06-07-2010, 03:00 AM
Today is one of those important days for me. You know, those days where you wake up and the window by your bedside is shining sunlight over your face and the warm rays seem to comfort you. The smell in your house permeates of a kind of old wooden scent. The kind you find in old houses that never really utilized modern standards. It’s one of those days where you have this sense of belonging and you look back on your life and you can legitimately say, “I don’t care what I did back then because the past is the past and I won’t let it affect me.”
It’s been rare for me to feel like that my entire life so those days that I have that feeling, I savor it. I try not to forget it because if I do I’ll let my mind get to me again and I don’t think I can stand that. You see, I’ve always been curious. In the beginning, it was a sort of happy curiosity, one that seems to have a childlike innocence. The problem for me is what happened after. It transformed into a kind of starving curiosity, one that would devour me whole if I couldn’t indulge it and that scares me.
That’s why I take these days in slowly, the ones where I don’t need to go out and satisfy my own mind. I like to go take a walk to a place close to my heart. It’s a woods but I’ve always held it as a symbol, of not only my own conscious but also all of the drugs, alcohol, and substance abuse that went on around me. I found out that it resembled my conscious the first day that I saw a dead plant there. It was the first time I wanted to cry in four years ever since my depression had set in. I forced myself to keep going and after I jumped the rugged rocks in the stream, I could clearly see the woods. A tree had fallen, it wasn’t cut down. Later on those trees really fazed me. It’s hard to explain why, but when I stare at them, I get a bit lost in my own head.
At first, I went to the woods for no good reason other than I didn’t find anybody outside to talk to. I would walk in, yet I’d admire the nature all around me. The sweet tweets of the birds, the cawing of the crows, the crackling of the crisp leaves underneath the soles of my shoes, the crooked linings and layers of the trees, they all seeped into me. I’d walk slowly, closing my eyes sometimes as I listened to Yellowcard, Halifax, or Papa Roach from my iPod. Any sort of punk or alternative rock music really, I’ve always looked a bit too deep into the lyrics. Now, I’ve never considered myself materialistic but that iPod was one of three objects that I’ve actually loved and had an emotional attachment to. I got that iPod off my friend for twenty-five dollars along with skull-candy earbuds and an MP3 player that I gave to my friend for ten dollars that I never saw.
I never saw those ten dollars, and the money I spent on the iPod got my friend some weed. I tried telling myself that I didn’t know what he used that money for until my dad found out about me buying that iPod. He got angry at me for it. He took my wallet, which had over five hundred dollars in it and then told me to ask my friend what he did. Turned out, he spent fifteen dollars on weed. I was disappointed to say the least, but I figured he would have done it anyways. He was a complete pothead.
Then again, I always got along with potheads more than normal kids. I didn’t know why I was like that, but so far two of my pothead friends had told me on separate occasions that I thought the way they did. That’s sort of how I found the woods. The druggies in town had another name for it. Old Reeno. Before you crossed the stream (I did regularly) you would find at least two plastic chairs that you could buy off of any Walmart store for around twenty dollars. The chairs would usually be placed facing towards about fifteen stones that would host a bonfire about every Friday and Saturday night in the summer time. The following afternoon you wouldn’t have to look hard to find crushed beer cans or Teddy Bear cracker packages wasting away in the dirt.
After crossing the stream though, there isn’t much. It’s a forest clearing, at the simplest definition. The only real difference is that while the trees are probably all taller than thirty feet, the first layer you’ll see, a good percentage is on the ground. I don’t know how they got there. I’ve been there since each tree was standing high and stiff, without a single worry of any falling. Suddenly, one day a tree was on the ground. I’m pretty careless so I walked by it and since it was one of those summer days where you just want to run nude in the street I was wearing shorts and a small, slender branch that stuck out underneath the waist length grass and ferns tore away at my skin. Every next visit that would prove to be worse until a month later when finding a tree that hadn’t fallen over was rare. I thought it would be made for developing land but no one comes for the trees. They’re left there to decay, together in a silent clearing where only time beckons at them.
People remember a story in three parts, the beginning, middle, and then the end. There’s usually some clear distinction between the three. It’s usually an event, a chapter, a line break. Anything. In life, you only remember the middle. You’ll lose your memory of the first two to three years of your life, though you’ll parents will tell you stories about something that happened and then you’ll end up making a fake memory about it. By the time you reach the end, nothing inside you is working anymore to retell how it happened. So forgive me when I tell you that this story is only going to include the middle. I haven’t gotten to the end yet. When I do, I won’t be able to tell you it. You’ll have to find it out on your own. Whatever you come up with won’t be the right story though. No one’s version of my end will be right.
