Thank You God

I have a problem that luckily enough, I haven't had to deal with for the past two months or so, but going to mass tonight, it got really bad. I was trying to fight off tears during mass, and I was trying to make sure I didn't look like anything was wrong with me. During my quiet time after receiving communion, I was praying to God to help me with what was going on.

Walking home from mass, I was just trying to keep from having a panic attack. I breathed through the fabric of my shirt once or twice to slow down some hyperventilation. My plan pretty much was just to go to sleep and try to cry into my corner without my roommate hearing or noticing me, if he was even there.

I got back to my room, and there were like, nine people in it, 6 of them girls. My roommate was pregaming, and I got convinced to go along with them. We went to a frat, and while I'm not really a frat kind of guy, I had a pretty good time just hanging out, getting less awkward with my roommate, and being a good wingman to all of the people in our group, guys and girls alike.

Right now, maybe it's just from a little bit of alcohol still floating around in my system, but I feel so much better. I don't know if it was just letting off steam or something else, but somehow, it's like my prayers were answered. Through drinking and partying.

Weird.

I'm a hypocrite.

I realized I was a hypocrite just moments ago. Now, most people are hypocrites in one way or another, but sometimes we don't realize what it is that we do that is hypocritical. Through a wide range of "coincidences," I came to realize that the last post I made is hypocritical.

I was pissed off at my friend Alex. I had to drag him back to safety for an hour and a half. It left me feeling tired and weary, to say the least. I felt like he didn't respect me in my relationship, that if he really was my friend, that he wouldn't do stuff like this to me. We were together a lot today working at a concession stand at Beaver Stadium (Go Penn State!), and we managed to make things all right. I sort of implied that I felt hurt by all that I had to do, and I didn't want to do it again, and Alex implied that he wouldn't drink so much that I would have to do that.

There is someone I treat in the very same way as Alex treated me last night. That person is Jesus.

I went to a religious group meeting, and the leader talked about how we need to develop a relationship with Jesus, that a relationship with Him, God, and the Holy Spirit is really the core of our religion. Getting towards the end of finishing Donald Miller's "Searching For God Knows What" has also reinforced this idea in my head of a relationship with Jesus.

I realized that most of the time, I am being a total jerk to Jesus. I am drunk and angry and heading towards trouble in His eyes, but I still want Him to let me go. Jesus, however, just keeps on pulling me back. He's been dragging me back to safety and away from a much more serious punishment than a fine for probably a good 10-15 years. Yet He still keeps on pulling me along. Some of my other friends might say about me "Let's just leave him here, he might be okay." Jesus tells them no. He wants to bring me home. A lot of the time I fight Him, I pull up my legs so He's forced to carry me, I try to run out of His supporting arms and into a frat house so I can just party some more. Each time, He comes running to help me. Many times I feel angry about His help. I'll yell at God and Jesus because I don't understand why they won't let me go do the things that I want.

But in the end, God knows what is best for me. I just have to learn how to accept that.

I'm sorry, but I just can't deal with you right now

Tonight I got a chance to hang out with some of my good friends for the first time since last year at school. We are a group of guys that was affectionately dubbed "The Freshman Guys" by the Catholic group we were in. I had some ridiculously fun times with these guys last year. Sometimes things would get a bit out of hand, and usually I would be the one to try to sort things out, because I have the highest tolerance to alcohol out of our group, I'd say I'm probably the most patient, and I like to think I'm good at defusing situations (Seriously though, how many people have actually used the line "Bros before Hos" to stop an argument?). I'm happy to help out, because I like to see my friends have a good time, and I just like helping people too and helping make peace between people.

Tonight though, has pushed me past my limits. Me, Alex, Brian, Dan, and two other guys all were drinking a bit in Alex and his roommate's dorm. Alex, somehow being the biggest lightweight ever, was already pretty tipsy off of probably a small amount of alcohol (I had gotten there late). Me, I had a straight shot of 190 proof alcohol, several shots of whiskey, and I quite literally felt nothing.

Eventually, one frat and a house party later, I figured Alex had had enough to drink, and needed to go home and sober up. This was at around the time he took off his shirt and pants during a one-man dance to "Greased Lightning." Don't worry, he still had his boxers on, but still.

Long story short, Alex didn't want to leave. He just wanted to go party more. He fought with me, Brian, and Dan the entire. An hour and a half I fought with him to try to get him home and keep him from getting an underage citation. Dan wanted to leave him. Brian wanted to leave him. I said no. He was my friend, and I was going to get him home safe.

He bled on me, he almost got me beat up by frat boys, he had me carry him quite a few times, and just in general he was a absolute asshole at letting me help him. If there was a way for him to slow things down, he did it, excluding actually getting into a fight with me.

