The Forge

Francis T. "Frankie" Hughes
HOLMES, NY - Francis T. "Frankie" Hughes, 19, a resident of Holmes, NY, passed away at his home, Friday, July 4, 2008. Born in Poughkeepsie on February 9, 1989, he was the son of Francis L. and Terilynn (Freeman) Hughes. Frankie attended Pawling Central High School, and graduated last year. He was attending Dutchess Community College and was a Pawling School employee. He was a member of the New York Sports Clubs in Carmel. He leaves behind his parents, two brothers, Braden and Bryan Bucchioni of Mahopac, NY, and many, many friends. Friends may call at the Horn & Thomes, Inc. Funeral Home, 83 East Main Street, Pawling, Wednesday, July 9th from 9:30 to 11:30 AM. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at St. John's Church, Pawling at 12 noon. Burial will follow in Pawling Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that donations in memory of Frankie be made directly to the Horn & Thomes, Inc. Funeral Home, 83 East Main Street, Pawling, NY 12564 to help the family with the funeral expenses.

I'm lost.

Just throwing it out there. But i'm absolutely clueless as to my own location.

Spiritually, i'm a Christian with a life full of sin and inadequate desire to be free of it, going to church without connecting and passing through the week no differently than an unbeliever.

Economically, i'm two weeks into my job and just turned in my two-week notice, and i have no idea where i'll find a summer job suitable for me.

Physically, i'm fast approaching the three-hundred pound mark with no signs of stopping, despite my repeated claims that weight loss is imminent.

Socially, i feel the reins i once had on my relationships slowly slipping from my grip, yet do nothing to regain them. It's as if i don't even care if i lose everyone.

Mentally, i can feel a once-vibrant imagination crumbling from misuse and inadequate application, all the while neglecting potential sources of inspiration.

There you have it. Complete lack of direction. I'm standing in a desert, trapped in a whirlwind, unable to see what's in front and only dimly recalling what's behind, thus paralyzed in my unhappy state.

Countdown initiated.

Houston, we have a problem.

Children's Theatre has been both a lot of fun and yet slightly depressing. I continue to realize how quickly my grip on the senior friends i've made is slipping. The one perk of being in the theatre is that there is a good chance i will see these people again while i'm at GCC--but that's only a temporary extension and frankly i have no reason to expect that i'll ever see them again after that. As it stands, very little communication takes place that isn't face-to-face. Some e-mails go unanswered, and passing in the hall brings at most a hello but more often the eyes trail to the floor.

I incessantly feel like an outsider, which to a degree i am and yet at the same time should not be. The caste system that i once claimed nonexistent is very much there between the cast and crew--it is simply built with invisible walls. There are the walls you expect--those between classes, wherein i am a newcomer to the theatre family and have not had the one, two, or three years of bonding that others have. These walls, while irksome, are acceptable. But there are other walls, walls between music majors and non-music majors, between people who have gotten roles and people who haven't... walls everywhere.

I can put on my techie blacks and it will earn me access to the table at lunch or dinner--but only during the run of the show. A week from now none of these people will think twice about inviting me to sit with them--let alone sitting next to me. Those who i've spoken with but not gotten a name from will remain obscurely recognizable to me while i fade forever from their memory, which is perhaps best seeing as it avoids the awkward state where i, recalling their name, address them and receive an unknowing stare as a response.

This presents a dual-faceted problem. If, in fact, the division is due to a clique mentality among actors, then i shall be able to break in by receiving a role in a production. The problem here is inherent in the system--there's no good reason why people in one camp should be so isolated from people in the other.

The second issue, however, is far more grave. Perhaps i am simply insecure, but more and more i get the impression that i am not liked by most of the people who seem to accept my company--not necessarily the ones i live with or the few close friends of the hall, but a great deal of the rest. Even there, i've had to make some rather disturbing discoveries. Betrayal never feels good.

I can deal with, as Willy Loman would put it, never being "well liked," but not being even generally liked is something i find rather unacceptable within me. It is an indescribable feeling to know that the person speaking to you wishes for nothing more than to be doing something else, and to know that the only reasonable explanations for this are either a. the person is a jerk by nature or b. you are a jerk by nature.