I think I can say that this story started in fourth grade for me. Not directly of course, but it did change me. That year a lot happened. More than your average nine or ten year old expects, at least. Back then I was in a constant state of depression. It was pretty pathetic when I look back it. My family had just moved from another town the night before school started. I didn’t know anyone in my new grade but I was one of those kids that you instantly take a disliking to if you don’t get to know him or her. It may have been from my lame mushroom cut, the pants I’d wear for a week at a time, or just how fat I was. That’s another thing. If a kid just meets someone and that kid is fat, people don’t want to listen. They’ve already decided they dislike that kid.
I can’t really remember all the things that I thought were so bad that year. Though one thing that I still vividly remember was when I walked home from school once. I had just got off the bus and I walked a distance to my house. I got to the sign that said, “Mountain Laurel.” Just a little more and I’d be home. Then a kid came up to me, “Hey, you’re Philip’s brother right?” Philip was my brother.
“Yeah, I am. How’d you know?” He moved towards me slightly as each second passed.
“I don’t know. It was just a feeling.” He was close to me now. I turned my head and while I can’t remember the faces, I remember a circle around me. His hands raised and pressed against my chest with some force. My hands flung out as I tried to steady myself but my legs got caught on a kid who lay on all fours behind me. My back hit the floor and then, without looking back, I got up and walked home. I could still hear them laughing at me.
I did end up depressed and suicidal. In that year I spent just about every weekend crying. It tired me out, it really did. Some weekends I just couldn’t cry anymore. My tear ducts must have dried out by then I guess. I still think it was pretty pathetic to have been suicidal back then, I mean, sure kids were making fun of me, but honestly, my life wasn’t that bad. I had myself and that should have been all I needed. Instead, my teacher saw me scowling one day and told the entire class to stop being so harsh to me. Lame, I know. By the end of the year I actually had some human interaction though. I was still pretty messed up though.
I met my best friend that next year. Or at least I consider him my best friend though we’ve grown apart ever since eight grade. I only call him my best friend because he’s the only person that can ever tell when I’m feeling depressed again. Either everyone else just lacks basic empathy or he just understands me more than others. We were in the same class that year and during recess all the boys would play foursquare. Most kids still hated me though I didn’t do anything to them. Anyways, in foursquare I would always be that one kid everyone else went after. I wasn’t even that good but when three kids in foursquare want you out, you’re getting out unless you’re superman. He would also play. He felt sorry for me. Story of my life I guess. People used to feel sorry for me. I would boast about my grades all the time though, I tried to put on a face to envy rather than pity. It didn’t work.
It’s been rare for me to feel like that my entire life so those days that I have that feeling, I savor it. I try not to forget it because if I do I’ll let my mind get to me again and I don’t think I can stand that. You see, I’ve always been curious. In the beginning, it was a sort of happy curiosity, one that seems to have a childlike innocence. The problem for me is what happened after. It transformed into a kind of starving curiosity, one that would devour me whole if I couldn’t indulge it and that scares me.
That’s why I take these days in slowly, the ones where I don’t need to go out and satisfy my own mind. I like to go take a walk to a place close to my heart. It’s a woods but I’ve always held it as a symbol, of not only my own conscious but also all of the drugs, alcohol, and substance abuse that went on around me. I found out that it resembled my conscious the first day that I saw a dead plant there. It was the first time I wanted to cry in four years ever since my depression had set in. I forced myself to keep going and after I jumped the rugged rocks in the stream, I could clearly see the woods. A tree had fallen, it wasn’t cut down. Later on those trees really fazed me. It’s hard to explain why, but when I stare at them, I get a bit lost in my own head.
At first, I went to the woods for no good reason other than I didn’t find anybody outside to talk to. I would walk in, yet I’d admire the nature all around me. The sweet tweets of the birds, the cawing of the crows, the crackling of the crisp leaves underneath the soles of my shoes, the crooked linings and layers of the trees, they all seeped into me. I’d walk slowly, closing my eyes sometimes as I listened to Yellowcard, Halifax, or Papa Roach from my iPod. Any sort of punk or alternative rock music really, I’ve always looked a bit too deep into the lyrics. Now, I’ve never considered myself materialistic but that iPod was one of three objects that I’ve actually loved and had an emotional attachment to. I got that iPod off my friend for twenty-five dollars along with skull-candy earbuds and an MP3 player that I gave to my friend for ten dollars that I never saw.
I never saw those ten dollars, and the money I spent on the iPod got my friend some weed. I tried telling myself that I didn’t know what he used that money for until my dad found out about me buying that iPod. He got angry at me for it. He took my wallet, which had over five hundred dollars in it and then told me to ask my friend what he did. Turned out, he spent fifteen dollars on weed. I was disappointed to say the least, but I figured he would have done it anyways. He was a complete pothead.
