10 Years
Happy 10th Livejournal Anniversary to me!
It may not be the exact 10-year anniversary that I'm posting, like I originally would have liked: but It's AROUND the same date that I made my first, ever Livejournal post. In my senior year of high school. May 2004.
10 years man. Between my first journal entry at the VERY end of my senior year of high school and today. That's the same distance between my birth and 1996. When, for my 10th birthday, my dad took my to a San Francisco Giants game, I saw my name on megatron at Candlestick Park, and my dad promised - absolutely swore that he PERSONALLY spoke with Daryl Strawberry, and he swore he would hit a home run for me. A rouse I absolutely believed for years afterward because Daryl, as my dad called him - since they were now on a first name basis- hit a home run in my direction, barely 4 rows away from us.
Don't remember Daryl Strawberry? That's how long it feels. Between my birth and 10 years, when Daryl Strawberry played for the Giants, that happened. The same distance between my high school graduation and right now.
Originally I typed "10 years since I graduated 8th grade." But I'm a bit tipsy and I did my math wrong. It's actually about 14 YEARS since I graduated 8th grade. 14 years since I started high school.
It'd be great to chronicle my life back to when I graduated 8th grade and started high school. But, alas, I didn't journal anything back then, and only started journalling back at the very end of senior year of high school.
That would be interesting to see, but looking back to 10 years ago: my senior year of high school, it's hard to imagine that I was much different than I was at the beginning of high school. I was always a hardcore Christian. Even up until the time I dated Malyse in my freshman year of college. Hardcore Christian. Sex is for marriage. Synod. Youth Group. Minh. Trying to get a girlfriend but getting turned down CONSTANTLY...probably because of being SUCH a hardcore Christian, even within my own youth group (hindsight is awesome). But didn't matter. God mattered. Jesus and his love for me mattered. My faith mattered. And if having a significant other wasn't part of that plan I was fine with it.
This is the BEGINNING of that time I started coming out of that shell. I wasn't fully out of it. I was about a year off from that. But it's just amazing to think that just a decade ago, that's where I was in life. Just deciding to chicken out of Wartburg College. Just deciding to divert from my path of being a Pastor. Just deciding to stay in Sacramento. Just starting to become friends with Jack, Jono, and Dave all together. Fascinating to think about what my life might have been had the three of us never been as close as we became at this time 10 years ago. Had the three of use not gotten so close, had I not fallen so hopelessly in love with Sasha, I would have gone to Wartburg. And in all probability stayed the course. Became a Pastor with a Bachelor's in Theology and a minor in music. Being an ordained pastor, or Youth Pastor at some church...wherever I might have thought that God might have wanted to send me.
Amazing to think that was just 10 years ago. The number "10", itself, isn't that big. But since then, I diverted from my path of going to be a pastor, dating an atheist and learning other ways of life. Starting to doubt my faith and being willing to abandon my still-remaining morals just to have sex with the hottest girl I had met thus far, only to have her deny me to preserve those same morals I was willing to abandon. Gearing myself up for Alma's debut with the creepy old gay guy who had a crush on me. Months away from beginning my party phase at Sonoma State. Beginning my party phase at Sonoma State University. Meeting Dozens of people who would quickly becoming INCREDIBLY close friends who knew everything about me up to that point. Friend who, unbeknownst to me, would fade almost just as quickly as they came into my life.
It literally seems like a lifetime ago. "!0" is just not a big number. But it feels like an absolute lifetime ago that I was posting to Livejournal nearly daily.
10 years ago, Jim was still alive. We were all graduating high school. And we were merely months away from the time Jim would show Dave and I what it was like to get high on salvia and then on weed. And months away from the time we had the epic conflict with Monica and everyone on 4th of July 2004 when they discriminated against Jim because he was gay. The same night he came out to me and Dave and was finally honest about BEING gay. The most horrible, conflict-ridden night of the three of our lives up to that point, but the most free and honest night of Jim's life to that point.
It feels like a lifetime ago that Jim died. Almost impossible to think that nearly exactly 10 years ago he was just discovering who he was.
