When In Doubt - Freshman Year

Chapter 8

How fucked-up is it to imagine a fifth grader calling someone a 'faggot.'

People always laugh, assuming they knew something about you. Sure, maybe Matt talked funny, had a few effeminate qualities about himself that validated people's questions about him in the first place.

If he said he wasn't gay, then why can't people just leave it at that?

The truth was, Matt didn't know what he was exactly.

Was he gay? Did he like guys?

Was that so terrible?

Why did everyone need to know or seem to know before he even knew himself?

Matt cringed as tears had started to fall. He was so sick of it all, of people who were so bored and unappreciative of their own lives that they had to be cruel and examine someone else's and ridicule them for being different and not a part of the norm. It was part of the reason Matt had considered himself a loner: why get close to anyone if all you thought about was 'I wonder what they say about me when I'm not around.'

Matt knew he could be a bit paranoid, and maybe even socially anxious at times. The thing was, while anxiety exaggerated someone's thoughts, it still stemmed from something that was very, very real. Once something triggered it, the anxiety just weighed them down and wore them out mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Was he having an anxiety attack, or was it all the different types of alcohol he'd drunk in the last hour or so? Maybe both? He felt like he couldn't breathe; the room and everyone swayed and switched in and out of focus.

He knew he needed to get out for some air, to get away from all these people that seemed to only care about his sexual orientation and nothing else about him.

"Excuse me," he managed stammered as he'd barged his way through the crowd. He'd placed a hand over his mouth to signal that we was about to puke, and his plan worked; people parted like the Red Sea and let him through. To them, he was just another drunk freshman who couldn't control his liquor.

Matt felt his issues and his ever-growing inner demons get swept up and lost amongst the sea of youth as they too were maybe drinking to numb the pain that haunted their thoughts.

Luke

"Wait, so you've had a boyfriend this whole time?" Luke felt multiple emotions at that particular moment: shock, disappointment, anger, disbelief, embarrassment, confusion and pain.

Heather had just told confessed to him about how she was actually already in a relationship, a relationship that'd been going on for about three years. After all the times they'd talked, after the brief run-in's in the hallways, to the lingering looks they both shared, he'd been so sure that something in the universe was telling them they belonged together.

Luke never really believed in fate or the universe, but that hadn't made him any less disappointed.

"I'm so sorry if I lead you on in any way, that was never my intention, and I didn't mean to," Heather crossed her arms, looked anywhere but at him. "I shouldn't have let you buy me lunch those times or...I don't know, I'm just sorry."

Luke looked away and took a deep breath through his nose, his jaw clenched. He was at a loss for words and he didn't know how to say what he was feeling. On one end, he was guilty because it seemed like it was partly his fault by coming to his own conclusions based on not much; she'd never actually outright expressed any interest in him. He also knew that just because a girl talked to a guy, smiled at him, or was friendly towards him that it didn't mean that she was attracted to him. Too many guys didn't get that, and always mistook kindness for flirting or sexual attraction, but the other part of Luke was mad because he felt like she had given him some interested signals.