I'm in Carthage, Tennessee, and there's not one nice thing I can say about this place. Sure, they have a wide variety of fast food joints and a kick ass rock and roll radio station, but they don't have my friends. I miss Stockton. I'm sorry for all the times I said I hated that town and the people in it, but right I'd kill to be back in Stockton. I miss hearing people talk with normal accents. I miss Stockton, period. Before I left town, I found myself unable to shed any tears for the adventure I was about to embark on. Now I'm just heartbroken. I haven't seen Angela in days, which is unusual for us. We used to see each other every single day. I don't have any friends here, but I'm sure I'm going to make plenty of enemies. Everything changed when I left. I feel like a part of me got left behind. I'm almost sure it did. I miss seeing the same old faces. I could compare Cheers and Stockton in a lot of ways. Everyone knew my name, they knew all about me. I didn't want things to change. I hate meeting new people. I don't want new friends, I want my old friends. This town is making me sick. Please send me back to Stockton, God. I'll do whatever it takes. Anything you ask you know I'll do... this one act of consecration is what I ask of you. Grrrrr... I really need to lay off on that Trent Reznor. I'm now totally convinced that if there's a God up there somewhere, he isn't listening to me. He's busy helping the little Somalian kids. So maybe I don't go to church, maybe I like swearing, maybe I'm a little disrespectful to my parents (sorry, mom, dad), and maybe I have a problem with authority, but I've accepted Jesus Christ as my savior 7 times (thanks to my cousins, the missionaries)!! As many times as I prayed for some freak accident or something so I could stay in Stockton, it never happened. This may be one of the things I want most in life, right next to attention and love. Yes, I'm going to admit it. Everyone get a tape recorder ready. I'm selfish. I'm very god damn selfish. If I don't get what I want, the whole world can go to Hell. See, most people like me before they get to know me. Then they realize how selfish I am. I don't know why my friends stick around. I guess it's sort of a little late to be asking that, as my friends are 800 miles away. Adam doesn't even want to converse with me anymore. Maybe I really did leave a piece of myself behind. I think it was that happy part. Yes, even I had a happy part. If you would have asked me if I was happy three months ago, I would have said hell no. But I would have been lying. Three months ago I had wonderful friends, maybe a not so wonderful love life, and a great home life. My dad was still around, I had friends, my love life was slowly progressing... I look back on yesterday and compare it with today. I had it made then, but I was too selfish and stupid to even realize it. Not too long ago I was called a selfish, dim-witted, attention-seeking child. I'm still selfish and a dimwit and attention seeking. But now I know it. When I left, all I could think was "poor me". Never did I once stop to realize how my move has impacted my friends and family (if at all). Maybe I'm dramatically over doing it (I've been known to do so). But all I know is this... I'm truly dreading tomorrow. Never has my sophomore year seen such a black, bleak day (maybe except for my last day at Stockton High). I go to school tomorrow. Enough about Smith County High. Let's go into the trip to Tennessee. We drove from 1:30 in the afternoon until we stopped off at a roadside park in Illinois at 3 o'clock in the morning and slept until 6 or 7. By that time, we all smelled REALLY bad. I was beginning to smell like my own bodily fluids and I know that when we walked by people, they turned around and went, "Okay, who hasn't been using their douche?" Alright, maybe I'm overdoing it again, but it was pretty bad. I was pretty relieved when we got into Carthage. You know you're really getting bad when the promise of a shower seems comforting. We went into the real estate agency and decided to rent a little house in the country. It wasn't a bad house at all. It had three bedrooms, a huge living room, two bathrooms, and a pretty spacious kitchen. Unfortunately, the water didn't work and we smelled horrible. All of us smelled like something had died on us or something. We decided to sleep at the house for the night and go to Joel(my dad's boss)'s house in the morning for showers. Even though I smelled and looked like something that had just crawled out of a sewer, I wearily agreed to the conditions pending. We slept on the floor of the house and in the morning, we gathered some clean clothing and filed into the family car to go to Joel's and take showers. You'll never believe how refreshing that hot water was. I happily washed my hair with -only- coconut shampoo and gave the rest of my body a thorough washing, then joined Mariah, Joel's wife, on the patio for a cup of coffee. She doesn't look much older than 20. She was telling me that Metallica stops through Nashville often. She and I blah-blah until my mom is done in the shower, then we bullshit about school. We pretty much spend the rest of the day like that. We decide NOT to rent the country house at all anymore. So we start packing up and shit, and the real estate agent shows up. It's a huge episode of Dawson's Creek Real Estate Agency, but we get away with leaving. Now we rent a tiny house that slants upward. Old people used to live here, and I have the sneaking suspicion that they died here. Sadly enough, I'm pretty sure the guy who is renting this house out to us could confirm it. There are only two bedrooms, one bath, an inky dink kitchen, a small living room, a tiny laundry room, an attached freaky garage, and a huge backyard. We have no refrigerator, so we live off of fast food and TV dinners. There is a Sonic's conveniently located across the street from my house. It's a total heaven-send. The high school is one block away from my house as well. Scary shit, right there.
"To fall away, leave me to myself. To fall away, and leave love bleeding in my hands, in my hands. Love lies bleeding in my hands..." -Fuel.
"Hurray for a child that makes it through... if there's any way, the answer lies in you. They're laid to rest before they know just what to do. They're souls are lost because they could never find what's this life for. I see your soul, it's kind of gray, you see my heart you look away, you see my wrist, I know your pain." -Creed.