Nostalgia Time: who where you growing up?

[lugaru]

So I talking on another forum about music and grunge came up, which was huge when I was growing up. I loved the stuff but was obviously not part of any grunge scene since I was in Mexico. So I'm wondering: who where you, what scene where you a part of, where did you come up? Jock or Nerd? Goth or Raver? Hippy? For the young members, what scene are you into right now? And for the older members, where you a flapper, a fop or a medieval peasant?

In my case I grew up in a small agricultural town in Mexico with little more than a sugar factory and a train station that connected to better places, so we would get a lot of tourists stopping off to replenish their supplies. The only "cliques" really where Rancheros (country fans), pop fans, metalheads and Spanish rock people. Some small groups of skater punks and ravers existed, but usually amongst private school kids who made frequent trips to the US. I was somewhere between metalhead and rock in Spanish, going to a lot of shows since before I was old enough to get in. One guy called me "el vato de las camisetas chingonas" or "the guy with the cool shirts" since I would get a lot of screen printed counterfeit metal band shirts from flea markets, such as Therion, Angra, Sepultura, Pantera, Stratovarious, Iron Maiden, At The Gates and so on. Local metal bands included Necropsis (Death metal), Mortal Kanabis (they sounded like At The Gates) and some really bad band that did really good Sepultura covers. A few cover bands came up too, doing iron maiden and dream theater. Oh, and there was Las Musas Confusas, an all girl band with an awful drummer who played Queen and Beatles covers at a local bar called Yesterdays.

I was also part of what I wanted to call "the ethno punk" movement but it was really just rock in Spanish. It was half hippy and half punk, wearing indigenous clothes, shells and hand crafted jewelry. The music ranged from 80's rock to punk but with the additions of trumpets, accordions, acoustic guitars and other traditional elements of Mexican music. Cafe Tacuba and Jaguares are great examples of this. To be cool you had to learn some indigenous words (I know a bunch in Yoreme), play some traditional instrument (a girl carved me a flute, never figured it out) and find The Doors to be both liberating and sexist.

By the time I left for the US the scene was falling apart, but before I left there where some great concerts where you would see a hip hop band, a folk band and a metal band, and all three shared at least one or two members.

What I never really got too into was the Bohemio scene, which was all about no nonsense poets, Cuban trova (folk), magic realism (Gabriel Garcia Marquez books) and intimate candlelight concerts you would smuggle wine into. Also I always had an interest in goth/industrial stuff but it was completely unrepresented in my town, and by the time I moved to the U.S. and went to some goth clubs it seemed silly to me.

PS me and my friends ran Risk games and homebrew RPG's every weekend but we where never really a nerd group. I think it was so alien over there that people would go "huh, that sounds cool".

[MikeB7]

If I'm being honest, the best school description would be "slacker".  In the advanced classes, but always in the back cracking jokes and doing just enough to get by.

Never really tried to categorize myself musically because I was all over the place growing up.  I guess you could say in jr. high school I was into synth pop - listening to albums by New Order, Heaven 17, Propaganda, OMD, a-ha, ABC, Duran Duran, Human League - and going to Depeche Mode, The Cure, Sugarcubes and Book of Love concerts.  Skinny tie type stuff.   

Then I became a lifeguard and got into party/alt-rock stuff.  Early Beastie Boys, Violent Femmes, REM, They Might Be Giants, Chili Peppers, etc.  Got into the party scene - y'know, someone's parents out of town, 30 kids pounce on the house, drink beer, then run when the cops come.

Didn't adjust well going from 9th grade 'in crowd' to 10th grade 'new guy in new high school'.  Awkward year there where I kept to myself but hung out with friends that were a year behind and still in jr. high.

By 11th grade, I...well, I was a hippy stoner.  But a functional stoner.  The standard hippy music applies there.  Played guitar and wrote some embarrassingly angsty or embarrassingly goofy songs.  Almost didn't graduate because I skipped like two consecutive months of school my senior year.   Also got into the more melodic hip-hop with the appearance of De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, which stayed with me to this day.

