The Words of Chris.

She - again.

In the days since I wrote that post entitled ‘she’ I have had some thoughts about what I was really trying to achieve with it.

I now know that she has indeed read it, but there’s a few things I’m concerned about.

Is it bad that I haven’t told her, and that I don’t want to? When I was writing it I wanted her to realise it was about her and know if she felt the same way. But she hasn’t realised. And I’m beginning to wonder if not telling her is the right thing. To be perfectly honest it feels pathetic I can’t tell her. I should have just told her rather than post it online in the hope she reads and understands it.

Then in another way, maybe she has realised it’s about her. If she knows but hasn’t said, then I know she isnt interested.

Either way we look at it, it’s a bit of a decision.

Do I tell her?

Or leave it?

Live.love.eat.

Trust.

This topic has been floating around my head for at least three minutes, so I thought I’d write something down.

I’ve always found trust very difficult. I would say I’m a very trustworthy person, I have secrets that I’ll take to the grave. It’s trusting others that is the difficulty.

This probably stems from some earlier childhood trauma, but I think there was a certain level of social realization too. I used to trust too much, and I often found people to be untrustworthy. Not necessarily with the important things, but with little things that would never have come up in conversation so you must have, well it’s my business not yours. I admit if I am to moan at that I should just not tell anyone, its far easier.

Nowadays I barely trust anyone, and its sad really. I pride myself on being someone worth trusting, yet I refuse to return the favour. I do sometimes feel that I have to say ‘dont tell anyone’ before absolutely everything.

Maybe people just aren’t trustworthy. Maybe deep down I know I’m not and that’s how i know others aren’t.

I’m certainly not telling you not to trust people. Open your heart up to those around.

Live.love.eat.

The past - part 4

We’ve reached the last part, at least it is the last section of the past because in this I hope to cover everything up to this very day.

Its the new year when we pick up the story, and its a completely different scenario. He is feeling almost content, and no matter what happens he actually can cope. I later found out that this was down to a new character forming. A girl he met just a few weeks prior, but who made such an impact on him he was like a new person. She gave him the one thing he needed, a purpose.
I’m not entirely sure what happened between them, something clearly did but any signs disappeared quite quickly, I can only assume something went wrong. There would always be the occasional glance between them, but any chance they had of more really died around that time.

That hit him hard. After such a relationship he had almost become accustomed to so many things, maybe he just didn’t know what to do in the real world. When someone loves you, it can sometimes give you a false sense of things, maybe the fact he’d had two years of someone thinking he was the best person in the world no matter what he did actually did more harm than good.

I guess it came down to those three who shaped these last months. He would be gone soon, moving on to other things and it was this chance he had to move on from his past.

The girl who made him happy would just be a girl he used to know. The girl who understood him would continue her path of destruction without him. The girl he barely knew, who he met just a matter of months before, now that is a sadder tale. He would leave soon, and she would become a girl he used to know. It was that fact which broke him. Though he was never entirely sure why, he felt for her a way he’d never known before.

A girl he used to know. A girl he never had a chance with. That’s all she would ever be.

Now we’ve arrived. The present day. He had survived a very interesting few months, which had taught him a few interesting lessons.

No matter how we look at it, his school life had been very up and down. But he left as he started, with nothing. Nothing, no-one.

And the next chapter? That’s only just beginning.

Footnote

It’s an interesting story this, and I wonder sometimes what this story teaches us. Is there a moral to it? Do we learn something from his behaviour? I’m still not even quite sure if we’re meant to like this boy. Yes I suppose he’s not always had it easy but he also has lied and manipulated innocent people.

Perhaps this story is just too open our eyes. It makes us see the true nature of people, and gives us an insight into how to live our life.

The past - part 3

You’ve heard his past, and you’ve heard his story as he stumbled through life for about 15 years.

We pick up the story just a few years ago, at what I would describe as his lowest point. A hole he had dug pretty much on his own, and a life ruined by the mistakes of a child who didn’t know better. The thing is though, and he would ponder this himself for years to come, was it a mistake? People make mistakes yes, but when you do so often, when you live your life manipulating and controlling people, how do we know they are even mistakes anymore? One day, a cold winter day in February, he realised this. He was a bad person. No longer could he justify his actions. A social recluse, avoiding people, losing friends and completely alone he was all but ready to give up on everything.

That’s when everything changed. He met someone. Someone who he would later fall in love with, someone who’s very being would bring him out of the dark place he was in. I guess what she gave him was a reason. He had a history, and he had done things most would find disturbing, but every time she looked at him, she looked at him like he was the best person he could ever be. Having that helped him. It gave him a reason to be better, in the hope one day he would be that person that she saw.

It was a completely new experience for him. Something that would change him. Though they would argue and fight, there would always be the underlying feelings that they had.

There is very little record of the next two years. It seems in his life, something was just going right.

