Thursday, November 25, 2004

Repledged! // Omaha, City of Entropy

For those of you that have been following my fraternity saga, which would be pretty much be all of you who ever read my posts (all four or five of you), I was repledged on Monday for next semester. Here is the longer story: The entire preceding week of being depledge more than sucked. I pretty much did everything in my power to show the house that I do care about it, myself, and the people in it. I never disliked it at all, the passion for it was just always dormant. I would stop and talk to people if I saw them sitting in their room, or if they were passing by in the hallway; follow them to where they were going if I had to. I would talk to the guys that live out of house more when I saw them visiting. There was a Greek Man of the Year, a for-fun competition one of the sororities holds each year, and we had one of our guys sponsored and whenever he walked on stage I yelled and cheered for him along with the rest of our guys, and he ended up winning (probably helps that audience reaction is a good part of the base of judgement). There are many other examples, but I honestly do not feel like typing them out ... it is 5:30 in the morning. I have not slept all night (we shall get to why later). So come this last Monday night, my pledge dad told me he was going to make a motion on that night's active meeting to get me repledged in the house. So after dinner was done I went up to my room and began writing up what to say to the active house when they called me down to speak on my own behalf. I ended with two sheets of paper, front and back, within the time I had. I finished about five minutes before someone came upstairs to tell me to come down. I went down there, read my paper, and went back upstairs. Five minutes later, I am invited back down, and told I am repledged for next semester. So basically, I am still not a pledge, but I am not held to the limits as strictly. I can go to social events as long as it is cleared with the house first. However, when I awoke the next morning, there was an envelope on my desk addressed from the house. When I opened it up, had a few sheets of paper, then end of which was signed "A Future Brother." The basic point of it was that they are going to see if they can repledge me this semester, so I might have a chance to activate with my current pledge class. It will take a bit of work, but I plan on getting on that as soon as I get back to Lincoln tomorrow night. I am in Omaha currently on Thanksgiving vacation ... I am going back early to help the pledge class sell parkings spots in our house parking lot because we have a home football game. I came back to Omaha Tuesday at about noon. From there I eventually went to dinner with my mom, stepdad, and sister. I also made plans to watch "Requiem for a Dream" with one of my friends (who happens to be one of my ex-girlfriends) later that night. It took a bit to actually get through watching the movie, as several other people ended up coming over as well throughout its duration. I started watching with my friend, Kim, and a little ways through it some of her friends came over. They talked a bit so it was a bit more difficult to hear the movie, and one of them had not seen it before. So Kim, short thereafter, had to go pick up her sister from work. I went with her, and while we did that, her two friends rewatched the movie from the beginning to see what they had missed. When we got pack, two more people were there, both of which were guys I knew from grade school and high school. It was pretty cool to see them again, but weird at the same time. Especially when they would started talking about things that have happened to other friends I knew here that I have not talked to in a good several years. It was all just so depressing because nothing they said that had happened ever really was a good event. We got through the movie with a few other minor setbacks. It was pretty good, but also a bit trippy (and rightfully so given the context of the movie). After if was over pretty much everyone but Kim and I left. So we just got to talking, and it ended up being a really involved conversation. She has always had a problem telling people things about herself, and I mean really. Not joking. At all. She once tried to get her mom to get her to a psychiatrist, because she has massive issues with fear, but nothing ever became of that ... which did not help her situation much. And she has been like that ever since she was a child. So it dominates her life right now. A lot of our conversation was me trying to get things out of her, getting her to open up. Eventually we just started talking about our past relationship. It has been about 19 months since it happened. Of any relationship I have had it was the quickest. We were involved for about three weeks, and actually dating for maybe one week. It was nice to talk about it, though. To see what the both of us thought about it, and we both pretty much had the same thoughts. It still had to coax a lot of things out of her, but it was worth it. I am glad it happened. We were at her house until about 4:30 in the morning. She drove me home and I stayed in her car out in front of my house because we had not really stopped talking yet. So I really was not in my house until about 5:00. Even then, we said we would continue talking tonight. And we did. She got over here at about 1:30AM Thursday, today, after she had gotten off work. At first we just talked about random crap, but then I brought it back to what we left off on the previous night/morning. Again, it was a lot of me trying to get her to say things she was afraid to. I got really frusterated at one point, and that pretty much brought the conversation down to one final bit of information I would stop at nothing to get her to say. She did not want to say it again because she was afraid to, and this one we more of a big deal to her. She describes her fear simply as a wall. It is put up to everyone, and sometimes people can break bits of it down, but very rarely. The previous night she said I had started to put a very small hold in it, and a few cracks here and there. It helps that I am a persistent bitch, and I am good at bringing conversations in full circle to come back to a certain point. However, with this one she knew would put a much bigger hole in that wall. It took me a good half hour to an hour, but I finally got it out of her. I let her leave shortly thereafter, but I knew that part of that wall really did crumble. Before she left, while we were still talking a bit, she told me something else she normally would not without me even trying to pry it out of her. Anyway, that is pretty much the reason I am still awake right now. She was here about as late as I was out last night. I still think it was more than worth it, though. I have realized, though, how much Omaha tends to depress me. Pretty much everything I ever knew here fell apart by the time I left for college. Now that I come back and visit with some of my old friends, everything just seems to further itself into a downward spiral. Everything just seems to eventually give out, and it does it fast. So many people I know do not really seem to be very happy anymore. It is just a weird thing to come back to after so long ...

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