Jerk can mean a lot of things here. For option 'a,' jerk bears the traditional connotation--a person whose personality is so abrasive and egotistic that to gain their friendship requires you to be the same as them, and therefore such a gain is rarely sought after. In the latter side of things--the 'b' side--jerk implies any of a degree of character flaws: arrogance, excessive neediness, laziness, overbearingness (is that a word?), pickiness (who cares?), or being too serious/not serious enough.

Am i a jerk? I don't really know. What with the way my spiritual life has(n't) been going, it wouldn't surprise me if i've become a less admirable person than i may have once been (though that is, quite probably, assuming too much).

But then, if i'm not a jerk, why do i feel like i might be? If this is all some outrageous paranoia, if it can be shelved under "freshman insecurity"--if i stand a chance of losing real friends because i'm assuming they're not--then what can i do? How does one determine the degree to which they are truly accepted by a group when all of society is dedicated to wearing perpetual masks to convey expected emotions--especially in a group of actors?

It's a hard topic, and one that will inevitably go unsolved.
You might say this post is a cry for answers, but i may as well be crying out into a void. Sure, i'd love a happy ending, where all the people this is truly addressed to read and respond to my thoughts, but i know that in reality the only people that will read this are the people i don't have questions about to begin with.

It's a gritty story about life.
Does life have happy endings?

There are some words to describe me, but presently i think the most fitting is "despicable," which means 'morally reprehensible.' For quite some time now i've allowed myself to completely crumble in all aspects of self-control. I've flung open the door to new problems while calling up old ones on the phone and inviting them to come back. More apathetic than ever, i've gone down roads unflinchingly that i once shivered violently at the thought of. I don't know what it is; this home, this town, these people, or all these changes being flung at me like shrapnel from a grenade. Whatever the case may be, i've become degenerate. A few of my many shortcomings:

-that weight loss thing? ha. elijah yelled at me about giving up like a month ago but i haven't really given it a thought since. What's worse, i've somehow convinced myself that giving up soda constitutes a new diet. No running, no calorie-counting. I still eat what i want when i want to and spend the rest of my time sitting under my laptop complaining about how i never do anything.
-speaking of apathy-picked up a guitar for about 3 days straight and haven't returned since. i've played tennis twice but haven't really been too into it. So much for a healthy hobby.
-I graduated on the 22nd of June. It is the second of August. My graduation party was on July 7th. My mother has been trying to get me to write thank-you cards and i've done nothing but procrastinate. And i am leaving tomorrow, which means the next opportunity i'm going to have to write those cards is August 14th- five weeks after the party and almost two months after the graduation it celebrated. So much for gratitude.
-i've happily given up opportunities to go to church. i've used the lack of any serious college outreach on wednesday nights as an excuse not to attend, all the while skipping out on a few of the friday night meetings specifically designed to fill the aforementioned void. My bible gets opened for approximately five minutes a week, which are the minutes during which the pastor asks us to read aloud a small passage, after which it returns to its closed position. This combined with a nigh nonexistent prayer life as of late has caused quite the rift between myself and God and you can bet it's manifested itself in other aspects of my life.
-i think the phrase "short fuse" is adequate to describe my temperament as of late. Although several times i've been in the right during arguments, for the most part i've entirely unjustly become outraged or raised my voice in what ought to have been normal conversation. Sometimes i wish i could see anger taking over me like that black suit in spiderman three- cuz that's certainly how it feels. A little tingle at first but before i know it it's totally enveloped me.

There are others but i think you get the point. I'm sick of who, where and what i am. I desperately need to change, but first i need to care. Sure, as i write this i'm consumed by the guilt/hate hybrid that says things must change, but i have serious reservations when it comes to how motivated i'll feel waking up tomorrow morning.

