My life is made up of quotes. My father was a poet and my mother an artist. Together they were musicians. When I came along they became parents. When I learned to talk they became teachers, and when I learned to understand they became mentors. When I started to make decisions they became advisors and when I became a man they became a book of wisdom. And inside the book I call my parents are quotes. The first quote was the first lesson they taught me when they were teachers.

"Love others."

With this lesson I learned to care. I loved the animals in the forest behind our home and the fish in my large fishing hole in the backyard. When I was bitten by a spider in my garage, I didn't kill it. I freaked out and screamed bloody murder, but I didn't kill it. When I made my first friend I gave her all the love I could possibly give, and in that I scared her away.

The second quote was given to me when I told my first lie.

"Always tell the truth. Not only will it give others faith in you but it will also give you faith in yourself."

In this I took away honesty. Little white lies, though so easy to tell, often got me in more trouble than I would've liked. I started being honest like my parents taught me, often brutally so. At the time, I hadn't known that you shouldn't tell someone (especially an adult) that they were fat and mean to their face.

Flipping through several pages of my earlier quotes, I come to the next very significant one in my life. My father told me this one when I was around nine years old. I had just witnessed a case of real bullying, not petty pushing, but a full on beating of one child from another. I remember standing in a circle of children, the bully and his victim in the middle, and not knowing what to do or say. I wanted to stop it, but I was afraid of being beaten myself. I ran home from school that afternoon with tears threatening to spill from my eyes. My father had gotten me an ice-cream cone and sat me down on the front stoop. With tired blue eyes, and his naturally quiet voice he told me a story of his younger days. It was that day I learned what child abuse and bullying was.

"Stand up for others. Protect those who need protecting. Don't walk away from someone in need."

When I turned fifteen I found myself in a dilemma I didn't know how I got into in the first place. I had a crush. It wasn't a normal crush, as the other students had put it. It was a scary crush. A taboo crush. I was crushing on a pretty blond haired boy. I tried to hide it from my parents; I even lied to them when they asked me who it was I was crushing on. But being one of the first things they ever taught me not to do, I felt horribly guilty. One night as we all sat outside on the stoop, my mother playing her vibrant orange guitar and my dad singing softly to the tune of the instrument, I told them. I expected them to be angry, to yell at me, and even disown me. But instead, they simply nodded their heads and my mother told me the quote I hold dearest to my heart.

"Never be ashamed of loving someone. Love comes in so many different forms. If it didn't, there wouldn't be enough to go around."

The blond boy and I were in a relationship for five months before he abruptly moved away. I never heard from him again.

Junior year was the year I met Riku. I saw him on the first day of school, holding all of his books in his hands, a scowl on his face. He was the strangest yet most beautiful person I had ever seen. I immediately desired to befriend him, yet sadly, peer pressure got to me. I was a popular teen in high school. I had many friends and was generally well liked. I never experienced a day of bullying in my life, yet I'd seen others go through it. I would stick up for those who were bullied, and in turn, several of them were accepted into the 'in' crowd because of it. Yet, this wasn't the case for Riku. I had never seen bullying as severe as what was directed towards Riku. His albino looks and distant personality instantly made him a target. Anyone with such an odd hair-color and equally unusual personality would. It didn't help the matter that he was extremely poor. So when my friends determined him unworthy of their friendship, I begrudgingly went along.

Every day I saw his face my parents' quotes nagged at me. When I saw him eating government provided lunch alone in the cafeteria my heart would tug in guilt. When I was in chemistry class and Riku would be sitting in the back, glancing desperately at other students textbooks because his had been stolen, my mouth would go dry and my eyes slightly water. When I'd go to the bathroom and find him regularly grabbing multiple paper towels in effort to dry his face that had minutes before been forced into a toilet, I felt my heart beat angrily against my chest and my ears burn. His pain affected me in more ways than I could count.

One day, I'd finally had enough. I remember the indignant squawks of my friends from behind me as I walked over to Riku's lonely table. I was never the same in their eyes after that. We were still friends, but it was a distant friendship. A false sense of friendship.

I will always remember the look in Riku's eyes when I sat down across from him. There was a mixture of emotions swirling in those aquamarine depths: shock, suspicion, anger, sadness, and maybe a glimmer of happiness (or I like to believe there was). I introduced myself and asked him his name, even though I already knew it. He didn't answer me immediately, in fact, he stood up and walked away. We repeated that scene eight times until finally on the ninth day he told me his name was 'Riku now fuck off'. But of course I didn't, I just pestered him more. And slowly, very slowly, we formed a friendship.

