8th Grade Lunchroom

“When I walk into a room, I do not light it up. Fuck.” The National

Flashback to 8^th grade. I’m coming off one of my best years socially. I made people laugh. I felt like a cool kid. I danced with more than one girl at the school dance. Things were trending upward for young matthew blake.

But, we interrupt this success story with the awful news my parents gave me the summer after 7^th grade. “we’re moving to Kansas.” I was so naïve. I assumed my cool would be packed in the big moving truck with everything else.

I was sure I had it. I went to orientation. Hair parted down the middle. Socks pulled up to my knees. A cute girl was so smiley and nice giving us the tour of hillcrest junior high. I vividly remember saying to myself, “I’m going to like it here.”

I was used to stuff going my way. I was used to people liking me. And being the funny kid. Girls wrote me notes asking me to go steady with them back in Michigan. “Fucking Kansas?” I’m sure I thought (in much more Christian vernacular) “I’m going to absolutely fucking kill it here.”

And then I walked into the lunch room on the first day. I did not light it up. Fuck, is right. That’s an all-time “oh shit” moment for me. Where the hell do I sit? Oh…there is the table of cool kids. I’ll sit a few seats down from them and I’ll be cool in no time. Didn’t happen. who I was in another state didn’t translate to fitting in in my suddenly awful new home.

So, 8^th grade was a fucking nightmare. The people I did meet and talk to were fucking awesome. And so in that sense, I only just this second realized what an ass hole and cool kid wannabe I’ve always been. Why? The guys I talked to the most in 8^th grade? I fucking guarantee they’d fit right in with me at my corner bar.

And maybe part of this is being raised to look good…I was supposed to be a good kid and fit in at the country club and all that bull shit. But, who I am in real life? It’s nothing like that. Fancy people make me uncomfortable. It’s the craziest fucking thing. It took writing this out for me to see that if I’d stayed in Michigan I would have likely ended up a douchebag. But, I got humbled in Kansas and it wasn’t the bad thing that I thought it was all these years. It was actually me getting my first experience with people who are more like me…the outsiders.

But, what I was getting at when I said that year was a nightmare was that there was a feeling I got walking in and knowing everybody at valleywood in Michigan...that light up the room sense of self. And it was so fucking lonely to only have a couple people who would even look my way at hillcrest in Kansas.

And it’s kind of cool to now see that I’ve always had an appreciation for lonely or broken hearted people because of my story. If I stayed locked in on cool (and now I’m laughing at myself, because I should ask some of my 7^th grade fb friends just how “cool” I actually was) or at least felt popular and my life was a line that never stopped peaking, what fucking meaning would i have found in life?

I’m a mess sometimes. I fuck up all the time. I fucking hurt. I have to write every fucking day so that I don’t self-destruct. I get in relationships with the wrong people and think the world has ended when it goes wrong. And shit. Again. All that is why my old life was a bad fit. Everything I just said in this paragraph. Try bringing that to church. You should be able to, right? There’s a Jesus out there, who was invented to heal the fucked up. I just never ran into him while I was churching religiously.

So, I can look back on my story. Know that I survived. And know that it was foreshadowing to how my life would go. I walked into clarette by myself. It was way fucking worse than 8^th grade. I was way more broken. And lonely. I had lost the wife, the job and the church. My identity would need to be completely rebuilt. And therapy and jack daniels were a big part of the rebuilding process.

And then last year…well shit…let’s go ahead and rebuild again. No clarette. No girlfriend. No problem, I thought. I’ve done this before. I knew I’d be fine. I knew I’d succeed. And I was way the fuck off. It has been fucking difficult.

But, the thing is, when you date someone for a while, that’s the box people put you in. if she’s lovely, people think of you this way. If she’s homely, they think of you another. And there was a certain image I’m sure I had at clarette when i was single. And when I dated naomi that changed. And when I was with Sarita, especially for that long, my image changed again.

Now, in my mind there’s an association that I have of what it looked like for me to date those two. And it’s a positive one. But, people may have actually thought “what is wrong with that fucking pervert that he dates girls so young?”

But, the point is when you see a guy who comes to the bar a lot and has been single for a while, you make assumptions that there must be good reason he’s single. And when someone is taken, it’s probably normal to overrate them. just because they tricked someone into dating them, doesn’t mean they’re not an ass hole.

I remember one night at the old house. One of sarita’s work friends had just met me and it happened to be one of the nights where jokes and stories were flowing naturally out of my mouth. This girl ended up saying to Sarita, “matt’s a dream come true. He’s way too good for you.”

So, yeah. That one got me. Made me think I was god’s gift to whatever. And so there was some piece of that version of me that I knew I’d be taking into single life. But, with clarette closed, I didn’t have a spot to call home. And all my friends are married. I was back to lonely matt.

I’d go to the bar by myself. And I was anything but a dream come true. I’d make friends here and there. And get a few laughs, but I really think I was coming from (and still am to some extent) from an 8^th grade place of “I promise I’m cool…please like me” instead of actually believing myself to be dream worthy.

I really, really like myself. And that’s taken so many years of writing and therapy to get there. So, when I get little rejections. Or little moments where my night at the bar is kind of hollow, I take that shit so hard. And realize how far I have to go.

But, I also have to remember how far I’ve come. This time last year, I was absolutely fucking dying. You can’t fucking treat your “dream come true” the way she treated me. I work fucking hard to unfuck my mind and to get it fucked so cold-heartedly by someone who could in the same breath say she loved me. Good god. It’s amazing that I unfucked my way out of that mess at all.

