A Lifetime in Review

By Hank Percevault

The class of 2007 really wasn't the best one that entered Ramsley High School, but it showed that it was better than many other ones. Students were very diverse here, not being just of different nationalities but also of different styles and beliefs. Living here long enough, one would not be surprised to see a kid with a five-gauge horn through his nose, or a girl that wore every color imaginable in one single outfit. It was more accepted to be here than most schools, almost everybody got along with each other, even if they didn't know each other. I'm not saying it was a utopia, but it was better than my last school, where everybody hated each other and the teachers were absolutely horrendous.

My name is Jake. I don't consider myself the nicest guy in the world; I do have my bad days. To be honest almost every day is a bad day for me. I just have trouble ever finding myself in a good mood; it's probably because I don't have too many friends. And it's not because I can't make friends, I just choose not to have them.

The guidance councilor at my old school always encouraged me to take on the challenge of finding people that are like me to help me get through my depression, but for some reason I only find myself spiraling more downward with the apparent "aid" of friends.

I had this one friend, Frank. He was pretty cool but he was one of those guys that just couldn't live one second without having me around. You might call him a stalker perhaps. I got rid of him as soon as possible. He didn't take it very well but I don't really care because I don't show compassion for too many people. Why waste time feeling bad for other people when I have problems of my own? It only makes matters worse for me. If I deal with one person then I have to deal with other people. Drama is never only about one person; there is at least one other person involved, and eventually it turns into two, and then three, and so on.

My parents have learned that I am in fact a misanthropist. They divorced when I was seven for whatever reasons my mother wouldn't tell me until I was twelve. Up until then, I guessed it was just not working; my father didn't have a job and my mother had trouble handling the bills without his help. That's just my guess, I don't really know for sure. I've been living with my mother on the east side of Manaque for the past nine years in an apartment, which is located on Ridgefield Boulevard. It's a cozy little community; the neighbors have always been nice and there haven't been too many problems of any kind.

But the problems that I have had I suppose I've brought upon myself. I made a few wrong turns in the past; got myself stuck in a few holes. I even thought that I would never be able to get myself out on my own. Sometimes I consider myself the "rebellious child," and because of a lot of the things I have done, I really am.

Some children are either brought up the wrong way, or there's some kind of incident that plays a part in the change that the individual goes through. I guess I'm both perhaps. If it weren't for the divorce and the constant verbal abuse by my father, then maybe I would still be what you call "normal."

"You're not good for anything! All you ever do is sit and play with your toys!"

This was the typical argument every day for him with me, and I was six and seven when this would happen. Basically I was clueless as to what I should do with myself, but to play with my toys even more. That's exactly what a kid is supposed to do anyway. My father wasn't exactly "all there", I found out that one day he had been beating my mother, five years after it happened, since I was older and more understanding of things.

Since then I haven't been the ideal child that my mother wished I would be. Being caught up in sex, drugs, and simply hanging out with the wrong crowd has turned me into everything I was afraid of becoming. It's hard to explain how I got involved with it all; come to think of it I believe it started when I met my first real friend Mike.

Mike was one of the most open kids I've ever met in my life. No matter how anybody around him was feeling, he was willing to express himself in any and every way possible. And for some strange reason he had this strange obsession with female body parts and just sex in general. He was an awkward character but he didn't really bother me that much. Let's just say he was intolerable for most. Fortunately, unlike Frank, he wasn't attached at the hip so I had whatever freedom I wanted.

I was 13 at the time when Mike and I started smoking, and I'm not talking about cigarettes; I'm talking about the other stuff. Pot was the only thing (or one of the only things) that helped me escape my reality of darkness. Whenever I did it, I just felt so relieved that my problems were temporarily gone.

They would come back, and I'd just do it all over again. It was pretty much a vicious cycle that I couldn't get out of, but I didn't really care. As long as I was happy for the time being, nothing else mattered to me.

I remember something funny that I used to do last year when I was depressed. For some reason candy made me in a better mood. I pretended that the Tutti Fruiti jelly beans were a form of medication to make me feel better, and after a while they stopped working at improving my mood because I got so sick of them. I did that with a lot of things; don't ask me why, I just did. I wasn't all there either when I was younger, but I suppose that's expected.

