"It's different now that I'm poor and aging, I'll never see this face again
You go stabbing yourself in the neck
It's different now that I'm poor and aging, and I'll never see this place again
And you go stabbing yourself in the neck"

Here’s a cliche: Nobody understands me. I want to backspace furiously and then not eat for a week just for typing that. It’s pretty terrible, honestly; life. I’ve got nothing to live for, no one to fall for. At this point, I’m kind of listing through life, floating from day to day. I’m depressed, and sinking deeper every day - the gnawing stress of failing high school and the doom of another inane sunrise slowly unravel the loose-knit sweater of my sanity. I’m being dramatic. I think that’s called “rhetoric.” I wouldn’t know. I don’t learn anything in school, as of late. What I do learn, I find on the internet.
God, I do love the internet. I love computers. I love that you can, in some very off sense, be productive, without having to interact with other humans. There’s this game I play, it’s called “Minecraft.” In the game, you essentially collect materials and build your own world. Build anything you want. I used to like the game. Now I’m addicted. I’m willing to accept the term “addiction” at this point. “Addiction” is defined as a physical or psychological dependence on a substance, to the point where it affects every-day operation. It does affect my every-day life; I play it every opportunity I get - my third-period class, which is actually supposed to be designated for schoolwork if I have less-than-desirable grades (which I do, of course); and during my seminar/study hall, and after school; and at home, when I’m also supposed to be working on school assignments. I’m playing it now.
I don’t know what I love best about the game. It could be the element of control - everything in the world bends to my will; it could be a macabre obsession with death, which is frequent due to monsters that inhabit the game; it could be a number of things, its probably a number of things; its probably that, in the game, I’m all alone. There’s no one to interfere with my goings-on - no one to tell me how to, say, farm, or hunt, or design a monument to myself. You can build traps, to ensnare the beasts that roam dark forests; you can slaughter animals recklessly, just to gather wool, or a feather or two. Who’s going to judge? No one.
Actually, that’s not entirely correct. Sometimes, when people see me playing it, they make a stupid, trite comment about how I “have no life,” or they inquire as to how much time I spend playing it. The answer to that question is unknown - even to me. If I had to guess the number of hours of my life I’ve wasted punching trees or collecting sand or smelting iron or fighting demons - I’d probably just shake my head and mutter some non-committal number with three digits.

I had a friend who introduced me to the game in December of last year - back when I still could play it, and then stop. He was my best friend; I had never had a friend before who really enjoyed my company who I didn’t have to entertain. I slept over at his house, and we would rent a video game and buy junk food, and make terrible jokes and talk about girls, and fall asleep watching bad comedy films at three in the morning. I liked him a lot. He’s an amazing guitarist - at least twenty times better than me. His band recently got signed to a major label. I haven’t talked to him since. I don’t blame him. He has something that will make him more successful than a weekly “jam sesh” with me. I really do wish him well.

So I was all alone again. I changed schools, to get away from a “down” period that I thought at the time spawned primarily from the fact that the kids in my class at that school at this alarming inability to think about what they were saying before they spoke. A new school, a new set of teachers - everything was the same. It turns out that almost every teenager I know, save, possibly two exceptions, is a complete and utter moron.

That’s not a nice thing to be awakened to at sixteen years old. I hadn’t expected to lose all of my faith in humanity...well, ever, let alone before graduating high school. Or, that’s what I like to think the issue is: that everyone else is mad. The alternative is a lot scarier to me. There’s something like six billion people on the planet. Either there is something fundamentally wrong with every single one of them, except me...or... I’m being generous and assuming that you see my dilemma.

But I don’t care enough to fix it. I can’t care; I don’t know how. I’m seeing a psychologist kind of sporadically - that was the action I took last time I hit a low point. She doesn’t understand how deep the problems are, but she’s trying, and she’s nice to talk to. I don’t tell her much that would help her help me, but that’s mainly because I don’t know how to put it into words. I don’t know how to express how much I’m hurting. Maybe hurting isn’t the right word - I don’t feel anything, except an overhanging sort of frustration with myself, and that terrible stress I mentioned at the beginning of this gratuitous confession.

There are things that make me happy, though. Things like my girlfriend, and spending time with my band. Lynna is what I need, now. She doesn’t know what I’m going through - but she doesn’t need to. Our relationship operates above the maelstrom of my emotions - its very hard for me to stay down when I’m with her. She says things that make me smile every time I read them (we hardly ever communicate aloud. She doesn’t have unlimited phone minutes to land lines - and texting is easier for me, anyway).

