Chapter 1

The sun was set, it was now dark. The moon glaring off the foot of crystal clear snow made it seem like there were two skies. I woke up after three hours of restless sleep. I glanced over toward my window. I slowly got up and walked over to my lamp to turn it on. With two clicks it turned on. It was 2:20 AM. My eyes slowly adjusted to the dramatic increase of light entering my eyes. I had not received a full night’s sleep in five months. It looked around ten fucking degrees outside, as I heard wind I changed my mind to negative ten degrees. It was a great night for sleep, nothing else but sleep. It was 2:49 when I actually got back in my bed. I just lay on my floor thinking with my eyes wide open looking at the ceiling. What if she’s thinking of me? I wondered if any of the people that were in my life even remembered me. There are so many people you get to know well and then you just stop knowing them. You just remember the times you talked and hung out. Like all those nights Taylor, Evan or one of my old good friends slept over and the days we’d hang out and laughed over the funniest things ever. Just being kids hanging out, do people remember that? If people remember those times, what about them do they remember?

I just kept thinking about issues nobody takes time to really process totally. There are so many guys and girls I get to know well and they just become faces in the hall after time. It sort of fucks with your mind a little to think about it. Once your four years of high school are gone, they never come back. You never see all those people again, it’s not possible. It fucks with your mind even more to think that there are many that move during the school year. You never really get a chance to say goodbye to the people you are acquainted with all the time.

Even people who you just have said maybe five words to in your whole life, you never say by to them at the end of the day or hi to them when the day premiers. So, why would there be a reason to say adios to them when the year is finished? There ISN’T! It just says with you, they just stay with you as the people that you always never knew and never will know. You would see the faces in the hallway, some friendly, some funny, some depressing, some intelligent, and others haunting. You never know you miss something until it's gone. That is one of the most painful truths in life, it really is.

I met this kid in seventh grade. His name was Matt. We were really good friends and talked all the time in school and shit like that. As the year progressed, I made a few more friends, most were just peers that knew me a little and saw me off and on during the day. But if I could rewind back, which I would NEVER do, I would have taken time to get to know more people no matter who they were, I really would have.

Anyway, this kid named Matt taught me about how to get respected. He taught me a lot of things that I'm really glad I know now, and it helped me out. We were really good friends and we used to hang out a lot. Now he is just another face in the hall and I am another face in the hall to him. It’s crazy how you are friends with someone and just two years later, they are almost strangers.

I got up off the floor, stood up and images flashed through my mind. They weren’t just images that you would think of on a regular basis. I didn't even have images until the thought of breaking up with my girlfriend became a close reality. But these images came to me at anytime of the day. It wasn't planned, they just happened. I remembered the first time Theresa and I kissed and how she talked to me and looked at me. I remember how many times she's looked at me like that, the way that takes my breath away. I realize I won't see that look again.

I went to sleep finally after turning my disk man on again listening to the same songs recycled. I never stop thinking. I never have stopped thinking. I’m always thinking about something.

My eyes slowly opened to the bright light shining in my room the next morning. It was 10:20 AM, so I just lay there, not ready to face any other person, just my thoughts and myself. That is why I like my room; it’s a place for my mind to express itself without any unwanted sources of pressure. I choose what happens. When I got up, I picked up the crap left on my floor last night as I eventually remember what exactly happened last night.

I went back to my window and looked out, the snow was melting, I could tell because of the icicles melting on my roof. I bent over to pick up something on my rug, at the time I didn’t know what it was. It was a note I must have read from her before I went to bed last night. I picked it up, put it back in the box where I got it from and started to get dressed.

When you look at a picture of someone, it makes you wonder so many things or ask you so many questions along with remember so many things. A picture is worth a thousand words. I actually believe that statement now. I picked up the picture of Theresa as I put back the note. I held it up and just stared at it, at her, at her face. She didn’t even know me when this was taken. She was seeing other guys, experiencing different things, making mistakes, living her life before she met me and I became a brief part of hers.