As i stood outside this evening, my obnoxious dog refusing to urinate outdoors and mosquitoes joyfully draining my plasma, i looked up and couldn't help but notice the looming silhouette of a nearby tree against a clear blue sky. It wasn't quite black out and thus there were only a small number of stars visible at the time. The strange thing was, as i looked around me, all the trees and the sky and the stars seemed to be talking to me. Not in the audible sort of way, naturally, but still, i understood what they were saying. It was a typical summer evening, not unlike those i used to spend playing manhunt, or stargazing, or staring out a car window as we travelled home from my grandparents' house before my grandma died. I still don't know the name of those bugs that sound like maracas, but they're always there, competing with the crickets to see who will drive me crazy first. And for the first time, it hit me. In three weeks i'm going to get in our van with my family with a few suitcases, drive hundreds of miles away, and when they leave i won't be coming back with them. This was my last summer of freedom-- the last time i could sleep in for the sake of sleeping in, the last nights i'd be able to spend doing nothing but lie in the grass hoping for shooting stars, the last opportunity to say the things i needed to say and do the things i needed to do before growing up. After all, who am i kidding? From now on it's school and then work. And if my parents have taught me anything with this Disney trip, it's that there's no such thing as rest when you finally get around to a vacation.

Along with this transition comes a hefty responsibility i never had before: myself. My words, my actions, more than ever before, are my own. Even at 17, some things still get laid on the parents' shoulders. But when i'm 18, a freshman in college, it changes. People will hang out with me only because they want to, not because they always have. The music i listen to and the movies i see are not dictated by a parental rating system but my own conscience. There won't be anyone nagging me to write those thank-you notes. There won't be a ride to church if i don't want one. Those decisions have to be made by me. This is my life. And in order to move on into this new era, i'm going to have to deal with what i've done....

in this farewell
there's no blood
there's no alibi
cause i've drawn regret
from the truth
of a thousand lies
so let mercy come
and wash away

what i've done
i'll face myself
to cross out
what i've become
erase myself
and let go of
what i've done

put to rest
what you thought of me
while i clean this slate
with the hands
of uncertainty
so let mercy come
and wash away

what i've done
i'll face myself
to cross out
what i've become
erase myself
and let go of
what
i've
done

for what i've done
i start again
and whatever pain may come
today this ends
i'm forgiving
what
i've
done

i'll face myself
to cross out
what i've become
erase myself
and let go of
what i've done

what i've done

forgiving what i've done.

How the ****'d we wind up like this?
Why weren't we able/to see the signs that we missed/ and try to turn the tables?
Now the story's played out like this/just like a paperback novel.
Let's rewrite an ending that fits/instead of Hollywood horror.
Nothing's wrong just as long as you know that someday i will:
Someday, somehow, gonna make it alright
But not right now....

You might remember a while ago i posted the lyrics to a song from Nickelback entitled 'If Everyone Cared.' It depicted two lovers laying in a field, staring up at the stars and thinking about how much better our world would be if people could just get over themselves and lend a hand to those around them. And, if we are to believe these lovers, in a world where nobody lied, nobody was consumed by arrogance, and everyone had compassion, then eventually we might reach a point of immortality. Basically, it's a call back to Eden; a world before the Fall, before one mouthful of fruit shattered the harmony we were always intended to live in. It's a nice thought, to be sure, and those of us in the Christian faith believe that the day will come (though, i should point out, not by any effort on man's part). But let's face it: this sure ain't Eden.

Over the last few weeks i started to correspond with a young woman that i met via purevolume.com. To be sure, such correspondence is odd at the very least because it requires taking two complete strangers and trying not just to build a bridge between them, but to find the right materials with which to build such a bridge. Even with such wonderful social networking tools as purevolume and facebook, who we are and who we choose to present ourselves as to others are often quite different and as such we often need to talk directly to other people to get an idea for how their psyche works. That's not to say i started talking to Michi as some sort of experiment, or to get inside her head. It's just that, as you talk to someone, you begin to better understand who they are as a person. It is then, when you start to know who they are for real, that you can compare them to the them they've presented to the world, and decide for yourself how and why such presentations are made.

In her own words: "By the way, I'm more ****ed up than you can imagine. I look like a little boy and I couldn't keep a guy by my side if my life depended on it. I pretty much suck." This ending is one of many variations of her purevolume profile i've seen in the short few weeks i've been talking to her. Other inclinations, both in photography style and music choice, led me to wonder if she might fall under that oh-so-popular blanket classification typical of my generation, emo. Only a few days ago, she sent me a link to a book entitled "Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture," telling me that the main reason it had piqued her interest at all was because upon reading the book summary she had the sensation that she was reading the story of her life. "But I'm not emo," she assured me.

