Thought Catalog

Ummmmm...

For once I don't really have a solid idea of what I'm going to write this one about, I guess you could call it a rant? I'm not very animated, so it's more like a... rambling? Eh, I don't plan to go on and on, so let's just settle for extended exposition. 

I've lived all of nineteen years on planet earth and I've realized people come and go. I moved to another country when I was only seven years old. I had to leave behind everything I had gotten used to as a child, my friends, the quaint town I grew up in, and even simple things like the weather. England and Jamaica truly are night and day. In fact, when I first moved I asked my mother if there would be enough food! Haha, in my defense I didn't even know where Jamaica was and all I knew about predominantly black nations was what I saw from "Save the children" ads on tv.

My first year in Jamaica was a lot of growing pains, I didn't know anybody, and the Jamaican school system was differently socially. A lot of the kids thought I was queer at first, which I guess is to be expected when you move from one of the most tolerant LGBT countries to one of the top anti LGBT communities. Not that I'm gay, I was just used to more casual intimacy between two people. Nonetheless, I adapted, because that's what I always do. After a while I made a few friends, but I wasn't happy, so then I was moved to another school, and the people there were forgotten. 

From a well established public school, to a very posh private international school was another huge jump. Despite being in Jamaica, most of the people there were children of US or UK citizens working with their embassies. It felt more like I was back in England than I was in Jamaica. I could relate to the people there. Even though we rarely every shared the same culture, we shared the same social and economic background. If your parents have money anywhere in the world, you're used to certain things I guess. I made friends from Paraguay, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, and a whole host more. The only downfall is that embassy personnel get shifted around every few years or so. So every year I could expect one or two of my friends to be leaving for what would seem forever. At least I could keep in contact via facebook. 

I spent six years at that school, my closest friends moving in and out like a revolving door. Eventually my parents due to issues at home wanted to get me out of the house. So the best movie they could consider was moving me to a very renowned boarding school out in the country. My neighbour went there in his days, and my other neighbour said it was always his dream to be a student, but he never went because his family would miss him. It was all leading me there. Halfway through the school year I was pulled out and flung into another entirely new world. 

My years spent at a boarding school at the very top of a mountain, in the very deepest bush of our country were a special set of years. It was seven whole years of adventure and wonder and I met some of the best people, in my opinion, in the world. It's hard to explain to someone who has never been to a boarding school the type of bond you make with somebody. All I can say is to picture your relationship with your best-friend. They always listen to your problems, they give you some of their lunch when you forget your lunch money, they help you with homework, they'll even fight someone for you. They're always there some way or another. Well, when you go to boarding school, your friends are actually there, right there, 24/7 for months at a time. You forgot an extra towel? Or they help you sneak into the dining hall when you're late. They ditch Sunday church with you, and make up an alibi for why you were late for class. They tell prefects you're in the bathroom when you're really out goofing off somewhere on campus. They are the type of people you go through near death with, and live nearly every day of normal life with. It's hard to describe any better than that.

So as you can imagine... after seven whole years, when the day comes for graduation, none of us could face it with dry eyes. Seven years of rule breaking, late night talks, school, sports, girls, illegal off-campus excursions, and everything else you could dream of. It came to an end. All of us to be dispersed again, spread out across the island, across the globe even. Some of us are in America now, some of us even made it twenty hours away to China! Our Brotherhood has been broken, but the bond, that seven year bond, cannot be broken.

All of this may seem a bit unusual to talk about but, the point is. I'm used to people leaving me, and I'm used to being alone. I grew up as an only child with parents that would get pains if they tried to play with me. I grew up in the years before boarding school with a friend who wasn't allowed to leave his front porch. Yeah, his front porch! We used to play cards and Gameboy through his grill! Most days I would just kick a soccer ball between the swings set, and run for it, and kick it again. It may sound depressingly lonely to most people, but what is fun and what is boring is on a scale. If you've never heard of a PlayStation4, then a PlayStation3 is damn fun. You think it's lame, I can't imagine anything better.

So as you can see... I've always been alone, but that never meant I felt like I was lonely or abandoned. I just knew it was just me. That's the way it was? It's not like a unicycle spends it's whole life looking for another wheel to become a bicycle. It can rid just fine. It may take a little more effort and skill to be a good time, but it can still be a good time. So maybe I was a unicycle, but I didn't mind. It hurt a lot seeing my friends come and go every year, or never being able to see the ones that were actually around but it never got me down. It got to a point where i just understood people leave. My biological father is dead. My adopted father is gone. That's just what it is. People leave.

What I'm trying to say is, just because people leave doesn't mean you have to be crippled by their disappearance. I've come to understand people go, but that doesn't mean I have to be demoralized. It also certainly means that I shouldn't expect people to leave. When you always expect people to leave, then you'll never have the power to make them stay. It's almost like magnets. Most times you'll be matched up just right with somebody, and then something could go wrong. Oh well, that's life. You are wrong forces, you repel each other at that moment. The thing is though, if you always repel people, when that person has changed to a repellant force as well, well you'll just fly apart. If you watch two magnets, even though you push two repelling forces together and they separate, right after one of them will flip around and they'll come back together.

Morale of the story... If you live your life in constant fear that you'll be left alone. All you'll do is push people away. You'll just be a lonely magnet...