I used to steal a lot when I was younger too. It started out with a candy bar or two here and there, then it became useless stuff I didn't need, such as pens, or something small that was somewhat expensive. I got caught once stealing this gag joke at this store called Roger's Miscellania. They put sensors on their merchandise that I didn't notice, so a mall security guard wrote me up. It wasn't that big of a deal really, my mother just kind of shook her head once I got home. I was also thirteen at the time and once again, the separation caused me to be a "dysfunctional" child. I don't mean the things I do, they just kind of come to me and I do it without thinking.

Stealing was a pastime for me, like baseball is a pastime for an adult, I just enjoyed it, probably because I got away with it so much. When you looked in the police blotter of the Ramsley Record, about one eighth of the things you see in it have to do with me, but I never get caught, because I'm good like that. I was the guy that broke into cars at night and stole CDs and whatever else I could find that I may be able to sell to the stupid kid in the 7th grade for a pretty penny. Kids can be so stupid sometimes; I find it extremely comical when kids are so desperate to have something that looks cool, but when they start playing with it, it doesn't even work, and I'm nowhere to be found.

Call me sadistic. I don't care. I know I am, and I know that I will never change my lifestyle as a teenage criminal. It's the way I am.

I remember a time that I went out with my friends to a rave. It was the first time that I had ever been to a club of any kind. I heard a lot of things about raves, and as I heard more I wanted to go to one. It was the place where people could act like idiots and not feel embarrassed because everybody is doing the same thing. My friend Greg had connections, so I was able to get a stack of ecstasy.

It was an exciting experience. It took about an hour to kick in, and even at that, I didn't really feel that much except a little bit of a head cold. Then Greg said that in order to really feel the effects, I had to start dancing. Now if you know me you know that I'm not one to dance, but when your on it, you learn to dance quite quickly, and I had no trouble getting used to it. Everybody kind of just kicks their legs around. It's not strange to bump into people, because nobody really notices it anyway since they're all "rolling", as they call it.

I went into the bathroom to fill up my water bottle and there was some kid that looked like he was going to die. He was sweating profusely and he ran into the stall to throw up, even thought he didn't. He just kind of gagged.

I'll never forget seeing this one kid named Sean. He was wearing a shirt that made him look like a big blue M&M. He was messed up beyond being messed up. He was around the fourth person I met in the bathroom; I was peeing in the stall next to him and he just turns his head and says, "Yo man I am so messed up right now."

"How much did you take?"

"I think two double stacks but I can't remember because I'm so messed up."

"Wow! I think you're going to die if you take that much."

But he was a big kid, maybe around two ninety. Then he left. I never talked to him again.

That really was a night to remember. I was talking all the way home, and my friend Ben was driving home. To be honest I was kind of scared since he wasn't all there because of the ecstasy. About halfway home his girlfriend Jessica told him to get the hell out of the driver's seat and she took over. I felt a little more comfortable because she concentrates when she's driving while rolling, because she knows that if she were to get pulled over then that would be the end of it. Her license would probably get revoked and her parents would most likely disown her. I remember when she was so straight edge. She told me that she would never take drugs ever.

You see I used to work with her at the local drug store. I really liked her and at one point and eventually I hooked up with her, while I was going out with my girlfriend. For a while things were a little bit awkward.

She regretted it and told her boyfriend about it. He was really upset about it but he had forgiven her not too long after. I told my girlfriend about it when she was on a school trip to Virginia Beach. Things didn't go to well as I thought they would. She broke down the second she found out about it. To tell the truth I felt like a complete asshole for ruining her vacation. She broke up with me then and there. I basically destroyed her completely, to the point where she wouldn't even talk to me anymore. She couldn't think straight for the next couple of weeks. I don't even know why she had forgiven me later on. I didn't deserve anyone nearly as close to perfect as she was. If I loved her so much then why the hell would I do something like that. I adored her in every way, and I screwed everything we had up. I think that was about the time I went back to cutting. I had to remove the emotional pain I had with the physical pain.