What I do know however, is of a time when all they had was on the brink of ending. It seems she was not the only one he had eyes for. A girl he knew, for some time prior to this time finally came forward and announced her love for him. This left him with a dilemma. This was not just any girl, it was someone who understood him, someone who had stood on the edge with him and survived.

The girl who made him happy? Or the girl who got him?

He made the right choice, and he was assured of that till one rainy day in May. His struggle between the two had led him to have neither, and it was on this day, stood with the girl who got him, that he found out. They kissed. If a secret should ever have been kept, it was this. If anyone ever knew, it would destroy friendships and relationships.

Secrets never get kept. When I heard of this particular incident, I wasn’t surprised. It had been a long time coming.

It was at this point he left, in fairness it was a planned holiday, but there had never been a more appropriate time to leave the country. He left uncertain of where he stood with either, and knowing upon is return, he would find out.

It was a bit of an anticlimax. Everything went back to normal, as if the kiss had never happened.

It would be months before we heard from him again. It was not that he had disappeared, but rather just a return to normal, or at least whatever normal was to him.

We arrive very recently. In fact, just a few months from where we are now.

The story is different. About as different as it could be. He was no longer with the girl who made him happy, and it really changed him.

What he never realised, was that once she was gone, he would return to where he was before. Alone, reclusive and giving up on everything.

Full circle.

Where next? Only time will tell.

The past - part 2

There’s a fine line between being happy and being okay. There’s also a very thick line between being okay, and not coping at all.

The boy had experienced all of these things, crossed lines and seen things many his age would never even imagine. One day it was enough. He decided there was no place for him here. He had been everywhere, and fit in nowhere. He had nothing, no one and nowhere.

How a boy so young ever conceived of such an idea I’ll never know. It saddens me in a way, to think that children, just children can do this to themselves. This is what we drive them to, this is where they end up.

They end up as a statistic. Another number, another lost person the world would never get to meet. You’d hear his name, a campaign against it, but he’d just be the poster boy. The story would hit headlines, bullies named and shamed forevermore and a community of people who would never get over it.

The edge is a fascinating place. You stand there looking, in a state of being so alive yet so close to death. He never felt more alive than that moment, because for that second he controlled life itself. He was playing God and any omnipotent being out there had no control over his life anymore.

But there’s darkness. A light dimming that tells you the end is coming. He couldn’t bear the thought that he would never see light again, because there’s nothing after. Nothing.

There’s a choice to be made. I hope none of you ever make that choice yourself, or ever know anyone who does because it’s the worst feeling there is. One he would never wish upon anyone, no matter how much they did to him.

He stepped back. He turned and he lived with it, but he did it out of love. An entirely selfless act. He lived so that those around him could continue to. To this day he would wonder about the choice he made.

If life is a test, I’d give him a B+. Could do better. Maybe he just didn’t try hard enough, maybe he gave up to easily or maybe he should be gone.

We’ll never know the truth, but then again the story is only just starting.

The past - part 1

His life had changed in ways he was only just beginning to understand. He had spent three months looking away, blinding himself to what was going on around him, but everyone must face the truth eventually.

For context we must know previous encounters of his, we need to know where this story begins before we can understand where he has arrived.

Our story begins aged 10, a fresh eyed child who had never had a particularly difficult life. He was raised in a loving, yet sometimes distant, small family. He had his friends, and although not popular, he wasn’t hated either. Till this point. Maybe something changed in the world, or maybe it was he who had changed, but no matter which way we look at the story, he was a target. Bullying affects millions of children every single day, in every school, club and even group of children. He was bullied badly, every single day, by everyone he knew. There wasn’t a single place he could step where he wasn’t bullied. Sure people noticed, but what can you do about it? It was something he just had to face alone for years on end.

Maybe that’s what led him here? Sat, alone, bitter and angry at the world for hurting him. They destroyed him in there, not always physically, but they broke him mentally, in a way that could never be fixed.

As the years went by, it carried on. It may not have been the worst bullying the world has ever seen, but it was unrelenting and effective. He lost faith in the goodness of people.

We pick up the story in high school. 13 years old and prepared for a new start. A new start that he would never get. Surrounded by those who had tormented him, he was even more distant. A year of 300 students and he could name no more than a dozen friends. Another year later we see a change in his character. He shoots himself into the centre of it all, with a confidence I had never seen in him before. Maybe it was the fact that for the first time ever, people wanted to know him, or maybe he had given up on life so much that he could quite literally do anything.

The faster they rise, the harder they fall. Never before has this statement been so true. In less time than it took him to rise up, he fell, dejected and heartbroken, to a place lower than ever before. This was something he knew only too well, but society had changed him, no longer would he sit down and take it, he had learnt from them and decided enough was enough. No more would he sit down and take he shit, he would do anything he could to survive. He had learnt something about himself through this, he could use words in a way very few could.

He bided his time, waiting quietly in the darkness, only stepping out to say the right thing at the right time. He remained mainly invisible throughout this, some may have forgotten all about him, but his time would come.

Questions and answers.

Some questions asked by David.

