn’t have to do it alone. I always had the support of my mother, my brother, my therapist, and if nothing else: antidepressants. Medication empowered my consciousness, giving me the ability to see every situation from two standpoints: my initial emotional reaction, and my intellectual reaction. Before I was on medication, I could only react to high stress situations with my initial emotional reaction. Everything felt abrasive to my mind, mixing me up and turning everything against me. Medication leveled to playing field and gave me the power to deduce most of my emotions and situations. I was able to see that nearly nothing of what was going on around me was my fault, that things would work themselves out in due time, and that nothing could get worse than it already was. However, just as I was starting to get my feet off the ground, one of my major allies left. Marc left.

The time had come for my brother Marc to finally make the first step towards leaving the household. He chose to differ from going straight off to college in favor of satisfying one of his life long dreams. To hike the Appalachian trail. He left the summer after my freshman year of high school for three months. This left me to fend for myself in our new household and learn how to deal with my father and Vicki on my own. When my brother left, I started to truly become an individual. I was already starting to outgrow my tendencies to idolize him, and his absence from my living environment made that possible. I began making discussions about how I acted, dressed and lived in a whole new light. He was no longer there to guide me, he was off living his own life, just as I had to. So the first thing I did with my new power of individual consciousness was move out of my father’s house.

The decision to move in with my mother was a very easy one to make. In either case I had to live with what may as well have been a stranger, I would rather live with a stranger who did not aggressively take away one of my parents and invade my habitat. Instead of Vicki I would be living with my mother’s partner, Pat. Unlike my father and Vicki, my mother and Pat’s living environment had very little underlying tension. There was a great uneasiness that floated around my father’s house that I could not help but be effected by. This new environment seemed much more welcome to my existence. I did not have to coop myself up in my room constantly to get peace. Also, unlike Vicki, I actually liked Pat. I understood why my mother was with her. Their union made sense to me. My father’s union seemed to me to be a “rebound” relationship gone madly out of control. One more factor that made living with my mother much more tolerable was the fact that I chose to go there. When I was with my father I was simply submitting to his power as a parental unit. By moving in with my mother I took greater control of my life and affirmed that I could make decisions for myself. I was quickly learning what it was to weigh serious options about how I wanted to live and with whom.

The next substantial thing that contributed to whom I am today was my discovery of Taoism. Up until this point in my life I had primarily been a social and environmental construction. My personality traits were developed in a sort of evolutionary way. All of my prior environments required patience, so I had patience. The damage done to my ego through school required humility, so I was humble. It was through my reaction to different environments that I became the person I was then. However, one day I was sorting through my mother’s book collection and found a copy of the Tao Te Ching. I thought to myself, “Hey, eastern stuff is kind of cool.” So I began to flip through the pages. The chapters of poetic philosophy struck me deeply as I progressed through the book. Their divine simplicity and logic resonated with something deep inside of me. It stirred my soul and made me curious and reflective. It moved me enough that I felt self motivated towards something, which for me at this point in my life, was rare.

It motivated me to buy my own copy of the Tao and start reading and rereading it frequently. I went to a bookstore and found a copy that was small enough to carry in my back pocket. More than anything else I loved the feeling I got when I read the book. It was like a drug to me. No matter where I was I could bring out this glorious text that would center me. It made me naturally tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted and dignified. It taught me how to go with the natural flow of the universe, even if it was for tiny moments at a time. The Tao became my relief from life’s onslaught of stress, confusion and haste. It slowed my mind down into a healthy rhythm that I could feel resonating all around me.

Eventually, instead of just reading the Tao and finding merely comfort in it, I started using the Tao. The Tao Te Ching after all, is a guide to living and making choices about life. As I read the text over and over again I began to become familiar with it, and could draw on it’s knowledge whenever I wanted. The only trick was that I had to remember to use it when I needed. I began to start training myself to shift from my natural emotional responses to responses that I read about in the Tao. I saw my three greatest treasures in life as compassion, simplicity and patience towards all things, people and situations. I began trying to take every free moment I could to re-center myself by contemplating the words I had run over so many times. When dealing with stressful situations in my home, or giving advice to my friends, I would use the lessons in the Tao Te Ching as my guide. Eventually I got to the point where I never left my home without my copy of the Tao.

As my interest grew in the Tao Te Ching, I began to expand my research to other books as well. I started buying books on Taoism, the religion as well as the philosophy. I wanted to learn enough about Taoism that I could finally consider myself a Taoist. It is true that I had been studying the Tao Te Ching for quite some time, however I saw a distinct difference between what I was and what I would consider a Taoist. I felt that at my current level of knowledge and understanding of the religion, it would be insulting to the Taoist community to consider myself one of them. So Taoism became a prominent hobby of mine and has been for the last three years of my life. My studies were never really rigorous by any stretch of the imagination. I would only read when I had the time or remembered to.