After high school, I took a few years off to 'find' myself, getting apartments with friends and working in record stores, as a burger delivery driver, in a deli - and then got hit hard with muliple sclerosis.  Spent a year in and out of the hospital, don't remember too much of that time.  As it stabilized, I got into a vocational rehabilitation program where we learned computers, typing, office programs.  I was driving again at this point, and really got into R&B that was on the radio at the time.  Jodeci, SWV, Brownstone, Prince, BBD, Tony Toni Tone, stuff like that. 

After graduating and getting a great office job in an up-and-coming tech contracting company, I started hanging out with an old friend that had also stayed in the area.  Through him, I got into a lot of 'drum&bass' music - Plaid, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Solid Doctor, Autechre...

So now my IPod is a huge jumble of different styles.  Often when playing CoH with Ephemeris or Train Wreck, we'll call out what group is playing at the moment.  It's always fun to hear what they're listening to, as well as seeing the strange combos of songs.

Got a little more in-depth there, but honestly I can't do nostalgia without talking about the MS.  So it was either not post at all or include it. 

[BWPS]

Backstory:
I moved around a lot as a kid. I was homeschooled until seventh grade, and then again until tenth. That was boring. I was a nerd and I played video games, basically from the C64 (at age 2 in Germany) to the N64, with PC throughout. I've always been into amateur game making, and I used klik n play and eventually RPG Maker 2000. I loved Pokemon for gameboy and then the cards. I still play video games and love Pokemon. I played outside too, mostly in Alaska, where I had friends. In 7th grade I got really into EverQuest, which was fine because I never did anything outside of school. Weird Al and Smash Mouth were the only musicians that ever existed, as far as I was concerned.

Then at 10th grade, I was in Alabama and I decided to start public school again. I started listening to AFI, but I definitely wasn't gothic. I eventually made some friends, but I started hanging out with people to play Yu-Gi-Oh! which later became Magic: The Gathering. I was still a nerd, but people liked me, even teachers which was weird because I hooked up lab batteries to my tongue, put salty language in my essays, and ate the tylenol that we made that the teacher told us not to eat because it was poisonous (I didn't die). I made good grades and (you might not believe it) I was funny in a high school kind of way.
I started getting really into alternative rock, Green Day, RHCP, everything else I didn't listen to from the 90s. In eleventh grade I started listening to My Chemical Romance (WHO ARE A GOOD BAND I PROMISE) and I dyed my hair black. I looked ridiculous. I went to local shows, but everyone was mostlt screamo/hardcore. Some of my friends started a goofy powerpop band which was really good and I went to see them play until they broke up. So I was basically a nerd.

[lugaru]

Got a little more in-depth there, but honestly I can't do nostalgia without talking about the MS.  So it was either not post at all or include it. 

Actually thanks... I was feeling a little embarrased for turning what should of been a 2 line post into a long history. Stuff like this is more interesting anyways, not just to get to learn about fellow forum members but just to see how many paths there are out there. And Sugar Cubes and The Cure where a big influence in Mexico, before getting all indigenous the Caifanes looked like a photocopied Cure album cover.

@ BWPS: yeah, I was a bit of a nerdy class clown too, only I would put alchohol on my hand and set it on fire in the bunsen burner. If you put it out within 4 or 5 seconds you are fine, but after your classmates make you do the trick a dozen times your hand starts to feel a little pickled from all that lab grade alchohol.

[wickerman]

Iron Maiden, Priest, Sabbath were pretty much my deal - I never wore spiked wrist bands or leather pants though!!!

I like VERY few current bands - I dig Disturbed, but not much else.

In high school I was part of the the little bit of everything type.  I played football and baseball but I didn't really hang with the jocks.  I was a A student, but low A's - so never hung with the 'brains'.  I pretty much did my own thing with a small group of friends.  We played paintball instead of going to school dances and keg parties.