1. What is your favourite colour? Why?
White, it is a culmination of all other colours. Teamwork.

2. How varied is your music taste? Why is it so varied?
Incredibly. I have around 10,000 tracks on my iTunes, everything from drum and bass to Haydn and Bach. It’s because I have the ability to respect music even if it is not my personal choice, plus different music is appropriate a different times. When I walk to school I might put on David Guetta and I’ll get there in no time at all, but chilling at home maybe a bit of Jason Mraz is better.

3. If you could fly, what is the first thing that you would do?
Ooh, tough question. Knowing me I would fly around stealing stuff.

4. If all the books in the world were being burnt, are there any books you would risk your life to protect?
Are we talking protect one copy? We can always make another so no. Oddly enough if I had to stop one book from being taken from existence, it’d probably be a religious scripture, because I think the way they’ve shaped the world is fascinating.

5. What is it like to fall in love?
It’s strange. I think that true love isn’t easy. You don’t love someone because they like the same music as you, or because you get on. Love to me is something where you can love someone for all the wrong reasons because you love them enough to not care about the differences, or the flaws. Look back to my post titled ‘love’ for more info.

6. What does ‘regret’ mean to you?
I very rarely regret things. Regret is a waste of time really, it changes nothing. If I regret something I did five years ago, what good does it do? I’m dwelling on the past and it’s not like I can travel back and change it.

7. Do you prefer day or night? Why?
Day because it’s busy and I can just blend in and disappear. Night because it’s quiet and calm.

8. Do you think that plastic was a good invention?
100% I don’t see an argument against it…

9. What would create world peace?
No stupidity but I think I could. It needs someone who has the ability to convince people and make them see things. Too many people are closed minded and it just takes one person to change a generation. I think I could be that person, who knows.

10. What do you understand by ‘existence’?
We exist. We cannot know in what sense, but everything we can know exists. See Descartes ‘I think therefore I am’. I could sit here and write references from the matrix and avatar, but you get what I mean. We could just be brains in a vat being fed this experience.

Right now for my ten questions.

1. Is any opinion a wrong opinion?
2. If any religion were to die out, which will go first and why?
3. Is it possible to love at a young age?
4. Do you think there is other life in the universe?
5. Do we exist?
6. Will you ever get to the point where you can accept death?
7. What are miracles to you?
8. Do you hate anyone?
9. Where do you think technology will take us next?
10. What superpower would you have if you could choose?

This is for Joe and David, I hope they see it.

Words.

From where does a word take its meaning? Is it created for the purpose, or do we find a word and give it a purpose? Either way or neither way the power of a word is something I’ve never fully comprehended. It’s almost like the sound we make matters more than the way in which we mean it.

Take an example. I use the F word to call you a fucker. I mean no offence and say it in a jokey way. Somd people would take offence from that. Consider an alternative scenario. I call you a blanket. Now anyone who does not live in a cave will know blanket is by no means an insult. What if I meant it as one? If to me that was the worst thing I could do. How would you feel then?

Now I’ve discussed the title I’m going to have some thoughts.

I’ve had the most up and down few months. Some incredible highs, and equally crippling lows. In less than 50 days I’ll be finished formal education, and the most important chapter of My life will be over.

School is the time that defines you as a person. It can be a time where you make life long friends, realize life goals and even fall in love.

This week I asked the question to myself. What have I taken from school? A string of people I’ve hurt, friends who wouldn’t recognise me and a fear of crowds.

I always thought that I’d have you. That down the line I had something.

Now I have nothing.

The moment I met you, something clicked. In such a short space of Time we had gone so far.

Now we’re only going nowhere.

This is Chris Drohan, signing off.

Live.love.eat.

It’s the way.

I’ve always found it difficult to describe you. I’m not going to call you perfect because you’re not.

I won’t even say you’re perfect to me because you’re not. You are full of flaws. Flaws that aggregate the hell out of me. There’s no excuse for them, quite simply you annoy me.

And this is the point most people would say “it’s because of all of these flaws that I love you”.

Well not me. I don’t love your flaws. I don’t love you.

I like you, but considering I’ve known you all that long love isn’t the right word.

I don’t like your flaws. They are some of the things I hate about people.

I like you despite them. Somewhere inside you there is this indescribable quality that I can’t get enough of.

I still think you’re beautiful though. As much as many people are attractive, there’s very few people I’ll say it to when they look THAT revolting.

Live.love.eat.

The boy.

He had felt like this before. Just once.

I have written stories about him many a time. The way he stood on a bridge, the way he never knew whether or not he should jump.

We’re finally at the last stage of the story. Years had passed since we last heard from him. Life had been good to him.

The end of this story takes us to today. He had thrown everything away, and was now sat alone, with nothing to live for.

The last time he felt this way, was when he stood on the edge of the bridge.

I’ve often said that instead of jumping, he chose to step back off the edge.

I lied.

He never chose to live, he survived from luck.

Are the odds in his favour?

We shall see.

Live.love.eat.