Poetry and All Things Alike

The Secrets of a Dying Pushover

I hated nights like this. Absolutely hated them.

Of course, throughout my teenage years I always pretended to like them. I went to parties like this all the time, smoked a lot of weed, got drop dead wasted and had a damn good time. Well, pretended to.

I especially began to hate parties after highschool when I became a part of the Delta Chi fraternity.

I don't know why I joined. In fact, I don't know why I do anything that I do. I guess it's just because I'm sort of a 'yes man'. If anyone asks me to do anything, I'm likely to immediately agree to do so without even thinking it through. That's how I crashed my car into a ditch my junior year, and broke my ankle my sophomore year, and set Lacy Rickerson's kitchen on fire my senior year. I just don't know how to say no to people.

Throughout middle school, teachers told my parents to watch out for this trait I had, for this desire to please others. I particularly remember Mrs. Halloch writing "Finn is incredibly bright and very hard working. However, he constantly allows his peers to bully him into submission and not allow him to think freely. He needs to be able to stand up to pressure."

My parents thought nothing of it, as they had bigger things to worry about, such as my mother's cancer, rather than schedule a meeting with a teacher. They figured they would fix my issues once my mother's treatment was finished.

She died seven months later after spending three weeks in a coma when her body was unable to recover from a surgery which was meant to remove a final tumor on her pancreas. My father, like my mother's body, never recovered.

Ever since my mother passed away, I was on my own. My dad spent his days at work, working overtime to avoid coming home whenever possible, and whenever he wasn't working he would simply wander the streets of Philadelphia until it was too cold and too late. Only then would he come home, and shuffle straight up to the guest room and pass out on the futon.

I continued to succeed in my academics during high school, however, I still found myself having trouble disappointing people, and was never able to say no. What drove me even more to continue saying yes was how much people liked me for this. The upperclassmen loved my laid back attitude, and that I was willing to party my ass off no matter what the consequences were. Even if I got so wasted that I would vomit up the contents of my stomach into some lousy shrubs, I would still get right back up and shotgun however many beers I was told to. Did I like it? Fuck no. But I loved that people loved me for it. I loved that older girls were all over me and that, unlike other underclassmen, the seniors gave me high fives in the hallway rather than push me into lockers.

I figured once I graduated this would all stop. That I would leave high school and go to some far away college where no one knew who I was. I would never have to drink upside down from a damn keg again.

Until I was accepted to Penn State.

I was thrilled to be accepted. All of my other classmates had been rejected, and I was so excited to have gotten in, that I decided to go there. I spent the whole summer following my senior year counting down the days until I would be free from alcohol and from girls sending me tit pics from anonymous numbers which I was sure I had drunkenly given out. Until finally, I left.

However, my life didn't start over. It only got worse.

I was quick to join a fraternity almost the second I was invited, and cursed myself for doing so. I tried to get out of it but those damn frat brothers are persistent as hell. I had no choice but to follow through. I figured next year maybe I could get out of it somehow.