I turned on my music and I walked downstairs to take a leak, it was Saturday morning and I was officially fucked over. I flushed the toilet and washed my face. I then walked downstairs pretty slowly and got some orange juice. Hungriness is something of the past now, I couldn’t eat anything close to as much as I used to. It makes you think and realize even more of how much someone can mean to you that it affects your health and the way you live.

What goes through her mind? Does she know what goes through mine? It would be cool if she did know how much she made me suffer. It would be good if she knew how much she meant to me and how I never did her wrong, I treated her the way I felt about her. I treated her like an angel and in return I got the devil’s pitch fork stabbed in my back multiple times. When you get stabbed with a pitch fork multiple times in the back, it just feels grand. Of course it’s happened before, but it was with a butter knife and it was only four other times, once by each person. I wonder if she knows she stabbed me in the back that many times and how it affected me. How much I mentally bled and how there were no stitches to be found because I didn’t want them. If I got stitches, there would be no point. The stitches would just be there to be broken again, eventually. It's real grand that I'm used to betrayal and consecutive lies at the age of fifteen. Ironically, there was nothing on TV so I just went back up to my room in addition to the fact that it was around twenty degrees outside and I don't do twenty degrees. Flipping though magazines is disturbing a little. Every other page is an advertisement for products you don’t even consider buying let alone wanting to know about. I saw the one add once for belt buckles. Who the hell cares what kind of belt buckle or belt you have. If it looks ok and it holds your pants up a good deal of the time, you should be set. Another time I was reading this article on Afrika Bambaataa and on the page next to it was a picture of Nelly with his shirt off for Got Milk. I drink milk all the time, I don't need to see Nelly's abs and all to know milk is good for you.

When I talk to people, I talk to people. I talk to the person about interesting things that we both can usually relate to. I never plan conversations, they come natural. So it would be really weird to tell you how I go about having conversations with people. Most of the good conversations were with Theresa, on the phone. We would talk for hours sometimes and laughed and said we loved each other so many times after every couple things we said. It was great actually. The feeling of knowing someone you can't get enough of and saying "I'll talk to you later, I love you" and then Theresa would say "but I love you more." I'll miss that if I don't miss anything else.

There are many feelings you can get that are really terrible especially when you don't know they are happening. It's not comforting when someone tells you that you're immature, too immature and need to grow up. It's a reality check when someone tells you that after just telling you that you stair at them too much. Sometimes I don’t know how I look at people, I just do and whatever happens, happens. But now I have to be aware of how I look at people because if someone says "you look like you want to kill me, you need to grow up." You are really stupid." When these genres of words are being pelted your way, it's a slap in the face. It really is, it makes you even more depressed that you started out in the first place. I thought Theresa appreciated my humor. Thoughts can be deceiving.

The way I view things is that if you have a problem with someone, whether it be minor or major, offensive or not, confront them about it and get it off your chest. Don't pretend you are totally cool with someone and come up to them one day and say "oh, by the way, just to be honest, you are really stupid." I mean how are they supposed to feel? Are they supposed to feel informed and better about themselves? It’s best not to ever let things build up, especially if there is something you can do about it. If you really want to know, that was what my relationships are mostly like, some more than others, just a big series of lies and not communicating right.

I read this book a few years back about this kid witnessing all these things. I don’t even remember the name of it, I read it in seventh grade. It was a really good book about this creep ass dad who molested his children and abused his wife. It made me think, for the first time, it made me think hard about how life could be in different circumstances. How other people’s lives are and how worse off they have it compared to me. Like having a family that you can’t live with because your mom can’t control her kids or support them and having a dad who doesn’t know how to be one. In addition, what if you never had a dad or never had a mom.

I cleaned my room and lit my incense with a lighter. I then made my bed, and just fell back on it. I can’t believe all the things that could make you go crazy that many people don’t even consider. If they do consider it, they don’t consider it to the fullest measure possible. That is what I do, I think things through thoroughly when they effect me.