The day I got my apartment a few blocks away from the college I was to begin attending; I asked my parents a question. We were on the old stoop in front of our house, my mother no longer played her guitar because of arthritis and my father had long since lost his singing voice. Yet this didn't matter, they made do with humming. I turned to them, my keys to my new place in my pocket and all my stuff moved out of my family home, and asked them 'how do you know if you love someone?'

"You know you love someone when 'they' become more important than 'I'."

Sitting here, five years from then, I'm finally experiencing my parent's last quote to me. A year after I moved out my father passed away from a cancer he'd kept hidden from my mother and I. In her grief, my mother followed. Right now I desperately wish to have them back for more advice. I want so much to sit on the old family stoop and pour out my heart to them, and in return, have them encourage me and advise me on what to do.

I fell in love with Riku three years ago to this date. We had been playfully making jabs at each other as usual while drinking beer on my old couch. It was a dark, autumn night, he'd come over to study with me for our psychology test coming up, but like always, we never got anything done when we hung out together. After debating several psychological theories we were studying, Riku randomly told me he had met someone. I shouldn't have felt jealous, as I was dating a pretty young red-head named Kairi, but I did. He told me his name was Axel and that he was a very cocky bastard, but he was falling in love with him.

Now Riku isn't much of a sap, he is a tough person. Riku, as I've learned over the years, is a very proud person who was unfortunately shoved into situations that hurt his pride terribly. He is a fighter, and damn does he fight, but when it was six to one in a narrow high school hallway, he was destined to lose. I admit before I knew him I thought he was somewhat of a wimp, but I was proven wrong one night when he took on this ugly beast of a man who tried to mess with him. So to hear Riku so openly tell me he was falling in love came as a big surprise. Partially because of what I mentioned before, and the other part being that the person he was falling in love with was male.

I remember asking him why he loved Axel. He told me he didn't really know. He just did. I pestered him about it for the next hour until he finally broke down and let me see a part of his heart that he'd kept hidden. He told me about his childhood, or lack thereof. He told me about his drug addicted parents and how the only attention they paid him was violent attention. He told me about being evicted and watching all of his prized possessions be thrown out onto the street like trash and when he'd go down to collect them the other children in the neighborhood would laugh. He told me how embarrassed he was to receive government lunches and that he sometimes ate in the bathroom in middle school because of it. He told me how it felt to never have anyone say 'I love you', to never be encouraged, to never be told he was doing something right. How it felt to never be called attractive, to never be seen as special in someone else's eyes, and mostly, to never feel loved.

And then he told me how it felt when Axel called him hot or sexy. He told me how it felt when Axel would call him regularly and how it felt when Axel looked at him with desire in his eyes. He told me how wonderful it felt to know that someone wanted him. That's why he loved him, he told me.

And I knew that night that something was wrong. The love Riku described sounded so superficial, but for someone who'd only experienced the tiniest bits of affection I'm sure it would feel like love. As I watched him walk out the door that night, I felt as if my heart was being crushed. I didn't know at the time, but deep down I wanted him to love me.

I didn't have the strength to tell him what I felt about his relationship, though now I wish I had. Now I wish I would've told him that Axel was using him. That he didn't love him and that it was all a lie. I wish I had told him I would love him. That I would provide him with all the things he'd been deprived of in his life. But I didn't. I let him walk out that door and right into the brutal relationship he's in right now.

So I sit here, in the dark of my living room thinking about the beautiful man I let go of so carelessly. I saw him tonight, but it felt like it really wasn't him. He was with that bastard Axel at a bar. The red-head had a group of his regular friends together and they were drunkenly arguing and cackling at the most random things. It would have been a normal scene if not for Riku. Riku was sitting beside Axel, his hands folded submissively in his lap and his eyes downcast. But what shocked and sickened me the most was the collar around Riku's slim neck. I knew it wasn't there because he put it there. It was Axel's doing. It had to be. Nothing of what I saw looked like love. Riku looked trapped and helpless. Axel looked as if he could care less about his lover.

I've come to realize that all this time I've been thinking about myself. I didn't want to tell Riku Axel was using him, so I didn't because I'd be uncomfortable. If I had truly cared for Riku I would have told him, no matter how much it would've hurt him or how awkward I would've felt. Well now, after tonight, all of my parents' most important quotes come back to me. I feel as if I've let them down. Their first quote about loving others I disregarded when I let Riku walk out that door. I wasn't honest to him about what I thought about his relationship. I didn't protect him when I saw where it was headed and I've only thought of myself and my comfort, though I claimed to love him.

Well now I've come to the decision that I truly do love Riku, and I no longer care what happens to me or my reputation. I'm going to get him out of that relationship if it's the last thing I do. I'm just hoping I haven't blown all my chances.