In college I lived off campus so I never got into any 'scene' really.  I was the jerk who parked his Harley on the lawn in front of the building instead of one of the spaces in the lot.  I made friends with a lot of guys in campus security so I never got parking tickets. 

Now 15 years and two kids later, I'm part of the Blues Clues marathon on Nickelodeon scene - very macho, let me tell you.

[Mr. Hamrick]

"My earliest memories, were not of anything specific. They are more like memories of feelings, as opposed to events. Feelings of abandonment. Feelings of loneliness. Feelings of sadness. They say our destiny is formed in these earliest moments. That our fate is determined, at this critical juncture. The chosen begin their path towards greatness. The ill-fated are doomed from the beginning. The unfortunate devour themselves, searching for annihilation. You see we are all prisoners, of our own nature. Locked into certain patterns of behavior. I could no sooner change the path that was placed upon me, than I could stop a swallow from migrating, or a salmon from spawning."

I was a child with a lot of medical issues.  I still have some issues because of those problems but that is neither here nor there.  I had a childhood that was filled with friendships built out of convenience and perhaps pity or envy.  Some of them envied the smart kid (which I apparently was to them) and some of them felt sorry for me because they knew about my medical problems.   I transferred schools during my fourth grade year.  I had moved before this in the middle of my third grade year but was allowed to finish out my third grade year at the school where I had been.  I still remember a huge rainstorm on the last day of school.

At the new school, I began to discover how naive I was.  I went from a relatively open-minded country town to a small town in a county that was known for its segregation even in the late 80s.  I made a few new friends here and there but didn't have a lot in common with many of them in the long run.  There were some who I thought I did but time has proven this wrong.  However, I remained a generally "clean cut" kid who listened to whatever was popular at the moment.  Then came the events of my sixth grade year . . .

"Mrs. Delong's sixth grade class. I sat in the third row next to a girl named Heather. And it was there that I first discovered alienation and barren path. The taunting and the badgering by the other kids made me realize the depths of human evil and the dark underbelly of human society. I'd close my eyes and pretend I was someone different. That I wasn't a misfit. You can't erase the dream; you can only wake me up. I didn't care. I never obeyed the rules, because even back then I realized the nothing...Nothing in nature behaves so consistently and rigidly as a human being in pursuit of destruction."

That is a slight alteration from one of pro-wrestler Raven's WCW era promos.  It's funny, all I had to do was change the names.  It sums up my sixth grade year and my middle school years as a whole.  Mrs. Delong was the lead sixth grade teacher and generally looked upon with reverence by the other teachers.  Meanwhile, she earned the scorn of many of her students who were the subject of her and her daughter's (and Ms. Buruss') borderline emotional and mental abusive behavior.  They open stated that the reason they did what they did was to "separate out the accepted kids from the non-accepted" or the "ones who had a future" and the "ones who didn't".   The act of them rewarding a student for holding my hand against a hot radiator was repaid later when I punched Thomas Delong in the face a few times st Boy Scout Camp.  Thomas was Delong's grandson if I recall.  If this was the beginning then what cemented my outlook was in eight grade when I ran into Mrs. Delong at church and she proudly proclaimed that she abused her students to make them better people.  Had I not been in a church, I would have probably slapped her.  In eight grade, a few friends fashioned what we called a "gang" and some of them went on to become regular little hoodlums.  I drifted away from the group by time we got to high school for an assortment of reasons. 

I was introduced to The Cure in elementary school.  In high school, I discovered that The Cure was what was called a "goth band" apparently.  I was friends with some of the goth kids and a lot of the popular kids my freshmen year of high school.  By the end of my freshmen year, I was suffering from depression and had a really lame attempted suicide.  (I later came to the conclusion that suicide would be pointless because too many people would take pleasure in my succeeding.)  The following year, I changed schools to West Hall where I eventually graduated from.   There wasn't really a "grunge" crowd or a "goth" crowd at West Hall.  I became something of a loner, an outcast, a loose cannon and a few other things.  I was a poet, a writer an artist, tried to be a drama geek (but was never really accepted there, ironically) and was a member of the school's marketing club though never in good standing.

