Life Goes On

“Life goes on.” These are the words that guided my entire life. No matter how bad things got, no matter what happened, I could always trust in the fact that life went on. The past is the past and there’s nothing you can do to change it. I lived these words everyday and never once even thought of trying to change the past. I was so sure that no matter what happened I would just stand back up and keep going with my life. That somehow I would move on. Oh how I wish I was still that naïve. 1

I can’t even begin to describe how much I wish that someway, somehow I could just go back and start over. Fix my mistakes somehow and make everything better. Change the course of history and make it fit my wishes and my dreams. But, one thing that I will never do is live a lie. Never again will I attempt to keep something going that isn’t what it seems. Even if I have the worst life in the world, at the end of the day I’ll be able to say that I was true in all aspects of my being that day. But, for now, I truly do just wish I could change this one incident and make it hurt less. I now sit back and write my tale, my story, and continue dreaming that it comes out with my ending.2

This tale isn’t one of violence and gore, or even of an unbelievable adventure that grasps the spans of the reader’s imagination and whisks them away to a fairy tale world where everything can be right. This tale is a true one of a one-side love and a broken heart. A tale of wishful thinking laced with the rotten twinge of confusion and hope. This is a tale about ordinary people, living ordinary lives, in an ordinary way, and at the end of the day coming up just shy of the delirium of a perfect tomorrow that they longed so much for. This is the true story of my life.3

I was always the kid sitting in the back quietly working on something and never going out of his way to make friends. I was the kid who could go home and say “Today was a great day, I wasn’t picked on once.” From the time I started Pre-Kindergarten I was different. I grew up with four older brothers and no knowledge of my biological family, no knowledge of where I was from. I spent my Pre-K year reading books in a corner and trying to keep as many people from noticing me as possible. I kept this same basic attitude most of my school life, up until sophomore year.4

If you asked me today why I did it I still wouldn’t be able to tell you. Why I went against everything I spent my life trying to do, everything I had ever done. The fact is, however, that I did. I went and talked to someone that I didn’t know simply for the sake of talking. That person ended up being very special to me. You see she is the other person in this heart-wrenching tale of lost hopes and misguided emotions. This point is one of the many places I wish now that I could change. I truly wish at some times that I never went and talked to her, but then I realize that I’m very glad I did.5

That day was the start of this tale, but it was also the start of the greatest set of friends I have ever had. That day my true family, the ones that I would lay down everything for, came together for the first time and began forming a bond of friendship that nothing could break NOTHING.6

At the beginning I saw this lovely girl as nothing more than a new friend that I was very glad to have met. Right from the start we became great friends. Right from the start you would see us as nothing more than a couple of crazy friends who didn’t give a damn. Then I made the first mistake in this whole equation, I start to fall for this crazy girl that could always make me laugh and would always laugh with me. I began to truly feel like I wanted to go beyond friendship with her, a mistake that I am very happy I made.7

Then, as with every tale, comes that part that I truly would change without thinking twice. Along comes homecoming. My first mistake at this point was not doing what I had wanted to do, not asking her to homecoming. The next part of this very mistake full night was one that, even today, I think “how would things have been different.” This mistake is not asking her to dance.8

That night lots of things were going on. I made new friends, I was crazier than ever before, and I made the second of a long list of mistakes. That night I had every chance in the world to, once again, go against everything I had spent my life doing, once more step out of my small box of security and do something so beyond myself and so different from my typical quite persona.9

I spent the whole night with her messing around and having the greatest time of my life. More than once they threatened to kick us out for horse playing. More than once we danced like psychos around the dance floor, dancing like there was no tomorrow. All of those times we sat around on the outskirts throwing cheese across the table at random people. Worst of all there was the time she actually mentioned that no one had asked her to dance.10

All of these chances to start one of the greatest things in my life, and possibly have saved it from the ending it came to, and I didn’t take any of them because I was too scared to live life to its fullest, a mistake that I will never again make. That night, even with so many wasted chances and lost dreams, ended up as one of the greatest nights of my life.11

After that wondrous night we all returned to our typical lives where nothing went right and every time we tried to live something happened to knock us back into our shells of insults and hatred. Believe it or not this tale has yet to even begin to show you the many things that have gone wrong in my recent life, or the many things I wish so desperately I would have had the courage to do. We have only scratched the surface of the many things I managed to ruin in this one short year of my wasted life.12

As I said we returned to our typical, well typical for us, lives of school and home and dreams of more. How many times did we dream of having something better or even different?13

Life became pretty redundant after that, for a little while anyways. Nothing exciting happened at all in my life until February 11, the day that I went on my first date with her. The day, also, that one of the greatest men I ever knew had his untimely funeral. That day was one of very mixed emotion, sorrow and happiness mixing together into one very tangible feeling floating between the two of us. After that day life became very different for us. 14

This very memorable day was inevitably followed by me, being the screw up that I am, making a second mistake that nearly cost me everything. This is a mistake that I still can’t put into words for multiple reasons. For one because it hurts to think of me having done this and for two because it’s more complicated than any words in my vocabulary could describe.15

After this mistake was taken care of it looked like we were going to get a faerie tale ending after all, until I pulled through again. As far as what I did I still don’t know, as far as my feelings, I am completely sorry for everything I did.16

This is my story, a story of misadventure and mistakes, a story of false dreams and unhappy endings, a story of misery and sorrow, but also a story this has yet to be finished. With this story I have made myself revisit some of my biggest mistakes in the past year and made myself think about everything I did, but that’s not why I wrote this. This story was my way of trying to make you, the reader, look at your life and make sure you don’t make the same mistakes I did.17

Life goes on… the words I lived 15 years of my life on, and now a saying that will forever guide my life. No matter what happens and no matter how bad it looks just remember that life will keep going, whether you’re following along or not. Don’t let the past drag you down, but also, don’t think of this saying the way I did. You can’t change the past, but you can learn from it. Live it, learn from it, and move on. 18

The End19