Even at that, it took almost a year longer for me to discover who I, Corey Helwig was.
10 years of chronicling my life here on Livejournal. Briefly looking at some of the posts that a 17-year-old Corey made, it's hard to believe that I ever believed the things I did. I ever thought the things I thought back then. That I was naive enough to think that all the friendships I left high school with would be intact for life.
Sasha and I became closer.
Sasha and I became best friends; closer today than we ever were back then.
Craig and I talk rarely, at best. But we still pick up from where we left off. And it's like no time ever passed. Figurative brothers since 2nd grade.
Miles and I have gone back and forth between hating each other and being closer to each other than anyone else in our lives. But he's still around. Everyday our friendship growing stronger and more solidified than the time we met in Kindergarten: Fall 1991.
Fall. !9.91.
FALL !991!
23 years. It's hard to fathom I've had a friendship with Miles that long: let along even being ALIVE that long.
There's nobody in my life from the class younger than me. Despite how influential KAIROS was to me. None of them are still around anymore.
I can remember that my KAIROS group was K2G6, and the one I was a leader on was K3G4. But I would be hard-pressed to remember who was in my KAIROS group. And only slightly less pressured to remember who I chose - hand selected- for the group I led in K3G4.
Except for Katie (now "Kate") Sprawka, I don't really know where any of them are at this point in their lives. It pains me to look back and hardly remember. But it also helps me remember that I'm human. Things are easy to forget. Things fade over time. There was a time, even a couple years after high school, where I could look back to every semester of high school and remember what classes, and what teachers, I had for which set I had each class every year of high school. At this point I can still remember what teachers I had, but for the most part, I can't remember which years, which semesters, or what grades I had in each of their classes.
So many things I can think about that seem like an absolute lifetime ago. I can reference back to previous journal entries and say "I was a different person then than I was the year before that". "And that person in this particular year, he was different than that other person a mere months, or maybe a year before that."
I've gone through various religious changes. And those I can site, only now, in general timeframes, when I used to be able to look back and rememeber where I was at each month - in some cases, even to the specific day where I was in my religious walk. From childhood until this time I was a hardcore Christian. After that I was confused but still believed in a god. After that, I was completely and utterly nostalgic waiting for a religious calling of some sort. After that I was a Pagan. After that, more specifically, a Wiccan. Then I was completely apathetic and ignorant again. Then a self-proclaimed Agnostic. Then a Full-blown Atheist. Then an Atheist who ignored all religion. Then back to a partial Pagan/Wiccan again and yet again back to a complete nihilist.
And that's just religion. In between all that personal conflict, I've had about a dozen heartaches, both major an minor. A few girlfriends, almost twice as many more flings.
Once I finally lost my virginity at 20-years-old, I could look back on half a dozen heartbreaks. And I could remember at that time I was grateful I hadn't gotten lucky in my horny teenage guy post-high school years. But that I had struck out enough that I had finally decided to save myself for someone that I would at least care about. Someone whom I don't think about on an everyday basis to this day (met her almost exactly 8 years ago), but whom I always look back with absolutely fond memories and whom I am absolutely grateful I waited for. It was much more meaningful to give my virginity to someone who meant something rather than just a random. Which, by the way, we've all had at least one in the last decade.
Again, I've come a long way since her, but she still holds a special place in my heart. And I've gone through my phases. Good partners. Terrible partners. Even my fair share of STD drama. Some which, after they happened, I would have wished to forget about and traded for better experiences, but that I now look back on as valuable experiences. Even the negative ones I look back on in fondness.
So many experiences. I haven't even counted, but I'm willing to bet on me making hundreds, maybe even pushing a thousands journal entries chronicling my experiences from the last 10 year of my life.
So many experiences that, like I said, seemed LITERALLY like a lifetime ago. Even though I can acknowledge that it is all a part of my past, it seems like an absolute DISTANT past.
So many changes have occurred in my life: Friendships, relationships, religious affiliations, interests, and career trajectories. Even something as minute as musical interests. It's hard to believe that it all took place in the last 10 years.
