First of all, my friends who are trying to move things from OD - down again! I don’t know what is going on, but I keep checking.
Now to why I came here today:
Recently, I was browsing the hometown papers and noticed the obituary for a former boyfriend. I saw his age, and then remembered, oh yeah, he was only two years my senior. Yikes.
His name was Fran - short for Francis. He was an outcast, just like me, and we had really begun being a couple more based on that than much of anything else.
Back in day, I knew that I would be leaving the bathroom optional part of my state for more employment target-rich places as soon as I graduated, and I also knew that long distance was not going to work for me, so I broke things off as graduation loomed. He also had some problematic tendencies, as in, he drove his demons away by drinking. And he did a lot of it, just never around me. I had been very clear to him that I detested alcohol and the behaviors that went with it, and to his credit, he honored that by only doing his drinking while away from me. He stood me up many times and was at best a marginal presence at school, so I worried about his prospects with regard to work. He, unlike me, had no plans to try and join the military. I didn’t manage it, and that is a short story for another day.
We were embarking on adulthood during the Reagan recession with unemployment reaching a national average of 7 percent. I was still under 18, but had emancipated from my parents and their meager financial assistance was lurching to a close, so I lit out for a more populated area to find some kind of work.
Fran stayed in the hometown. I don’t know what all he got up to but I do know that he married, had kids and died kind of young.
I guess this brought up some thoughts about how things would have turned out for me had I stayed in my hometown. Life there is fine for plenty of folks, but it was not fine for me. First of all, I had to leave the family legacy behind - our family name had a stink that would not wash off. Secondly, I just felt confined there. Like there were very few opportunities- and there were very few to be honest - and the town was just too small.
I hope he had a good life. Too bad it was short.
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