The Ages of Me

In a recent weblog entry, my friend Don mused:

I don't know if other people mark their lives by distinct periods, but I seem to do so. I have fond memories of them all. Funny how the memories get fonder as the years pass. I'm not sure what period to call the present one. It seems a bit disjointed and out of place and thrown together haphazardly from bits and pieces of the previous ones. Maybe in another 10 years this will all make sense to me, and I'll understand it better within a broader context. Right now, it's not so much a period in my life as it is my standing on a shore, looking out, wondering what might be over there on the other side, beyond the horizon.

I responded that I do break my life down into periods, because there seem to be several obvious ones. Maybe it's just that my mind chooses to impose some order on them, and the fact that I like to do that with things (at least in my head; I don't actually live an orderly life) certain has something to do with it. But by coincidence or not, there do appear to be four major periods to my life (so far).

These periods are defined by a combination of factors, and its the way they tend to change in rough synch with each other that makes me give some weight to the idea. The transitions were more gradual than they come across here (because not every factor changed simultaneously, overnight) but in retrospect, I can see them happening. Each period is marked by where I lived, my job and/or school situation, my social life, and my general attitude at the time.

I don't count the first couple years of my life, because I don't remember them and like all humans that age, I was really little more than a fetus too large to stay in the womb.

So the first period was my childhood. For most of it, my family lived in a medium-sized house on a corner lot, in the city but just a couple miles from being in the suburbs, withing walking distance of my neighborhood school. It was a stereotypically innocent time, with the major trauma of my life being mostly that I didn't have many friends, and like most kids without a schoolyard "group" to be a part of, I got picked on. It didn't help that I was pretty much smarter than all the kids my age, so I was often put in classes with older kids, or off on my own. Being "the class brain" isn't as bad as being "the class retard" (and of course I made fun of her too), but I was definitely not what you'd call "popular". But the traumas of "modern" childhood (divorce, abuse, substance abuse, etc.) weren't part of my life. It was OK. And I was smart enough to understand that my whole life was ahead of me, and full of possibilities, so I had faith that it would all work out. I guess I should add that I also had a typical child's faith in what he's been raised to believe about God and such. It all ended with puberty, a new school, and a new neighborhood.

So the next period was adolescence. We moved to a bigger house, this one only a mile from the 'burbs. I had even fewer friends there... none, in fact. What friends I had were at school, which included middle school, high school, and college. So pretty much all of my socialising was there. I managed to be more social during this period, in part because I'd accumulated a few fellow "brains" as friend in my late childhood and most of them were at the same middle school and high school. I had to start over from scratch in college, but thanks to dorm living and extra-curricular activities like the school newspaper, student government, and the frat I feel in with, I quickly found a social circle I could participate in. I was always on the periphery of it, but still I was part of it. Although I spent most of the year on campus, "home" was still that bigger house not quite in the suburbs. During this time I also discovered... boys. I had a firmly-denied sense of it in middle school, explored it and came close to coming out in high school, but stayed just inside the closet door all through college. It'd be simplistic to blame that for the fact that my social life never fully developed during this time, but it was a factor. It would not be simplistic to "blame" it for the changes in my values during this time. By the end of this period, I had gone from being a compliant Republican Christian to a skeptical Democratic agnostic. All the naive expectations I'd have about my family of four with a house in the 'burbs were gone, and frankly I expected a fairly dismal, lonely life once I had to leave the comfortable social environment of school. This period ended with graduation, entering the working world, and moving out.

The next period can best be described as young adulthood. I moved a few times, but for the bulk of it I lived in my own apartment, by myself for the first time. I had a couple of full-time tech-support jobs during this time, one at a corporate office, the other for a college, and while neither of them paid huge bucks, they both paid more than I needed to live on, so money was something I didn't really need to worry about. The complete lack of parental supervision meant I was finally free to come out. I was old enough and socially reserved enough that I didn't go wild and try to make up for the missed opportunties of adolescence like so many newly-out gay men do. Instead I was more politically active, and to my surprise found myself at or near the center of attention at times. I still didn't have lots of friends, but I was finally "popular"... or at least "well-known" and perhaps "influential" in the gay community. More importantly, I found a boyfriend. Andy approached me, which is good because I still didn't have the courage to approach anyone myself. It was a strange relationship in many ways, but it suited us both (most of the time). Toward the end of this period I was starting to burn out on all the social activist stuff I was doing, but it was mostly a "golden age" in which I regained the optimism (or at least the determination to make things better) I'd lost in adolescence. Which ended when I lost Andy, lost my job, and my landlord raised the rent enough to send me packing.

This is the current period of my life. What happened with Andy is a long, painful story, but the ending can be stated simply: he's gone. While all this was happening, my invulnerable openness about my sexuality cost me my job, and that made it hard to get another one. Instead I went back to school, both to "launder" my resumé (so people would stop asking me why I'd left my previous job) and to possibly start a new, more creative-orientated career. This period began with me living on unemployment benefits, but I found a part-time job that paid just well enough - with a paper route on the side - to pay my basic living expenses. I wasn't impoverished, but I could no longer buy new computers, new cars, etc. whenever I felt a need for them. "Making do" became the order of the day. Unfortunately, that job later vanished, and I'm back on unemployment again, without much hope of even restoring my previous standard of living, let alone starting that new career. Aside from the loneliness, my home - 1/3 of an old early-20th-century house in the not-quite-inner city - is the best place I've ever lived. But the only real friends I have are a few left from earlier periods. As for my philosophy about life, I'm now a certified atheist and pessimist. In adolescence (as I recognised my homosexality) I feared that I'd live the balance of my life alone and fairly unhappy. I think I was right after all.

One pattern I can't help noticing is that each of these periods is about 10 years long: age 2-12, 12-22, 22-32, 32-? I used to think of my life in 4-year periods, which corresponded neatly to things like high school, college, my first job, which car I owned, etc. And I could certainly break these 10-year-periods I'm talking about into smaller, distinct parts, even based on the home/job/social-life criteria I'm using here. But still, these 10-year periods hold together pretty well. If nothing else, the turning points between them are pretty signficant developmentally: puberty, independence, loss of a partner.

But I'm hoping that this pattern doesn't hold up, because that would mean I've got another 3-4 years left in this period. And frankly, I'm sick of it. I do have some reason to think this period might end sooner, since I'm pretty certain to finish my second college in the coming months, and there's still a chance I'll find a decent job rather than having to lower my standard of living even further. That might change my outlook on life... maybe even help revive my social life, I suppose. I don't see myself moving anytime soon, though, and I'm not about to move just because "it's time".

So anyway, that's the long answer to Don's question. For what it's worth. {shrug}