I got back into being a pro-wrestling fan largely because of ECW.  I became a big Raven fan both in ECW and WCW and to the presence.  I suppose this is because I have always felt I somewhat identified with the character on some level.  I listened to a lot of 90s Alt-rock bands but I also loved The Cure, Depeche Mode, Pink Floyd and a lot of older Rock bands.  I loved the first NIN album from the first time I heard it.

Furthermore, I don't get along with my family all that much.  It's gotten worse over the years.  I have friends who I am closer to than most of my family.  My closest friends and I are kinda like a "flock" or a "nest" . . . and we always seem to welcome "kindred souls".  A side note, I have more professional acquaintances (some of who I call friends) than I do that "nest" of "kindred souls". 

[House Quake]

I was never quite typical growing up.  I was an only child with an over active imagination.  My parents were seperated but I still adopted many of my fathers passions... comicbooks, movies and music.  But... my imagination was intense.  You could put me in a room with any building material... paper, clay, aluminum foil... and if you came back an hour later...
- I'd have made the entire JLA out of clay
- Drawn pictures of every character you ever heard of and some you didn't
- Made a fleet of starships out of aluminum foil

In grammar school...  not only was I an over weight kid.. but because I started school early... I was always the youngest in the class.  However,  I was also one of the brightest.  I never did homework... never studied.  After the teacher explained it once... I had it. So I would sit in class and draw or daydream rather than do the work... yet I always aced my test and scored top of the class on standardized testing.   I know now I was probably a gifted child who needed to go to a school which challenged me..... but at the time my mother just thought I was lazy.  I also had many run ins with bullies which resulted in many fights... verbally and physically.  I never lost a fight, but that never deterred then from making my life miserable at school other wise.  Thier reason being, "He acts like he's smarter than everyone.", as told to the Principle after I beat up one of the bullies who had been messing with me.  Truth is... I did think I was smarter.  If the teacher asked me a question... I had the answer.  I was that kid with his hand raised all of the time who took joy in making the bullies look bad. 

For the most part... high school was great... but at the same time not good for me.  I had developed into a 'cool geek'.  I was a Prince fan, an artist, I loved comicbooks, rap and football, I was charismatic and made friends with jocks and geeks alike.  I mixed in well with everybody and nobody. The negative aspect which came out of HS was once again... no challenge.  Most things came too easy and with my charisma... teachers let me have the run to do as I choose and come and go as I pleased.  I also got the worst advice from my commercial arts teacher.  He convinced me and my mother that trying to get into comics or any type of animation or graphics field was not a good thing.  The market was not to big and my talent was only marginal. (yes he said that).  He talked me into taking my scholarship and majoring in another field.  This was 1986... boy did I miss the boat. 

Socially in college... I grew and learned a lot. Otherwise... my life was stagnant.  I was an average at best film student and really lacked direction because I didn't really know what I was good at.  Being a jack of all trades hurt me during these years because I didn't focus on any one thing and build on it.  Ulimately after 3 1/2 years I felt that college was a waste.

Post college... my life was RPGS, nightclubs, women, comics and just hanging out.  Even though I was always comfortable talking to the opposite sex... during my college years and prior...  my fear of rejection kept me from pursuing those I had real interest in.  Women I knew always assumed I had a girlfriend as the reason for me not 'talking' to them , plus they would always 'see' me with a girl.  But .. I was just scarred to take conversations past general flirting and ended up with a lot of friends.

After college... I got over my feasr of rejection.  It took a few women to convince me... but I realized I had a lot going for me.  In spite of my weight... I was still good looking, intelligent, a great conversationalist and a pure charmer.  OK... I got a touch conceited and I was very picky about the women I would approach or who I let approach me.  Truth is... I was cocky acting towards the eye candy... but a real gentlemen towards the nice but still very cute girls.  I met my ex wife in one of the nightclubs I was a regular at........

and the rest is history.

