Apologies around the pub!

So I'm giving out a free round of apologies to the entire non-existent crowd and anxious readers I sometimes pretend to have. After dealing with all the absolute torture that was my last 6 months at Winthrop University, I had pretty much forgotten that this blog existed. I'm both too lazy and disinclined toward carpal-tunnel to actually recap the past six months. I'll summarize it with this:

Winthrop and Michelle both can go suck a big donkey turd.

I'm staying back at home with my dad, working part-time 3rd shift to help out with the bills.

I plan on moving to Missouri to live with Beth, Crystal and Noah and begin attending a new school up there. And I'll be moving....when I save up about $900. Yep. It's gonna take a little bit. Donations are greatly appreciated but hardly expected.

I guess my life right now feels...stagnant. And were it not for some of the absolutely amazing people I've met at the Hawty McBloggy forums, I'd probably be depressed or fat or anti-social or something along this lines. There is an absolute dearth of social activity and opportunity in this town, so an online social scene is really the best that I can hope for. And honestly...I seriously prefer it. Some of these people are so much easier to talk to than some of my real-life friends. Elpolloguapo, SonofMacPhisto, and Merde 'Sam' BrusselsSprouts in particular are just so easy to converse with and connect with. I get the feeling that they really do respect me for who I am and not who I am labeled as on-sight, as is so often the case with meeting people in person.

Not having the burden of appearance allows for ample opportunity for acceptance. It's not that us internet-addicts are anti-social; it's that we prefer a social life free of material and superstitious judgmentalism that so plagues all of the Western world. I don't have a perfect Hollywood smile, far from it, nor do I have six-pack abs and a flawless bronzed tan. Do Guapo or Merde care about that? Or anyone at HMB? No. And for that, I love them. With the financial troubles my father and I are going through right now, along with the stress of figuring out how to get back into college, sometimes it really feels like the community I've discovered there is really the only thing keeping me afloat.

I should be used to loneliness by now. I'm an only child and I've been relocated so many times that bonds and strong friendships are a luxury, not a right, for me. I've spent more of my life alone than I have asleep, to put it into perspective. I had thought that my 3 years at college would've made up for lost time, but 1 year and a half of that was spent in an even worse situation: emotionally alone on a campus of 9,000. A lot of that was self-inflicted and my junior year was an absolutely amazing improvement, excluding hurricane Michelle which rolled through my head and chest. But the social foundation I had begun to build there only makes this new isolation all the worse by comparison.

You see...when you're always alone, you don't realize you're lonely. It's just part of your everyday existence. But once you experience something besides loneliness, you come to see loneliness as it is and you loathe it and reject it and lament it instead of accepting and befriending it as you once did. I never yearned for a little brother until I was 11 years old and had both gain and lost my best friend in less than 2 years. And from 11 until the time I was nearly 20, I struggled and pined for that same commitment to loyalty that he and I had shared. I had briefly experienced the brother I was never given.

In college, Mike and I began to grow that sort of bond, but I let Michelle get between us just as Mike let Ferrari get between us. And Rachel showed me was a true relationship and truly accepting love really was. After she and I ended, it took me a while to realize just what I had experienced and how little I cherished it when I had the chance. I expect Michelle to be able to give me that some sense of security and comfort, but I was mistaken...and much to my own personal torment, at that. Looking back, I can't believe what I allowed Michelle to lead me to becoming. I can't even recognize who I was for those few months. I was so...broken. And after leaving Winthrop, I've had only silence and ample time to pick up those pieces and begin slathering on the rubber cement. I've still got a few holes and jagged edges, but I'm much closer to being the man I always knew I could be. I wish I could thank Rachel for the amazing patience and love she showed me and tell her how sorry I am for not listening to her warnings about Michelle. I wish I could get back to hanging out with Mike and sew that friendship we starting stitching between us.

As for Michelle...

For her, I hold only a furrowed brow and a tightly clamped tongue.


I guess all I can do right now is pinch my pennies and look to Missouri. At least it's not South Carolina. And though I'll never gain that brother I used to long so heavily for, I always held a smile and a hope for a little sister. Maybe Beth can be that for me. A sibling is a sibling, whether connected by blood or not. And love will always be love. It can't be anything else. I never had a mother to love. I never had a brother to love. At least maybe now, I'll gain a sibling sister to love.




Brother, I

By: Chris H.



This lack of a sibling

sister had long been a sustained

disappointment. To awake,

dazed, and turning and looking for

a friend each dawn. As yet, never

a brother has awoken here.



A friend there was, of course.

An old friend. Almost a kin of

a kind; a friend born

of storm clouds

and dandelion fluff

on days alone in the fields.



Pan’s shadow: always a ready

companion: ever-proverbial, an

all-weather friend

with unparalleled social skills.

A big toothy grin, It reaches out:

“May I have this dance?”



He has to decline. “There’s only

one warm pair of hands here,”

(We’re not even good

for a game of catch”).

A sustained disappointment.



This lack of a sibling sister has

endured to here. Look at all

the pristine white tiles..sanitary,

the maternity ward lobby becomes

a welcome suspense.