Thoughts

Sometimes it’s the smallest most insignificant things that get to me the most. I don’t generally get upset about things. I try not to let the world get to me too much, but because of that very fact I have been accused of being distant, cold and unfeeling. I just don’t want to get hurt. I’ve been told by lots of people that I’m strong, that I can deal with things that other people wouldn’t know how to. I’ve dealt with betrayal, death, suicide, racism, religion and sexuality and that’s only in the last three years. I don’t think that I handled some of these things as well as I could have. I did manage to make one of my friends who was suicidal realise that there is so much more point in living than in dying. He’d been through a lot of stuff in his life that had made him reach the point where he saw no worth in living, no reason for going on. His father had walked out on his mother when he was seven and he had struggled with the racism and discrimination against being an aboriginal living in a predominantly Caucasian town. Another of my friends had walked into this guy’s room and found him hanging from the ceiling barely breathing. Fortunately he got there just in time to cut him down and save his life. That was the fourth or fifth attempt he had made on his life. I only knew him for about eight or nine months before he dropped out of school. I later heard that he and my other friend had been caught stealing cars, dealing and smoking marijuana. They were banned from contacting one another and put on curfews as part of the court order against them. His friend managed to get his life back on track, quit smoking marijuana and get an apprenticeship. As to the first friend, I never did find out what happened to him, he vanished from my sphere of life and everyone who I have talked to that knew him cannot say where he is or what he’s doing. I hope he managed to sort things out and that he is alive and well somewhere on this planet of ours.