I eventually got him home with Dan and Brian's help, but he just wouldn't go to sleep. I was so tired. I had done most of the carrying of Alex this entire time, as Brian was still kind of tipsy, and Dan's idea of getting Alex to come along was telling ridiculous lies and hoping he'd believe it. We sat in his dorm room for a while, hoping he'd sleep, but he just didn't want to. Eventually, he needed to go to the bathroom, but he wouldn't let anyone come with him. I knew this was code for "I'm going to run off to the commons or something because I still want to have fun," but I had endured enough. I let him go. I had gotten him back on campus, I had gotten him back to his room, and if he wanted to screw it up from there, I would let him. I left just a few moments after Alex left his room, and already there was no sight of him down the hallway. I made my way outside, and just stopped in the stairwell to pray for him.

I had done this sort of thing, praying for Alex when he drinks too much and runs off. The last time I was worried he would get hypothermia and die outside somewhere, but luckily, my prayers somehow were answered and I found him after searching for close to an hour. He had been in a lounge drunk dialing people.

I started walking, but still praying, and I started getting sort of vindictive. Maybe he needed to get caught. I prayed to God to let the right thing happen, whether it be keeping Alex free from the campus police, or whether it was him getting a citation so he'd learn a lesson.

Walking back though, I realized something. Taking care of Alex the way I had was not something I wanted to do. Sure, if he happens to drink too much and starts puking, hell, I'd be right there with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of water. The entire time I was helping him, he just disregarded everything I did for him. He forced me into situations where I had to use force against him to try to help him because I was pissed off and I couldn't think of any other way. Thinking about that started drawing me into a panic attack, because I hate getting mad at people. I hate getting mad, because usually when I'm really pissed off, I end up hurting someone I love. I so rarely get mad, but I just wanted to beat the living hell out of Alex tonight.

He's my friend! I'm supposed to love him! I just felt like a bad person because I wanted to hurt my friend and I couldn't think of anyone to call or talk to because it was already two in the morning, and most of my friends were probably already asleep, and I didn't want to wake them up just to listen to me rant and end up crying on the phone to them. So instead, I walked the eight minutes or so back to my dorm room, completely alone, scouring my mind for who to turn to while trying to hold back tears in front of the people I walked past.

I need to talk to him about this, but I worry it will just degrade into me telling him how much I think he was a shitty friend and that what he did shows he doesn't care about me and that he has an alcohol problem or something, and I'd end up yelling all of this in front of a bunch of people who don't really know how we drink and whatnot, and it'd just be shameful for him, and I don't want to do that to him. I can't just let this go and keep on looking after him when he can't manage to control himself, and basically, that is how he got so out of control. He never put any sort of limit on what he drank, he just kept on going.

He called while I was writing this, and told me he was heading back to his dorm after going to probably one of the furthest places on campus from his dorm. I told him it was all okay, and he thanked me for helping him out and dealing with him, but he doesn't realize or even really remember everything I had to go through helping him out.

I guess the real question is, how do I go about figuring out this situation? How do I forgive all of that? He said we'd hang out tomorrow night, and he definitely wouldn't drink as much, but I don't really believe him. Even drinking half as much would put him in the same state. I don't want to be in that situation again but I don't want Alex to get in trouble and I just don't know what to do. He hurt me deeply tonight (this is my third draft for this entry, and most of this one has just been filled with me crying as I typed). I just don't know what to do here.

College classes, day one

I finally started classes today. My roommate and I have been getting along more, as we slowly get used to each other. What can I say, we're guys, we don't just go hug and start talking about everything we can think of right off the bat. It'll come in time though.

Today I had to set up a stand for a pro-life group that I am the webmaster of at a student involvement fair. I was the only board member of the club that could make it there during the setup time, so I got drafted/I volunteered. However, what I failed to remember was how soon my first class, elementary French, started after the involvement fair began. My replacement came, and after getting him some much needed info from our website, I checked my schedule and realized I was already about 15 minutes late for my French class. Oops.

Luckily, I apologized to the teacher after class, and she was okay with that lateness because I had a good excuse. However, I am more afraid of taking French now. The teacher plans on speaking in French for most of the class. I have ZERO French experience. She seems very nice though, so I'm still hoping for the best.

Second class, mythology, was good. It's non-Western (i.e. no Greek or Roman) and it's a large lecture class, with 100+ people. However, I managed to participate a fair amount because really, everyone has thoughts, they're just too afraid to say them. Heck, we got asked what we thought someone who had seen God would say what He looked like, and someone suggested "Like Willie Nelson." You know that kid will get a good participation grade.

That's all the classes I had so far, but tomorrow will be much bigger. I have intermediate programming, French again, Social Psychology, and Creative Writing. The programming language is C++, which I never was too good with, so it kind of looks like I'm learning two languages this semester, haha. I'm worried about creative writing though. The syllabus says we'll probably have to write about what scares us, and, well, I'm scared to do that.