And yet, many things have remained intact since the time that I graduated high school. Friendships, relationships, religious affiliations, interests, and career trajectories, and still: musical interests. So many similarities, yet so many changes.
Sometimes it feels like a lifetime has passed. Sometimes it feels like almost no time has passed. REALLY? IT WAS AN eNTIRE DECACE AGO THAT I GRADUATED HIGH SCHOOL?? 2004?
Wow.
Just. Wow.
Like I said, sometimes it feels like a life time. And other things feel like they're absolutely recent.
All wrapped up in the same, both recent, in arms reach, while also absolutely distance and unfathomable are the memories of losing Sharmelia Jeffries and Matt Prentice.
So recent. Still painful. Still fresh whenever I think about the both of them. But at the same time completely distant and both fond characters of my distant past.
The pains and heartbreaks from the last 10 years still sometimes seem fresh and newly-formed. But the close friendships and fond memories are sometimes a fading recollection of fondness of my consciousness.
I could go on and on. Everything seems so distant and far away. But everything also seems like so new, fresh, and like hardly any time has past.
All this ranting and I have only barely scraped the surface of all the life-altering experiences I've been through in the last decade.
10 years. What sounds like hardly any time at all. And, yet, I feel like I've lived the lifetime of a dozen different people, all of whose memories are blending into one, fond, very brief timeline of the same conscious person.
And now here I am. With a bachelor's degree I earned I heard 5 years ago...Holy shit..5 YEARS AGO! A certification and experience in being an Emergency Medical Technician. And a passion and future career focus in being a Special Education Teacher and Behavior Analyst. All of those which didn't take place until MANY years after high school - amidst all the personal identity crises, religious questionings, friendship shifts, and relationship paradigm changes. And I am only finally, just this year solidified in my path of becoming what I want to be when I grow up.
If this is what the first 10 years since graduating high school has brought me in life, it makes me curious, hopeful, skeptical, optimistic, pessimistic, completely in love with, and even absolutely terrified at what the next very short, but painstakingly long time of my life will bring in the next 10 years.
It may not be the exact 10-year anniversary that I'm posting, like I originally would have liked: but It's AROUND the same date that I made my first, ever Livejournal post. In my senior year of high school. May 2004.
10 years man. Between my first journal entry at the VERY end of my senior year of high school and today. That's the same distance between my birth and 1996. When, for my 10th birthday, my dad took my to a San Francisco Giants game, I saw my name on megatron at Candlestick Park, and my dad promised - absolutely swore that he PERSONALLY spoke with Daryl Strawberry, and he swore he would hit a home run for me. A rouse I absolutely believed for years afterward because Daryl, as my dad called him - since they were now on a first name basis- hit a home run in my direction, barely 4 rows away from us.
Don't remember Daryl Strawberry? That's how long it feels. Between my birth and 10 years, when Daryl Strawberry played for the Giants, that happened. The same distance between my high school graduation and right now.
Originally I typed "10 years since I graduated 8th grade." But I'm a bit tipsy and I did my math wrong. It's actually about 14 YEARS since I graduated 8th grade. 14 years since I started high school.
It'd be great to chronicle my life back to when I graduated 8th grade and started high school. But, alas, I didn't journal anything back then, and only started journalling back at the very end of senior year of high school.
That would be interesting to see, but looking back to 10 years ago: my senior year of high school, it's hard to imagine that I was much different than I was at the beginning of high school. I was always a hardcore Christian. Even up until the time I dated Malyse in my freshman year of college. Hardcore Christian. Sex is for marriage. Synod. Youth Group. Minh. Trying to get a girlfriend but getting turned down CONSTANTLY...probably because of being SUCH a hardcore Christian, even within my own youth group (hindsight is awesome). But didn't matter. God mattered. Jesus and his love for me mattered. My faith mattered. And if having a significant other wasn't part of that plan I was fine with it.