[Vertex]

  Who was I growing up?


I was an old soul of sorts I guess but how I grew up probably had a large part to do with it. My father was a machinist with hearing probs and a violent temper. Between his hearing and his upbringing, he is quite paranoid and quick to violent burts. My mother is a bi-sexual who was a very well known apartment manager with a lot of friends in the gay community. We moved no less than at least once a year all the way to high school, often two or three times.

  Needless to say I was always the new guy, I tended to gather rather an odd group of friends whereever I went. In first grade, my teachers tried to put me in the 5th grade and so on till middle school. My mom always turned down the offers cause she didn't want me so out of my age group. School was always strange cause I usually was so ahead in my work that at many schools I ended up grading papers or doing filing while the class did their work. This is not however to make me sound like I was such a superior student.. well I was except in math. I'm HORRIBLE in math and always have been and think it's because of how I worked on it. I noticed a few years back infomercials on "speed math" that used the exact method I did in school which always got me in trouble. Methinks because I always got in trouble with teachers over how I did the math caused me to get convinced I wasn't able to do it.

  Friends were always either way older than me or younger, I've never been known to hang out with my own age group except when I started high school. I remember in elementary school I had a "sleepover" that consisted almost entirely of freshmen high school students. Where we lived during the year determined who I hung out with basically. At some apartments there were no kids allowed so I spent my time alone for the most part or around adults. My mother having so many gay friends over I got real used to dealing with transvestites, gays, lesbians etc.

  My hobby has ALWAYS been comic books and recreating them either by drawing them or making them out of clay or painting them. In elementary school I even got in the habit of making my own comic books and selling them to the other kids. Don't knock it, lol many times it paid for my comics to buy. It was always a bit of a problem because my father discouraged it so much, that if he found my collection of comics.. he'd throw them away or even in one case he took a huge trunk I had and put them on the front lawn and burned them.  The funny part of this is that my father has a natural ability in art that he refuses to use.

  Girls... growing up I often was surrounded by them. In first grade you could say I went on my first date, nobody told me but the girl sure knew it.... she tried to make a move and shocked the hell out of me. Around 5th grade I had my first real girlfriend, we went everywhere together, like movies and skating and you name it. Weirdest thing about it is after that year I didn't date again till after high school. I simply wasn't interested, fell into the friend zone with every girl I knew. I became that guy who all the girls tell all their best secrets to because it was safe LOL

  When I turned I started high school I sat my mom down and told her flat out.. she owed it to me to stay put. It was time I actually lived somewhere long enough to really fit in and high school was where I was drawing the line. My mom heard me out and decided to grant my request. You'll notice most of my references to growing up refer to my mom, easy enough to explain.. I avoided my father at every opportunity because of a simple fact. The man couldn't stand me, the classic tale of oil and water. It was a constant balancing act dealing with him just enough, to avoid causing a huge explosion that would result in broken furniture and screaming and my mother getting caught in the middle to stop some big fight from happening. She took a lot of crud for me as a kid, I know at least half the fights they had were because she was taking the heat instead of him coming after me.

