Some things in life are funny in how they work out in the end. When you're just a little kid you hope for grand dreams of excitement and glamour. I knew plenty of people who had out of this world plans for this future, like sailing around the world, become a movie star, be a rock n' roller, join the astronauts in space, or even get elected to the White House. These are all pleasant little fantasies, but I need to break it to you. They're just that. Fantasies. In all probability, you'll have to lower your expectations when you grow up and realize you live in the mundane. You'll have to accept the fact that you will probably be something like an accountant, or a banker, or a plumber, or an employee of the IRS. Sorry for killing your sacred cow of hopes and dreams.

Some things in life are just unfair. Everyone has to go through this unpleasantness at least once in their lives.

The only major thing that separates me from the rest in one key element. I kept my expectations low from the beginning. No joke, from my earliest memories I had no desire to achieve anything great, as I was actually looking forward to living a plain life. Strange, right? I guess that was why I always got looks from my peers whenever I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. Instead of saying something like "I wanna be a pirate!" or "Be a super star!', I would just say in a plain voice: "I want to be secretary." or "I don't know, a janitor I guess.", this would just make some of my prepubescent class mates and friends.

"What a dummy!" they would say (or something around those lines) "Why can't you be cool like us?!" That's right, laugh now, because in a few years you'll realize how right I was and how wrong you were.

I guess I got my pessimism from my parents, because I could never remember a time where they didn't tell me how the world really works, always encouraging me to see the world through a non-rose colored lenses. Now don't get me wrong, both my parents are fine people who care for me just as much as most other parents would to their own kids, it's just that they had to go through adulthood earlier then a lot of other people. My mom had to look over her younger siblings throughout her teen years because of an absent father and a zoned mother. My dad was born into a family of hard working farmers, who had an unwritten rule to shun procrastinating and submit to honest work. So I guess I'm just the direct result of two down to Earth people.

What I'm trying to get to is that I just don't concern myself with standing out at all. It doesn't have anything to do with low self-esteem, because I've been told that I have plenty of that. So I hope you can get what I'm saying.

One more thing, and this relates to the very first thing I said about how life sometimes acts in funny ways.

I got the exact opposite of what I wanted.

One day during summer break, with my final year of high school over with, everything I thought was going to happen to me (i.e. go to college, get a degree, find a job, and then settle down with a sense of accomplishment) just...vanished. I learned that I had something that only a select few have, something that would permanently change my life for the worse. And the 'best' part of it was that I had absolutely no idea what was happening to me. The best guess I had at the time was that I was being possessed by an evil spirit. The people who were around me when it first happened began to panic, and I couldn't blame them, because I would have probably been no different in my own reaction if it was someone else. It was because of this single little experience that forced me to run away from home, hopping to find a new life somewhere else. In hindsight I guess I was being a little rash in that decision. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now. Damn.

Now I'm starting to wonder if everything I was taught to believe turned out to be a lie, a little fib used to protect me from an even more unlikable existence. Well, I guess I have a long way to go before I actually find that answer.

My name is Joanne Joestar, I'm 18 years old, a runaway, and most importantly of all, a Stand user. This is my bizarre adventure.