Then again, I always got along with potheads more than normal kids. I didn’t know why I was like that, but so far two of my pothead friends had told me on separate occasions that I thought the way they did. That’s sort of how I found the woods. The druggies in town had another name for it. Old Reeno. Before you crossed the stream (I did regularly) you would find at least two plastic chairs that you could buy off of any Walmart store for around twenty dollars. The chairs would usually be placed facing towards about fifteen stones that would host a bonfire about every Friday and Saturday night in the summer time. The following afternoon you wouldn’t have to look hard to find crushed beer cans or Teddy Bear cracker packages wasting away in the dirt.
After crossing the stream though, there isn’t much. It’s a forest clearing, at the simplest definition. The only real difference is that while the trees are probably all taller than thirty feet, the first layer you’ll see, a good percentage is on the ground. I don’t know how they got there. I’ve been there since each tree was standing high and stiff, without a single worry of any falling. Suddenly, one day a tree was on the ground. I’m pretty careless so I walked by it and since it was one of those summer days where you just want to run nude in the street I was wearing shorts and a small, slender branch that stuck out underneath the waist length grass and ferns tore away at my skin. Every next visit that would prove to be worse until a month later when finding a tree that hadn’t fallen over was rare. I thought it would be made for developing land but no one comes for the trees. They’re left there to decay, together in a silent clearing where only time beckons at them.
People remember a story in three parts, the beginning, middle, and then the end. There’s usually some clear distinction between the three. It’s usually an event, a chapter, a line break. Anything. In life, you only remember the middle. You’ll lose your memory of the first two to three years of your life, though you’ll parents will tell you stories about something that happened and then you’ll end up making a fake memory about it. By the time you reach the end, nothing inside you is working anymore to retell how it happened. So forgive me when I tell you that this story is only going to include the middle. I haven’t gotten to the end yet. When I do, I won’t be able to tell you it. You’ll have to find it out on your own. Whatever you come up with won’t be the right story though. No one’s version of my end will be right.
I think I can say that this story started in fourth grade for me. Not directly of course, but it did change me. That year a lot happened. More than your average nine or ten year old expects, at least. Back then I was in a constant state of depression. It was pretty pathetic when I look back it. My family had just moved from another town the night before school started. I didn’t know anyone in my new grade but I was one of those kids that you instantly take a disliking to if you don’t get to know him or her. It may have been from my lame mushroom cut, the pants I’d wear for a week at a time, or just how fat I was. That’s another thing. If a kid just meets someone and that kid is fat, people don’t want to listen. They’ve already decided they dislike that kid.
I can’t really remember all the things that I thought were so bad that year. Though one thing that I still vividly remember was when I walked home from school once. I had just got off the bus and I walked a distance to my house. I got to the sign that said, “Mountain Laurel.” Just a little more and I’d be home. Then a kid came up to me, “Hey, you’re Philip’s brother right?” Philip was my brother.
“Yeah, I am. How’d you know?” He moved towards me slightly as each second passed.
“I don’t know. It was just a feeling.” He was close to me now. I turned my head and while I can’t remember the faces, I remember a circle around me. His hands raised and pressed against my chest with some force. My hands flung out as I tried to steady myself but my legs got caught on a kid who lay on all fours behind me. My back hit the floor and then, without looking back, I got up and walked home. I could still hear them laughing at me.
I did end up depressed and suicidal. In that year I spent just about every weekend crying. It tired me out, it really did. Some weekends I just couldn’t cry anymore. My tear ducts must have dried out by then I guess. I still think it was pretty pathetic to have been suicidal back then, I mean, sure kids were making fun of me, but honestly, my life wasn’t that bad. I had myself and that should have been all I needed. Instead, my teacher saw me scowling one day and told the entire class to stop being so harsh to me. Lame, I know. By the end of the year I actually had some human interaction though. I was still pretty messed up though.
I met my best friend that next year. Or at least I consider him my best friend though we’ve grown apart ever since eight grade. I only call him my best friend because he’s the only person that can ever tell when I’m feeling depressed again. Either everyone else just lacks basic empathy or he just understands me more than others. We were in the same class that year and during recess all the boys would play foursquare. Most kids still hated me though I didn’t do anything to them. Anyways, in foursquare I would always be that one kid everyone else went after. I wasn’t even that good but when three kids in foursquare want you out, you’re getting out unless you’re superman. He would also play. He felt sorry for me. Story of my life I guess. People used to feel sorry for me. I would boast about my grades all the time though, I tried to put on a face to envy rather than pity. It didn’t work.