This is the BEGINNING of that time I started coming out of that shell. I wasn't fully out of it. I was about a year off from that. But it's just amazing to think that just a decade ago, that's where I was in life. Just deciding to chicken out of Wartburg College. Just deciding to divert from my path of being a Pastor. Just deciding to stay in Sacramento. Just starting to become friends with Jack, Jono, and Dave all together. Fascinating to think about what my life might have been had the three of us never been as close as we became at this time 10 years ago. Had the three of use not gotten so close, had I not fallen so hopelessly in love with Sasha, I would have gone to Wartburg. And in all probability stayed the course. Became a Pastor with a Bachelor's in Theology and a minor in music. Being an ordained pastor, or Youth Pastor at some church...wherever I might have thought that God might have wanted to send me.
Amazing to think that was just 10 years ago. The number "10", itself, isn't that big. But since then, I diverted from my path of going to be a pastor, dating an atheist and learning other ways of life. Starting to doubt my faith and being willing to abandon my still-remaining morals just to have sex with the hottest girl I had met thus far, only to have her deny me to preserve those same morals I was willing to abandon. Gearing myself up for Alma's debut with the creepy old gay guy who had a crush on me. Months away from beginning my party phase at Sonoma State. Beginning my party phase at Sonoma State University. Meeting Dozens of people who would quickly becoming INCREDIBLY close friends who knew everything about me up to that point. Friend who, unbeknownst to me, would fade almost just as quickly as they came into my life.
It literally seems like a lifetime ago. "!0" is just not a big number. But it feels like an absolute lifetime ago that I was posting to Livejournal nearly daily.
10 years ago, Jim was still alive. We were all graduating high school. And we were merely months away from the time Jim would show Dave and I what it was like to get high on salvia and then on weed. And months away from the time we had the epic conflict with Monica and everyone on 4th of July 2004 when they discriminated against Jim because he was gay. The same night he came out to me and Dave and was finally honest about BEING gay. The most horrible, conflict-ridden night of the three of our lives up to that point, but the most free and honest night of Jim's life to that point.
It feels like a lifetime ago that Jim died. Almost impossible to think that nearly exactly 10 years ago he was just discovering who he was.
Even at that, it took almost a year longer for me to discover who I, Corey Helwig was.
10 years of chronicling my life here on Livejournal. Briefly looking at some of the posts that a 17-year-old Corey made, it's hard to believe that I ever believed the things I did. I ever thought the things I thought back then. That I was naive enough to think that all the friendships I left high school with would be intact for life.
Sasha and I became closer.
Sasha and I became best friends; closer today than we ever were back then.
Craig and I talk rarely, at best. But we still pick up from where we left off. And it's like no time ever passed. Figurative brothers since 2nd grade.
Miles and I have gone back and forth between hating each other and being closer to each other than anyone else in our lives. But he's still around. Everyday our friendship growing stronger and more solidified than the time we met in Kindergarten: Fall 1991.
Fall. !9.91.
FALL !991!
23 years. It's hard to fathom I've had a friendship with Miles that long: let along even being ALIVE that long.
There's nobody in my life from the class younger than me. Despite how influential KAIROS was to me. None of them are still around anymore.
I can remember that my KAIROS group was K2G6, and the one I was a leader on was K3G4. But I would be hard-pressed to remember who was in my KAIROS group. And only slightly less pressured to remember who I chose - hand selected- for the group I led in K3G4.
Except for Katie (now "Kate") Sprawka, I don't really know where any of them are at this point in their lives. It pains me to look back and hardly remember. But it also helps me remember that I'm human. Things are easy to forget. Things fade over time. There was a time, even a couple years after high school, where I could look back to every semester of high school and remember what classes, and what teachers, I had for which set I had each class every year of high school. At this point I can still remember what teachers I had, but for the most part, I can't remember which years, which semesters, or what grades I had in each of their classes.
So many things I can think about that seem like an absolute lifetime ago. I can reference back to previous journal entries and say "I was a different person then than I was the year before that". "And that person in this particular year, he was different than that other person a mere months, or maybe a year before that."