My reading wasn’t only contained to Taoism. I found several closely relating belief systems that I read about in order to add some contrast to my knowledge. I read books on Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Shamanism and Confucianism. All of these religions were interesting to ponder and reflect upon, however none of them resonated with me the same way that Taoism did. There is a simple sense of fulfillment that I link with Taoism that I have never found in any other belief system.

I was lucky to find the Tao Te Ching when I did. It was a terribly chaotic and stressful time in my life. I was an angst filled high school student in need of something deeper, in need of a guiding force, in need of something to put my faith into. Luckily Taoism came to my aid. My initial attraction to Taoism as a possible religion for myself was not only the feeling I got when I read it, but the fact that in order to follow the Tao you do not need faith. So many religions require you to have faith in some sort of deity or afterlife in order to give your life and existence meaning. Taoism doesn’t require anything of the sort. It is a celebration of the way the universe is, not how it might be. I don’t need to believe in resurrection, walking on water, parting of oceans, gods and wrath in order to be a Taoist. I have no hopes for heaven and no fears for hell. I will not be judged at the end of my life, my life will simply end. I do not even have to believe that enlightenment is possible! Even though Taoism makes reference to masters and enlightened beings, I don’t need to believe any of it because I can see the good that it is doing me regardless of any myth.

It was in the ladder half of high school that I started exploring the concept of relationships. The instilled insecurity about myself, my appearance and who I was as a person kept me from trying too much to display myself to others as a possible candidate for a relationship. Although I had had many crushes, I saw those as minor infatuations that came and went. Often I grew angry at myself because of my own insecurity. Logically I knew there was nothing wrong with me, but whenever I looked someone in the eye I crumbled and reverted to an asexual disposition. This was consistent until my junior year of high school when someone else asked me out. Her name was Jessica, she was from another suburb of chicago about twenty five minutes away from me. I met her at a party through one of my friends in late November. She became infatuated with me for reasons I did not understand then. She too, had self image problems and insecurity. I decided to partake in the relationship because I needed to experience it sometime, why not then? I saw it as an easy opportunity because I did not have to make the first move to initiate the relationship, which I considered the hardest part.

My relationship with Jessica was short lived. Though out the relationship I noticed an increasing gap between us that was based on very different views on life and exceedingly separate personal interests. We did not connect to each other through anything we did. Whenever we were out and about we were doing something that either pleased her or me, but never both. Our views on how to live life differed as well. She saw success and profit through capitalism as the means to live a happy life. She saw materialism as the only way to make a person truly “successful”, complete or happy. I disagreed with that avidly because of the happiness that I had achieved through Taoism, which advocates a lack of material wealth. After about three months, Jessica found out that I had been experimenting with marijuana and decided that in addition to our growing distance that was grounds enough to end the relationship. I shed no tears over the breakup because I had been unhappy with her for quite a while after realizing the only thing we had in common was that we were both hormone filled high school kids.

It was my brother who introduced me to the drug culture. In high school he had never abused substances, however while hiking the Appalachian trail after school he was introduced to marijuana by other through hikers. After the trail and his experiences in college, he came back home to live in an apartment complex near me. Because of my residual idolization of Marc, in addition to my natural curiosity, I decided to try marijuana when he offered it to me. The experience I had was nothing I considered special. I felt lazy, stupid, and wasteful. His apartment was filled with people older than I. Most of them were somewhere between 20 and 26 working dead-end jobs just to pay the rent. Often I would sit in the living room watching very stoned people playing video games and listening to industrial techno. The environment offered little contribution to anything for me at that time in my life, I merely saw it as a way to bond with my brother while he was at home. However, on good nights, when we were feeling talkative, we would often engage in deep conversations about spirituality. While in college my brother discovered a love for Tibetan Buddhism. Being slightly similar to Taoism, and having known a little bit about it, I loved sitting around talking with Marc about the nature of the human spirit, spiritual interaction between people in everyday life and manipulation of energy through meditation. Some of my greatest moments with my brother were talking with him about spirituality. Almost simultaneously in our lives we had both found something beyond the physical realm, a guiding force that gave both of our lives direction based on our personal interpretation of the religions.

