Peter Pan Leaves Neverland

Change in my life has been seemingly constant for the past 3 years. I moved from a small community of roughly 5,000 people in the Fall of 2006 to Indianapolis, which is closer to 800,000. I had always felt like a big fish in a little pond and I was ready to stretch my fins. I dove into dorm life and school head first, taking part in different activities than I normally had at home and within a few months and joined a band.

After the school year was over I spent the summer working a minimum wage retail job about 10 hours a week...the rest of my time was spent with music. I traveled around Indiana and Illinois with 3 guys I cared a lot about. I played in front of a lot of people and had a lot of awesome experiences. During all this I also moved twice, once from the dorm to an apartment, then into a basement apartment with the band's singer.

I transferred schools from University of Indianapolis to IUPUI to save money on school and have more time for the band. After about November, though it had started to turn into something I didn't love doing anymore. They had turned it into more of a job. Also, my girlfriend and I had called it quits, leaving me feeling a bit lonely. So I decided to leave where I was and move back home. I enrolled in classes at IUSB with intentions of regrouping and moving back to Indy when I was ready. Within a month of living back home I had started dating a girl from Elkhart, and was going to see her quite often, taking my focus off school.

After about a month and a half I decided to stop living with my parents and moved into a house with 5 guys in South Bend. I got a job at a restaurant as a server and spent my free time with my friends. I took my focus off school and worked too much. Then I decided I would go back to Indianapolis.

An hour after my last final at IUSB, I was on the road back to Indianapolis. I moved into an apartment with an old friend in Greenwood, a suburb south of Indy. I started a job as a server at another friend's restaurant. Allison's parents owned a restaurant called Pipers in Indy and it was a great place for me to work while transitioning back to "big city livin'." Allison and I started dating after much persistence on my part.

I spent the summer working two jobs, as a server and also as an Automotive Glass Technician. I was spending the week working 10 hour days on top of Semi trucks in warm clothes for shit pay. My weekends were at Pipers and with Allison. She and I had been getting along so well...it was the easiest relationship I had ever been in. Toward August of 2008 everything had begun to wear on me. I hated my job as an auto glass technician and by the middle of October I was laid off. Also, my relationship with Allison was taking a hit. We broke up in late November (the same time I had left Indy a year before) and I kept working at her parents' restaurant.

I had taken the semester off that fall, but Spring of 2009 I went back to IUPUI. Allison and I were still broken up and I was still working at Pipers. I had taken up cycling (fixed gear) which was lucky because my car had broken down. I was riding to class every day from my apartment in Greenwood, to the mall bus stop where I'd take the bus downtown and ride to class...in -25 degree weather. After a while I needed a break from serving and got a job downtown doing maintenance at a banquet hall for which Pipers often catered. I also got a job working delivery on my bike at Pita Pit. So now I was working 2 jobs, going to school, riding my bike everywhere, and attempting to get back together with Allison. It was a busy few months.

At the end of March my lease was up and I moved in with a family from my church, very close friends of mine. Allison liked this because I was closer than downtown and with friends of both of ours. My car still didn't work and after the semester was over I was working at Jimmy John's doing delivery as well. So now 3 jobs.

I quit the banquet place and stayed at JJ's and PP. Then I moved downtown with a girl I had met once and lived in an old school building. My bed was in the living room, which was my domain. The girl was a nutbag...and it only lasted about a month and a half until I got my own house with my best friend Charlie and an old friend, Jordan.

About a week after I moved in, Allison and I broke up again. Everything had been going fine, but it was reaching that time again...Fall. At the end of every summer and during fall I become someone I'm not. I burn bridges. I become very selfish. I broke up with Allison and it was foolish.

I don't know why I do this, and it keeps me up at night. I'm conscious of it, yet I still do it. I don't want to. So now, 3 months and 3 days after we broke up, I'm sitting and writing this. I've been attempting to mend things with Allison. I've been someone I don't want to be and she has always been there for me. Only two things have been constant in my life since I graduated high school: change and Allison.

So now, I'm proposing to myself a new challenge. I'm attempting to achieve some normality. I have a lot to prove to Allison, but I will. She has been my best friend for so long. Someone I don't have to try with because we think the same. Someone who all other women will never live up to (except my mother, of course). Someone who belongs at my side, and I at hers.

So it's time for another change. A change to becoming the man I will be, not the boy I used to be. It's time for normality. It's time to grow up.