I've gone through various religious changes. And those I can site, only now, in general timeframes, when I used to be able to look back and rememeber where I was at each month - in some cases, even to the specific day where I was in my religious walk. From childhood until this time I was a hardcore Christian. After that I was confused but still believed in a god. After that, I was completely and utterly nostalgic waiting for a religious calling of some sort. After that I was a Pagan. After that, more specifically, a Wiccan. Then I was completely apathetic and ignorant again. Then a self-proclaimed Agnostic. Then a Full-blown Atheist. Then an Atheist who ignored all religion. Then back to a partial Pagan/Wiccan again and yet again back to a complete nihilist.
And that's just religion. In between all that personal conflict, I've had about a dozen heartaches, both major an minor. A few girlfriends, almost twice as many more flings.
Once I finally lost my virginity at 20-years-old, I could look back on half a dozen heartbreaks. And I could remember at that time I was grateful I hadn't gotten lucky in my horny teenage guy post-high school years. But that I had struck out enough that I had finally decided to save myself for someone that I would at least care about. Someone whom I don't think about on an everyday basis to this day (met her almost exactly 8 years ago), but whom I always look back with absolutely fond memories and whom I am absolutely grateful I waited for. It was much more meaningful to give my virginity to someone who meant something rather than just a random. Which, by the way, we've all had at least one in the last decade.
Again, I've come a long way since her, but she still holds a special place in my heart. And I've gone through my phases. Good partners. Terrible partners. Even my fair share of STD drama. Some which, after they happened, I would have wished to forget about and traded for better experiences, but that I now look back on as valuable experiences. Even the negative ones I look back on in fondness.
So many experiences. I haven't even counted, but I'm willing to bet on me making hundreds, maybe even pushing a thousands journal entries chronicling my experiences from the last 10 year of my life.
So many experiences that, like I said, seemed LITERALLY like a lifetime ago. Even though I can acknowledge that it is all a part of my past, it seems like an absolute DISTANT past.
So many changes have occurred in my life: Friendships, relationships, religious affiliations, interests, and career trajectories. Even something as minute as musical interests. It's hard to believe that it all took place in the last 10 years.
And yet, many things have remained intact since the time that I graduated high school. Friendships, relationships, religious affiliations, interests, and career trajectories, and still: musical interests. So many similarities, yet so many changes.
Sometimes it feels like a lifetime has passed. Sometimes it feels like almost no time has passed. REALLY? IT WAS AN eNTIRE DECACE AGO THAT I GRADUATED HIGH SCHOOL?? 2004?
Wow.
Just. Wow.
Like I said, sometimes it feels like a life time. And other things feel like they're absolutely recent.
All wrapped up in the same, both recent, in arms reach, while also absolutely distance and unfathomable are the memories of losing Sharmelia Jeffries and Matt Prentice.
So recent. Still painful. Still fresh whenever I think about the both of them. But at the same time completely distant and both fond characters of my distant past.
The pains and heartbreaks from the last 10 years still sometimes seem fresh and newly-formed. But the close friendships and fond memories are sometimes a fading recollection of fondness of my consciousness.
I could go on and on. Everything seems so distant and far away. But everything also seems like so new, fresh, and like hardly any time has past.
All this ranting and I have only barely scraped the surface of all the life-altering experiences I've been through in the last decade.
10 years. What sounds like hardly any time at all. And, yet, I feel like I've lived the lifetime of a dozen different people, all of whose memories are blending into one, fond, very brief timeline of the same conscious person.
And now here I am. With a bachelor's degree I earned I heard 5 years ago...Holy shit..5 YEARS AGO! A certification and experience in being an Emergency Medical Technician. And a passion and future career focus in being a Special Education Teacher and Behavior Analyst. All of those which didn't take place until MANY years after high school - amidst all the personal identity crises, religious questionings, friendship shifts, and relationship paradigm changes. And I am only finally, just this year solidified in my path of becoming what I want to be when I grow up.
If this is what the first 10 years since graduating high school has brought me in life, it makes me curious, hopeful, skeptical, optimistic, pessimistic, completely in love with, and even absolutely terrified at what the next very short, but painstakingly long time of my life will bring in the next 10 years.