I like to think of myself as a basic person. I go to school and sleep like a normal teen, and go out sometimes. I’m social, I could talk to anybody or give anyone advice. But there’s certain things I talk about with certain people. Usually it’s my closer friends that ask for some advice or open up. So I just listen—listen to them complain about their parents and how they didn’t get them this or they are arguing again. Maybe they complain about their life and how “hard” it is and I get it, it is hard but not hard enough to complain about it every day. The best part of the conversation though, is when they say “I wish I could be you”. That’s when my blood heats up because they don’t know a single thing about my life. They don’t know my dad and mom separated when I was 3, they don’t know my dad abandoned me, and a couple of years later he died. The endless amounts of death in my family, the attempts of suicide, the separation, the drugs and the alcohol. They don’t know, so they shouldn’t talk. They don’t know the times I’ve cried myself to sleep, the times I’ve felt alone. The times I’ve thought “Is it worth living anymore?” They don’t know how hard it is to not complain because they always do. How hard it is to say I’m fine, how hard it is to keep a smile on my face. How hard it is to watch your own father pointing a gun to his mother or seeing him in his casket with clay & makeup filling the hole where the bullet flew through. Yeah I’ve been through things but I’m grateful for all the scars and bruises they left behind because every time I look back and get stronger.