  Who am I now? a married man with 2 kids (3 and 5) who's finding out just how much he inherited his father's temper. I fought quite a bit as a young kid, usually I would get in fights whenever we moved because the new kid is a natural target and I eventually started seeking out he leader of any group and starting a fight. Not saying I always won... but I avoided a lot of misery by making it real clear if ya fought me I would do my best to put you in the hospital. After a while I didn't even care why I fought, I'd just pick the biggest kid in a new area and jump em. I once argued in the kitchen with my mom and went to go after her... smart woman stopped me with one sentence.. look at you.. you're being just like your dad. After that... I almost never got in a fight again. Hard to wanna fight when that anger wave hits you.. and suddenly you see the entire fight play out.. winning or losing but seeing just how much damage you can do to someone and seeing yourself doing it. I thought I had my temper in perfect check till I had my kids, it's funny in a sad way but I had to learn to change how I controlled my temper once I had my daughter. All the worst things my father did growing up.. I had to realize I was trying to emulate. It really is true how they say child abuse is passed down the family. I can happily say I've never hit my kids, never made them feel small or worthless but I had to stop myself a lot of times. My kids recently got to see me and my father get into a fight at my folks place. My father went to bully and intimidate me, when he saw it wasn't gonna work he went to slamming me in the chest and backing me into a corner. My kids were standing right there freaking out, and I snapped. I've never laid my hands on my father the entire time I grew up, never yelled at him or disrespected him. I saw my kids watching this and crying and I went off. He went to swing at me and I slammed my dad down on their ceramic tile floor, pinned him by the neck in a chokehold and wouldn't let him up. Everybody went to hollerin' and my mom was trying to get me to let him up... and I did once I figured the best chance that he wasn't gonna immediately come up fighting. We argued a bit after that and he wanted to keep fighting but we settled on my no longer being considered his son and then we left. Later that day I sat my kids down and had a long talk. I tried my best to explain why things happened and why I wasn't about to do my usual thing of avoiding fighting with my dad.. not with them standing there watching. I also made my son make me a promise.. if ever he catches me behaving like my dad... he's to flat out confront me and let me know.

[MikeB7]

Whoa...that's some heavy stuff, Vertex.  Good to hear you talking openly with your kids about what happened.  Thanks for sharing.  Glad this game and community has given you some joy, I can't imagine going through that.

[zuludelta]

Thanks for sharing Vert. I can relate with a lot of what you wrote, and I guess it just feels good, even mildly cathartic, to connect with someone's personal experiences, even if it's just through a message board.

<turns on the flashback special-effects>

Spoiler

I grew up in the Philippines. I wouldn't say I was born into an indigent family, but we definitely struggled at times. My father was (and still is) a real nice and intelligent man, but he wasn't much of a provider and he had (and still has) his fair share of substance abuse and personality disorder issues. My mum pretty much supported us throughout my childhood, with some help from my paternal grandparents (a devout Chinese-Filipino couple, and the kindest people I've ever met). My mum was what some people would call a "hustler," she'd just find a way to put food on the table and even buy my older brother and I the occasional GI Joe or Transformer. She'd work multiple jobs, even act as a fence for some of the shadier characters in our neighbourhood, and she'd always be running an "operation" or two on the side. Of course, I didn't know any of that as a kid, and just took for granted being fed everyday and having clothes, and it was only recently that my mum and I have been able to talk about the "bad old days."

Our home life wasn't particularly stable. We moved at least half a dozen times before I was in first grade, and at least a couple of those times were to get away from my dad, who was growing increasingly paranoid and occasionally violent. One positive thing I did take away from my dad was his love of comic books and music, and I spent my formative years pretty much with my nose buried in comics half of the time, and the other half tuning in to the radio or listening to my dad's collection of classic American rock cassettes and LPs. I got pretty good grades in elementary school (my brother and I went to an "experimental" public shool that had gifted children mixed in with visually-impaired, hearing-impaired, and socially impaired kids), although I didn't really get labeled as a "brain," probably because of the unique make-up of my school. My teachers even got some guys from the Department of Education test me a couple of times just to see where I was at on the trendy child intelligence scale of the day. My greatest school-related achievement at the time was being on the team that placed 2nd in the 1990 Caltex/Department of Science & Technology National Young Scientists' Quiz when I was in sixth grade. I remember getting the prize money and thinking about buying a bass guitar and amplifier (I had been playing for a few months in a band at that point, but I didn't have my own bass... I had to borrow my math teacher's old beat-up Fender P-Bass whenever we had practice), but I never saw the money again after I handed the cheque to my mum. I was angry with her (in my ignorance) for a few weeks after that.   