Talking with my brother about spirituality strengthened the bond between us greatly. It introduced a whole new level of connection between us that we had never considered before. To each other, we became sources of insight and objectivity, whenever one of us encountered a problem that threw off our judgment, the other would always step in with insight and wisdom to guide the other. Our separate personalities complimented each other and our compassion held us together in stressful times. Our talks would often drift to one problem we both had to deal with, our parents. When dealing with my parents became increasingly difficult, Marc would always be there to help me through it. Unlike most other people, he knew what I had to deal with just as well as I did. He understood my mother and father a little better than I did because of his age. We’d sit around and talk about each of our parents separate motivations, hopes, dreams and processes of thought.

It was around this time in high school that I really started blossoming as a social entity. After having a relationship I started having more confidence in myself as well as having a clue on how to interact with the opposite sex in more than friendly terms. In addition to that I started becoming significantly more social in my free time. Now that I could drive and had a few more friends I went out to do things every night of the weekend and sometimes during the week. The night began to hold some value for me as a time in which I could go out and connect with other people, possibly going to coffee shops, late night diners, movies and all sorts of very teenage places. Although going all these places didn’t change me in any drastic way, it helped build a stronger foundation for human connection. All of these types of human interaction became increasingly easy for me to handle and feel comfortable in.

It was because of my increased social interaction that I met Catie, who eventually became my second girlfriend. We met at a social gathering at my brother’s apartment one evening and eventually became good friends in school. It was my junior year, and she was a senior. I found instant interest in her that slowly became a sizable crush. Often I would skip my gym class just to visit with Catie and her friend Jill during their lunch hour. Our relationship eventually rose to dating status after about 3 months of knowing Catie. It’s hard to pin down who exactly initiated the relationship in the beginning, it just sort of started happening gradually. Catie was the first person whom I had ever had romantic feelings for in my life. My prior relationship had none of those feelings and before that I had had nothing but insignificant crushes. About two months into our relationship we realized that we were in love with each other. Of course, being so young, we weren’t quite sure what to do with those intense feelings, so we pretended that age didn’t matter and went on being happy with each other. The summer after her senior year was one of the greatest times of my life. Catie and I would go to our jobs during the afternoons and in the evenings either stay in or go out, it didn’t matter to us. The summer didn’t have any huge, life changing occurrences, however the sheer quantity of wonderful small moments turned it into one of the greatest periods of my life.

Catie taught me about making a real human connection. Being with her has taught me just how great interaction with another human being can be. She taught me about patience for other’s natural needs and speeds in life, she taught me how to trust another human being completely, how to take refuge in others and let my guard down once in a while. She taught me to be much more attentive to other people’s feelings, even when they don’t vocalize them. How to look into someone’s eyes and see what kind of things they were thinking. Catie taught me how to share myself with another human being in ways I never had before.

Although we considered it many times, our relationship did not end when she left for College. It continued on for the better part of one and a half years. However, after some time we had each grown enough in different directions that things fell apart.

My senior year of high school breezed by very quickly. It was a flurry of chaos and learning all at once. By the end of my junior year and all of my senior year I had finally learned a few tricks to get by with descent grades in school while having an adequate amount of free time to balance it out. I spent more and more of my time out of the house, out socializing or at work almost every night of the week. It got to the point eventually that I had to tell my mother which one or two nights I would be home to eat dinner with her during the week. I was always flying at a million miles an hour traveling from one destination to the next, meeting people, going to Tae Kwon Do lessons, ect. Although there were very few prominent moments helping shape me as a person, the entire year was a constant evolutionary journey for me. I learned more about myself, what I wanted from the world around me, what interested me and what I needed from other people. I saw myself as a harmonious balance between social constructions and independent development and that balance satisfied me.

It was senior year in high school when I finally started becoming okay with who I was as a person. I looked at myself and I found out that I was proud of my interests, my experiences and who I was. At that moment in my life, it finally became okay for me to be more outgoing and chaotic about my actions. It became okay for me to bend social norms in an effort to either get a rise out of people or for my own expressive satisfaction (often both). Eventually I reached the point that when I met a new person I was more interested in engaging them in interesting conversation than what they thought of me. I established a useful disconnection with how others saw me because it no longer mattered as greatly as it had before for me. I even celebrated my freedom of action by, whenever I was in a playful mood, speaking complete nonsense, being loud and chaotic or silly in front of masses of people I didn’t even know. The gradual transformation and establishment of “myself” peaked during the summer of my senior year in high school, right before the greatest transition I had to face in my youth, the move to college.