My band is great. Musically, the group is essentially the drummer and I. I say that because we’re the only actual musicians in the group - the only ones who contribute very much, musically. The other half are decent instrumentalists, but they don’t know how to write songs - besides, they’re too cheap to buy their own gear. I like all of them immensely - this band is more a tight group of friends than any other I’ve ever performed with. We make music at practice - and then usually adjourn shortly and probably either skate or play video games. But it works - and my mood elevates whenever I’m with them. They’re losers, and I’m a loser, and we all sort of know it, and accept those qualities about each other.

Music means more to me than anything. I’m not good at anything else. I’m failing AP Language, Pre-Calculus, and probably Genetics, now, too - I’d rather not find out. I just don’t get it. I used to be advanced in elementary school, which probably doesn’t say much. I was enrolled in the “gifted & talented” program at the middle school - that’s when I stopped doing well. From sixth grade until now, I haven’t gotten even decent grades. I drift from class to class, letting work pile up, until some specious and fleeting phantom of consciousness grips me, and I maybe make up one or two assignments. School is moronic, and mundane. I understand the establishment, but it makes me want to die. What is the point of working through thirteen years of this pretentious absurdity?

I get responses like “if you want to make it in life, you’ll stay in school,” or “to prepare you for real life;” those answers are cut-throat - exactly what a depressed high schooler constantly on the verge of tears doesn’t want to hear. The only reason I put up with all of this now is the promise of being finished with it. Saying this torture is preparation for real life is synonymous with “give up now.” You’re not really going to make it. It surprises me that life has such sinister motivations - but so many people live out their lives despite.

I sometimes smile - I sometimes laugh. Because sometimes, the cloud lifts. Sometimes I can pick up a guitar, and I can make plans with Lynna, or lay down some tracks on a friend’s new album. Its moments like that in which I think I see the point to life - but then the point knocks me back into my own head, and I sink down again.

I hear stupid girls complain about how depressed they are - I hear stories about people with depression, and I try to ignore them. Those girls know nothing of what I’m going through. Feeling sad isn’t depression - and pretending like it is to get attention from other superficial and banal attempts at humanity... Its an aberration, a criminal casuistry unto my time on this earth. They don’t know, of course; they’re too stupid, too insipid, too thoughtless.

Apparently, or so I’ve been told, that’s a harsh and uncouth way of viewing “my fellow man.” The psychologist I talk to, my mother, and some of the puerile wastes of breath that try to communicate with me all tell me I need to learn to deal. “You’re going to have to work around some people in your life that you really don’t want to, but that’s life,” the psychologist told me. I think she misunderstands. She doesn’t realize that I don’t want to deal with anyone, save the few exceptions I mentioned before. That’s life. That’s just another corner of the ledge dropping out from under my feet.

It used to be that I just thought people weren’t as smart as me, but I realized eventually that if that were the case, I’d have better grades than them. I can’t stand stoners, and I don’t want to hear their protests that saying such a thing is uncool; I also can’t stand those more “intelligent” (in an academic frame of reference) of the mob - their over-eager (or subtly veiled) penchant for education sickens me. I’m jealous, of course, but that makes me indignant.

Every time anyone in my life opens their mouth, another fraction of the ledge crumbles.

I can’t actually care about anything. Every day activities are difficult for me. I’m crippled by an alarming apathy and a myriad of probably psychosomatic physical ailments - pains I’m presumably imagining in my back, arms, and stomach. There’s probably a complex in there, something like: these infirmities are created by my affected mind - everyone knows that misery loves company.

I’m unmotivated - to do anything. I love music, but the combination of an impersonal, selfish, calculating instructor and an abasing, pervasive chronic melancholy make me forget my passion. I used to like hiking, and exploring, but that same downheartedness and the winter cold keep me at home, in my room, or on a computer, wasting hours on the monstrosity that is Facebook, or more likely Minecraft.

How about some rhetorical irony, to make this an English paper? How about, I’m addicted to computers, and I’m typing the exposition of my addiction on a computer? How about, I’m not motivated to do anything but write a confession of my apathy? How about “life is killing me”?

No one understands - do you see what I mean now?

"I submit my incentive is romance;
I watched the pole dance of the stars.
We rejoice because the hurting is so painless,
From the distance of passing cars.
This is a wasteland, now."