I think high school was where it started unraveling a bit. In retrospect, I guess all that emotional turmoil built-up from my early childhood was just looking to burst out. I was still getting good grades, and I had learned that being on the school's Science Quiz Team and writing for the school paper could get me out of the universally-despised CAT (Citizen's Army Training) for weeks at a time (I think CAT has since been abolished). I started drinking and doing "soft" drugs (secretly, of course) when I was 14. Strangely enough, none of it affected my academic performance any. I graduated valedictorian and earned a full scholarship to the University of the Philippines. My scores on their entrance exam were such that I earned a guaranteed slot in their medical school via the Integrated Liberal Arts and Medicine (INTARMED) program. My mum was ecstatic.

At this point in the story, you just know that things are going to go títs-up sooner than later.

I left home at the age of 16 to go to university (although I guess emotionally, I hadn't been "home" for a couple of years before that). Being in the INTARMED program was a different, but surprisingly welcome and liberating experience. I was no longer the smartest kid in class (in fact, I was probably in the bottom quintile in my program batch in terms of academic standing) and I went about reinventing myself as the "bad boy" most girls of freshman age seemed to have a fascination for. I don't really remember much from my first 2 years of university... a lot of drinking, drugs, unprotected sex, although I did manage to do a lot of volunteer medical aid work (mostly so I could earn days off of CMT -- Citizen's Military Training). Oh, and I developed an addiction to exercise. Or more appropriately, I developed an addiction to the endorphin rush that comes with sheer physical exhaustion. I pretty much screwed up my left knee for good from overtraining.

My scholarship was suspended halfway through my second year in university due to my poor grades. I was broke and I was too proud to call home for help. My then-girlfriend and her roommate, bless their hearts, loaned me some money so I could finish out the year and hopefully earn my scholarship back. I managed to get my scholarship reinstated just in time for the next semester. And I paid my girlfriend back by cheating on her. It was all aboard on the self-destruction train, and I had a first-class ticket.

The next couple of years was a slow downward spiral. I lost my scholarship for good at the end of my third year. I called my mum, who had since moved to Canada, to ask for money to pay for school, which she promptly sent. There were just so many things going on then... there was a lot of political turmoil (I was politically active, and was a member of a couple of socialist youth groups), my romantic relationships were all screwed up beyond repair, I was finally coming to grips with the fact that I had substance abuse problems (but true to form, that didn't stop me from drinking and doing drugs). I managed to keep things together long enough to earn my degree in Basic Medical Science (the first step towards a medical degree), but I was worn out, both physically and emotionally. A couple of weeks later, my roommates rushed me to the hospital (ironically, the same hospital I was interning at) for complications resulting from alcohol poisoning aggravated by a healthy shot of morphine.

Fast forward a few months later. One day, I just up and went into a bank, and took out all of my savings. There was barely enough left for a one-way ticket to Vancouver, where my family had moved to. I called my girlfriend to say I was leaving. I left all my cassettes, LPs, comic books, and my small collection of classic Asimov's Science Fiction magazines on my roommate's desk.

I didn't want to bring any baggage with me where I was going.

And that brings us pretty much to where I am now. I've spent the past few years reconnecting with my brothers and my mum (and even my dad). It hasn't been all good and easy. I've had a few instances where I reverted to my self-indulgent/self-destructive teen/early twentysomething self. Some days, I feel angry with myself, especially when I think about all the people I've hurt and all the opportunities I've wasted. But now that I'm near family again, people who keep me grounded and remind me of who I used to be as a child and who I can be and what I can do if I keep my head on straight, I feel a lot better. And weird as it sounds, the FF community (both FR and NPI) sort of helped as well.       

*events edited for brevity and dramatic effect

[daglob]

I was Peter Parker, with nary a radioactive spider in sight, and there were far too many Flash Thompsons.

Actually, except for the humiliating torture that was school, and my parent's divorce and the subsequent trials and tribulations that produced, I had a fairly mundane childhood. My mother worked hard to keep it that way. She's also the one who bought us comic books (she read 'em too).

The past few years with the extended periods of unemployment have not been much fun.