There is this group of kids that I could never quite figure out. But life does have its mysteries and I probably will never figure them out. It is impossible to figure everyone, everything out. It if was possible, it would take a fuck load of time, time I don’t have. But these kids just stand around, talking. These kids focus only on their world, canceling out how others feel or how the school regulates. The school is a good thing, they hate it, they think it is the gayest thing ever and they just like nothing about it. However, here is where they are even wrong think what they think. Everybody is entitled to their own opinions and view on things, but not ever aspect of their entire opinion is write, it just simply isn’t no matter how you look at it. The school I go to brings four towns together. Without the school system like that, you would not know half the people you. It could be your girlfriend who you love kissing and talking to, you good friend that you swap music with or even a person you become life time friends with, he hooks you up with a deal or a job that you have a successful life with. And with this vast variety of people, you learn about different lifestyles and things. When you are in school, you are learning of others, not of what “y” equals, or what the rough endoplasmic reticulum is in a plant cell, but of other people. You like learning about other people because you can learn FROM those other people not only of them. You develop skills, talents, views, opinions, attitudes, self esteem, and anything else from those people. You enter new genres of new genres. Whether it is music, clothes, politics, life, literature, customs, choices, options, talents, focuses, etcetera, etcetera.

As life goes on and you’re living your high school lives, you never just stop and forget what you have come from. You don’t just banish your past from you memory, it just won’t happen. No matter how many drugs you abuse and how much alcohol you consume, you can’t abolish your future, it is your shadow and you can’t cut your shadow off of you like Peter Pan. In addition to this, you always are growing; you can never change the past once it goes, it’s gone. You can not escape young adulthood, the only way you can is to kill yourself, and sane people don’t kill themselves. As much as Michael Jackson would like to picture himself as a kid at the age of forty-five, or whatever age he is, it is simply impossible to say a kid forever. Peter Pan was a great Disney film, but it is fiction and fiction is not reality. If fiction was reality, then when you open a dictionary and looked up fiction it would say reality. If you are insane, fiction is defined as an imaginary creation. You then enter puberty which is the transition between being a child and being a young man or woman. You can not fight it unless you have some condition that keeps you from entering puberty. And believe me, if you never hit puberty, your life would suck even more than it already would.

When you are at the point of your life that you have been though a lot in a really short amount of time, you are the holder of an ability to think. Thinking is the most important part of your life, without thinking, nothing would be accomplished. You think about choices you make or will have to make. You think about girls, you think about school, you think about your future and realize how shitty your childhood was. But in the process of thinking about these critical things, your childhood comes at you like 10 darts in a dart board. You are like “oh there’s nothing I can do about my past, it’s better to forget about it.” As much as you all would love to mozie on and live your life as it is in the now, you can’t.

It is impossible. It is living in denial, many people live in denial even though they don’t even have the slightest clue that they are. No matter what, you can’t fight it, you are in denial at least twenty to thirty if not forty percent of you life. It doesn’t have to be about your childhood, I’m not retarded. It could be about anything. It could be what you promise someone, the promises you can not keep. Everybody makes promises they can’t always consciously keep, so why do we make them? What is the point of promising someone something if it isn’t a promise? “I promise you that none of my feelings will just fade for you” is a promise of which never has been kept.

If there is one thing I hate, it is posers. Posers can be defined as many things. A classic example of a poser is a wigger. Someone who just talks black and all ghetto and wear ridiculously baggy clothes with Macavelli or Snoop Dogg labels on it. Then their main vocabulary and method of speech is warped in addition. Even when they carry on a regular conversation, they never use the English language to their fullest advantage. English was made for a reason. “I fucking loved that shit I heard last fucking night, man, oh give me the answers to the fucking homework or whatever the shit we had last night.” Swears were made for a reason: when you’re mad about something or you’re displaying your opinion on something. I’m not against swearing what so ever. But you have to use swearing in the connotation in which it was made for. You don’t just casually speak with constant swearing mixed in your speech after every other word.