I'm just gonna put it out there: Michi is terrified of being labeled as Emo. Because for her, as well as so many others out there, the word means more than "emotional." Instead of denoting a person with the admirable quality of letting his or her feelings show despite what friends, passerbys or strangers may think of them, wearing a heart on their sleeve, and tapping into the complex network we call "feelings," the word 'emo' has become a derogatory term. Which is ironic because, as a subculture, a large percentage of those labeled emo embrace the derogatory nature because it just goes to further their feeling of low social standing and self-loathing. Thus, those who are truly emotional at heart dare not admit to it because so many people are pretending to be really deep just for the sake of fitting in with the huge number of people who make a life out of being misfits. The true emo has been displaced by the army of wannabe low-lifes.

I don't bring this up because i want to go and prove that my friend is emo. In fact, if the above gives any indication, i'm all for the true 'emo' and even consider myself to be one. Those close to me are likely to find that very odd, because i don't *dress* like an emo or *talk* like an emo. But then...those people probably haven't got a real grasp on what it is i'm saying. What i'm saying is that i tend to read very much into things. I'm gullible. I'm jaded. And i often get very angry at society simply because, well, it sucks. A lot. But then there's that not-so-great quality of the emo: self-pity.

Put simply, it's the idea that your life is just so bad that everyone around you should feel sorry for you. In fact, unless enough people tell you it's gonna be okay, you won't be convinced and thus will remain in your corner crying and (in some sad cases) bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. I'm certainly not over the edge to that extent, but i've had my bouts with depression and i know it's terrible. What's worse, i see a lot of people out there with much better reasons to complain who say nothing at all. They bite their tongues and move on with it, and it makes me stop and wonder why i'm such a crybaby. On the other hand, there are those who deserve to be pitied, to have a hand stretched out to them. Those to whom life since the Fall has not been kind. Those to whom, as some might put it, Fate has dealt an unfair hand.

Tonight i was talking to Michelle and, as usual, we were both bored, insomniac and had no one to talk to but each other. After a long period of silence, i jokingly asked her what she was doing to distract herself from my mindless drivel. She told me she was just scanning some site that had looked interesting. When i probed further, she sent me the link. "dailystrength.org. it's like a blog community." Nonchalantly i followed the link, and (with her in mind) i decided to try out depression. A few moments scanning the page led my eyes to fix themselves on the topic "Havin a bad night need to talk to someone." Alright, a chance to see this site in action. I readied myself for what would most likely be some petty complaint, and couldn't have been more wrong.

"I am really feelin bad! I am so down right now i just really need to talk to someone!!! :'("

The responses were as would be expected. People wanted this girl named Ashley to know that they were there to listen. What was on her mind?

" my boyfriend kinda raped me this afternoon. I dont know if its really considered rape because hes my boyfriend but IM really feelin pretty down about myself."



...




...




Future posting revealed that she had been beaten and abused before the rape took place. Concerned peers and parents alike began to flood in consolations and advice. Help hotlines began to fill the pages. Call the police, they told Ashley. It doesn't matter if he was your boyfriend, get away from him and get help. Sue him. He's wrong. We're praying for you. Etc.

Slack-jawed, i began to read what had moments before promised only to be a temporary diversion from the monotony of my calm, air-conditioned existence. Suddenly the ugliness of the world around me came crashing through a cable line and bore down my irises to the brain. To the heart. Forget my previous inclinations. My life DOES NOT suck.

And as i read, the song from Nickelback began to float through my mind. That first line, which i care not to repeat, says volumes with that single profanity. What went wrong with us? How did we get to a world based on self-serving, a place where people feel like it's okay to beat and rape their girlfriends for momentary satisfaction without thinking of the consequences to follow?

What bothers me the most, however, is this.

Someday.
Somehow.
I'm gonna make it alright
BUT NOT RIGHT NOW.

When? I petition you all. WHEN is it time to make it alright? When will we put aside our foolish self-centered tendencies, get out there, and help the Ashleys out there. When will the Michelles feel good about themselves and let their emotions run as deep as they were meant to? The answer is simple: now.

Let's make someday, THIS day.