Thank You

A time has come in my life where I have had to sit down and evaluate my influences. I’ve had to think back to when things changed for me and how I came to be the way I am. I need to thank you for all that you have done and all that you have given me.

Without you, I’d have never learned at a young age that people can be full of disappointments. Who else could have been so effective at teaching me that I needed to stand on my feet or else I’d be thrown down? Because of you, I learned that true rage exists and that it can ruin the most precious of things no matter how innocent. Without that lesson, I wouldn’t be the control freak that I am. Only you were able to teach me that emotions were simply weapons and that feelings have no place on a sleeve.

I’ve been told that I need more in order to truly feel things. By this, I mean I need the extreme. I need to hold the taste of death in my mouth in order to feel like I’m living. I need to feel loss in order to find joy. I need a surplus of adrenaline racing through my veins in order to breathe. I need chaos in order to properly function. Love…something that is done so easily by most…is a harsh reality. I need such a high dose of any emotion in order to make it a part of me. The credit for this is yours. You put me through so many highs and lows that I built up a tolerance, I guess. It’s like if you use pain pills for too long, you have to continuously up the dose in order to feel its’ effectiveness…in order to feel that high.

Only a great teacher can show a teenager the true darkness that can be held inside, so deeply entrenched in cynicism that it can easily be mistaken for hate. Yes, indeed, it takes a special soul to bring forth such angst amongst innocence.