As I was saying before, I hate posers. If you rap, that’s great, write tons of lyrics in your free time, practice them a little and maybe if you find yourself being skilled in that area than do it up. But don’t just talk with Ebonics and slurred language just because you think Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys are cool. Personally I think they are a joke to rap and don’t deserve as much credit as they are relieving, meaning the publicity they get and the imitation the kids portray from them. Say what you have to say in a unique and clear way, that makes some image or impression. That is the art of rap music, not tripping over your words and saying the same stuff that everyone else does. Whether I like you or not, you are delivering a message that is you, not someone you want to be, but who you really are. Don’t put sun glasses on and have dread locks covering your face along with gold teeth in your mouth and a glass of whine or Bacartti in your left hand. Screaming “what!” over and over again is great, it adds hype to the music, to DMX music. DMX saying “what” the way he has always said it, DMX is good music. NAS is good music. Jay-Z is exceptional music. Eminem is good music. Green Day and Rancid is talented, amazing music. They represent good music simply because they control themselves, they are themselves and what they have to say portrays themselves. They aren’t displaying fake aliases or fake hype about issues and events. Sure they goof around like many others do, but that’s goofing around. They have a sense of humor. They do a damn good job at it when they do so. But there are so much more unnecessary musical artists that are being recognized for something that is just ill-mannered. Their level of talent isn’t even near the level that of for instance Metallica or Led Zepplin or Dr. Dre’s acquaintances. Of course people like Snoop Dogg get some good starts, but because of the time they were exposed to the public during their descent years, when they fall apart talent wise, they don’t know when to give up. But every other rap or rock artist, or alternative music artist that isn’t acquainted with the major masters of talent automatically have a disadvantage. These musical artists need to either get lucky or do a lot of work to get to where the rest of the popular artists are. Now, if you simply can’t produce good material, than that’s where I get upset at the people who just suck and are selling millions. And for the millions of rappers who lack an incredible amount of talent, they aren’t real. Their material isn’t unique or talented. It consists of how many times they hook up with girls and how good looking they look along with drugs they have done and weapons they have or wish they had. It’s a fact that ninety-six percent of rap in the year 2004 is the same song recycled; it’s just bad, low quality material.

Abbey once told me to have fun with what you are doing with your life. If you are not having fun with your life, then what is the point of life. She introduced me to being laid back for the first time, something that I have never done, be laid back. I was always this uptight fat kid with a shit load of hair before I met her. I was really self conscience and didn’t like trying too many things. But Abbey changed that when I knew her well. She was the first girl to say “you want to dance?” I was shy as hell in the first half of eighth grade, I really was. I never took changes with girls or had fun with them. I never really even had tons of fun with my regular friends, I just had a lot of loosening up to, and Abbey told me that. Abbey always spoke the truth to me and that is why she stands out to me. Although I’ve been with many girls, there are only really a few that stand out in good ways and that I had a real relationship with..

Although I was still moderately uptight when I was with Haley, I got my first sense of how do be when I was dating a girl. You have to make them feel good and never lie to them. You have to tell them the truth and let them know exactly how you feel about them. You have to kiss them goodbye when they let you. In addition, you have to surprise them sometimes and get them something or make them something out of the blue. Plus, kissing them when they aren’t expecting it is a very important thing to remember too. You have to write notes to them and call them when you get home. You have to spend time with them on the weekends and make moves along with serious and funny conversations. This also includes the fact that you have to impress them whenever you can, although not too much, but more than you think. You have to go to movies with them and other places they might like to go. You have to make eye contact with them and put your arm over their shoulders. There are a lot of concepts that are key in a relationship with a girl, I will never forget because if I did forget, I’d be gay.

Summer school is viewed as boring and uncool. Well in most ways people who have that view is right, but not completely. When you have any type of extended time spending time with other kids your age during any season, you have a good time. It doesn’t matter if you hate math and that is all you have to do the whole month that your are in summer school, the people you are around and the times you share together can be pretty cool. It contributes to many memories of times you did have fun, maybe of relationship you were in, and of things that were said that you might still remember or will remember.

Back in the summer of 2003 I had to go to summer school, I didn’t want to at all. Haley was also going, and it wasn’t the most popular thing to talk about in our conversations, so we never really did talk about what our future together might be. When I’m with a girl, I can make a little prediction of how long we are going to last together. I knew me and Haley weren’t going to be together for too long, although I do wish it would have lasted a little bit longer than it did.

I will never take pride in being with so many girls because break ups suck really bad when they happen. Because they suck, the experience sucks and it sums everything up to be worse than you were without her, before you meet.