And yeah. I’ll be lonely. And the process is painfully long. But, I know I’m getting there. And I have little moments that make me want to kick my own ass for getting sad. I got the sweetest inbox from this lady on match dot com the other day. She read my profile and thought it was hilarious. And put a lot of time and effort into the email to me. I know what it feels like to write that email. And I know how shitty it feels to get no response back.

I’m not interested in her. and I guess to some extent that’s shallow, but I’m not going to end up with someone I’m not attracted to, right? And see…that reminds me of a good friend. It was confusing when we first hung out. she noticed it. Set things straight. She wasn’t interested in me. And that just opened the door to a beautiful friendship. We could have real heart to hearts without wondering if there was anything more to it. We were pals.

The point of that I guess is that all I’ve seen on match are people I would be pals with at best. And really, maybe I should just delete that shit so that I’m not getting girls hopes up. There’s a standard that I need, that I’m going to hold out for. and I’m not going to fuck up my life again, by repeating my mistakes. Each girl I’ve dated, at one point or another, felt like they weren’t good enough for me.

Part of that is I’m okay. Part of that is that the girls didn’t love themselves. so, I ended up dating a pretty face. And talking myself into there being more substance than there actually was. They were young. Give them a fucking break. Grow into liking yourself. There aren’t any fucking shortcuts. I was so cool with me, pre-naomi. And it took some rebuilding to get to pre-sarita matt.

I just had this image of 4 or 5 italian interns at the hyatt. They’re walking through the building on their last day and I walk in. all of them lifted up their hands at once and said “Matt!!!!!” I hung out with them a few times. Not many. I worked with some of them. But, that moment was that light up the room moment. It’s the way my therapist made me feel. She lit up. She saw me for free. She loved my writing.

And she gave me the confidence that I needed to know that I’m going to rebuild yet again. I have a track record now, from 8^th grade on up. Lonely is cool. I can get through it. For every ounce of lonely I feel, I have to offset that with all the stories I’ve told and people I’ve met throughout the years. I’m adored. And I insta-shook my head as soon as I wrote that.

But, it’s true. Get to know me. We’ll find our common ground. We’ll start collecting our stories together. Whoever you are. Friend. Person I just met. Girl who’s cuter than me (aka all of them). No matter the person, I’m going to be loveable on some level. Not as a cool kid, I’m awesome/worship me. But, as a guy who’s been beat down by life.

And my heart breaks for women like the one who messaged me. She doesn’t have that outward beauty. And it’s not fair, but that means she’s going to have a measure of lonely that I’ll never know. Not because i'm much to look at, but because of who i've worked hard to become. Oh god. In fact, the other night I was said something like, “she is pretty. And I am not.” To which I guy I had just met, dead serious, responded, “no, you’re really not.”

So, call it false confidence, but I do feel pretty. Not because I’m some guy who looks good taking his shirt off, but because of all the little moments where people give me a mirror as to my worth as a human. The walk into a room/light it up moments that I have experienced.

I’m a long way from that reality at sullys, but I have fucking loved my time there. And there…see. I’m still that 8^th grader learning lessons. The point isn’t that I light up the room, so that I can feel good about myself. It’s that I light myself up by writing and working on being a better person, and in turn provide some kind of light. Some kind of feeling to the people I chat with that I really enjoy them as people. Everybody is fucking cool. And sometimes you have to be forced to sit apart from the cool kids to have that sink in.

A year ago this week, I dropped my daughter off for her first day of 7^th grade. She knew like 3 or 4 people. Everyone else had their cliques from elementary school. She was a bit of a lone wolf. And as soon as she got out of the car, I could not stop crying. And I know a big part of that was how much I struggled the first day of 8^th grade.

But, kid is not me. She is confident. She does light it up. She handled it fine. It wasn’t the greatest year ever. But, it wasn’t the end of the world. And she needs to learn to succeed in spots like that. She’s building her own track record. Living out the moments that will become future story times.

I can’t just hand confidence to her. but, I make sure she knows that I light up when I see her. who she is, is who I say she is. When I came up, my parents actions told me I was one thing, and it’s taken me forever to instead listen to the people who tell me I’m a dream come true.

As I was almost home from my walk just now, the front bottoms sang through my earbuds, “one day you will find someone who will love you like you deserve.” That’s a tall fucking order, right? But, why not keep dreaming? And keep building up the best me, so I have more to give the next girl. My therapist was my 80 year old dream girl for years. and I didn’t listen when she tried to tell me I deserved more than I was getting from the 3 girls I liked while I was in therapy. They even said “amen” to that and I kept saying “no I deserve to be shit on”.

Come on kid. You’re better than that. i love looking back on my growth and recognizing that i actually do deserve greatness. i've come a long way. not only improving as a human, but in terms of how i feel about myself.

in 7th grade, i may have been cool-ish, but i was an ass hole at times. that year, a group of boys, including me, got in trouble for the verbal bullying of one kid. he didn't want to come to school anymore. how much courage did it take for him to speak up? and how fucking lonely must he have felt? i got a little taste, when i went from cool to being that kid in a year.

but, fuck cool man. what did that life ever do for me, besides give me a fake sense of self and get me in trouble. i'd rather hang out with that bullied kid at a dive bar these days than hang out at the country club or church trying to impress people. the marginalized. the outcasts. those are my people. walk into my lunch room aka bar and i'll wave you over. no one should be made to feel how i did that day in 8th grade.