College was (and will continue to be) the most influential time of my life. Right from the beginning, it was such an extraordinarily different life structure than any I had previously known that I did not know quite how to operate in it. It completely redefined my lifestyle, it changed who I lived with, what I ate, what clothes I wore, how I presented myself, how I acted, what governed my time and my views on social interaction. It is a massive transition like the one between high school and college that points out just how malleable human beings are. I know that college changed who I perceive myself to be, and it is a lot harder to see that in yourself than for others to see it in you. How much of the change within me has been due to my new social environment versus my isolated evolution as an individual, I cannot put my finger on. The physical changes are easy to see and easy for me to justify. I grew out my hair because one day I would like to be able to fit it into a top knot, which is the way Taoist Acolytes wear it. I grew out a beard because I that is also a trait of a ancient Taoist. I got a tattoo on my back of a piece of Taoist scripture because it makes me feel more a part of my spirituality. I got piercing because it is something I have longed to do for a long time and did not know how my parents would respond. I find it funny how many of the changes in myself over the two terms I’ve been in school have been religion motivated. Three out of four of my physical changes have to do with my spiritual beliefs and reaffirming them. Gradually I am changing the process in which I behave and think even more to go along with those themes. I started off the school year as the wild, chaotic person I was in the summer of my senior year, however as my stay at Knox continued I have grown increasingly more quiet and introspective. (This is not to be confused with depression.)

College has taught me a lot, but I think that the most I’ve learned so far has nothing to do with what I had studied in any class. I’ve learned a great deal about human nature and relationships here at Knox. Relationships in every sense of the word. I learned that it is possible to know anyone you see. It sounds ridiculously simple, but so many people go through their lives seeing such interesting looking strangers, and never having the gall to meet them. Here at Knox I realized that it’s a small world, and chances are you will have a lot in common with the strangers you want to meet the most. This term alone I have become aware of interesting people that I wanted to meet, and I went through the necessary actions that were required to become familiar with them. Very quickly I found myself with three new friends.

In addition to social relationships, I have also learned a lot about romantic relationships at Knox as well. At the beginning of the term, I came here a single man. Catie and I were trying another separation because we recognized the fact that the first year of college changes everyone drastically. We both wanted to have our options open during this time of turmoil, and we would decide when we met each other as new people if we wanted to start the relationship again. I took advantage of this freedom and nurtured my insanity greatly during my first term here. I went out, drank, abused substances, tried out every kind of social interaction I could think of. However it didn’t get me anywhere I wanted to be. So I tried wading into more intimate relationships with people and found myself in very deep water very quickly. (Yes John, allusion intended). I formed two different relationships during my first term. One of them was very early in the year and was completely physical with no real connection whatsoever. That lasted about two weeks. The other relationship I had took me greatly off guard. I found new type of connection with another human being that I had not previously considered, nearly total connection. My level of connection with Catie had been high, but we still had our differences. Most of the time these differences complimented each other quite nicely. Consistency to my spontaneity, discipline to my chaos, type A to type B. However in my relationship at school, I found I had such a high level of connection with the other person that we could nearly read each other’s thoughts. So I pursued this connection very happily until winter break, when I saw Catie again. That’s when things got complicated.

I had to reevaluate my current life style and make a decision. I had to compare strength of feeling, happiness and fulfillment on both fronts and make a decision. I knew what both of them wanted, but I could not make both happy. Familiarity or exciting new possibilities? It was at that point in my life when I realized love could split in many different directions at once. It was at that point in my life when I also realized I wasn’t nearly as together as I had thought. Logic and emotion made themselves very obvious as completely separate entities this year. They always had been, but this was when I finally got to put it into play. Logically I should have went with the relationship that was closest to me if it made me happy, however the love and sentimentality that had been marinading in me for a year and a half won the battle.

Needless to say, all situations like that are sticky. No matter what a person does in that situation, someone is going to end up being disappointed (to put it nicely). The entire experience brought to light just how complex human emotions can be, there were times when I was so baffled by myself I felt like a stranger in my own body.

A stranger in my own body? After all of these years I still don’t have the greatest idea as to who I am. I know what I am, I know my interests, I can predict my behavior... even control it sometimes! However I don’t have anymore of an idea as to who I am than any other time in my life because as I continue to peal back the layers of my consciousness I just discover more that baffles me. I don’t think I’ll ever really know myself fully, I believe that human nature is a holistic idea, and even if I could remember every moment of my life and analyze it I would still not be able to account for the totality of my character. That is what attracts me so much about life though, self discovery. If there was ever a time in which I stopped learning new things about myself I would consider myself dead. Self discovery and learning are what make us fundamentally human. I would never want to give that up, the rapturous sensation of discovery, within and without myself. I look forward to each layer I can peel through. Every step of ascended self awareness is a greatly enjoyed journey, and I always look forward to making the next one.