So tumblr, I’ve been neglecting you, but recently there’s been a lot going on. Well I finished up my semester back home at LLCC and have re-enrolled back at SIUE for the fall semester. I’ve also recently moved into a house down in Glen Carbon,IL with a few people (Brandon, Bree, Joe, and soon to be Adam). We’re getting along ok I guess. What I’m writing about though has nothing to do with my roommates or school, but it does have to do with a few things. Suicide, friends, and morals. Those are the three main things I want to touch on with this blog. As far back as I can remember I’ve always been three steps ahead of the curb as far as maturity goes for my age…while I come off as offensive and immature to a lot of people, it’s only for comedic relief. Anyone that has known me for a long period of time, knows a lot of the events in my life that forced me to have to grow up really fast, too fast in my opinion. In this time it seems like my adolescence was rushed and in a sense not really there at all. I mean I had my childhood, my parents (mainly my mom) tried to make sure we had more than we wanted and especially more than we needed…maybe she knew she wasn’t going to be alive that much longer, so she tried to do what she could for us in her short time here, no one knows what went through her mind at the time. Once she died in 8th grade it feels like my life has been going so fast I can’t slow it down. Even though my life’s gone by super fast, I’ve taken the times to pause and think about my moral conundrum, and what I stand for and what I want to stand for and I know I’ve made the right decisions. The problem(s) I have do not come from my beliefs, morals, and ethics, but come from this country’s lack of morals. People all the time that know a little bit of history of the straight edge culture like to bring up Elgin James and the whole west coast straight edge gang that used to beat up people that would smoke and drink. First of all that was a very small group of people. Second of all, most of the people they beat up were the douche bags that blew smoke in their faces and poured beer on them on purpose…in which case those people had it coming to them. What I want to know is when a person that’s in the minority stands up for what he believes in, it’s considered gang like behavior…yet when it’s part of what the majority believes in, that it’s ok and deemed acceptable instead of cult like behavior? In my eyes and in my mind I see all the people that give into peer pressure and do what everyone else is doing without thinking twice, as zombies. I see them as cowards that do not have a brain and are basically lifeless. If your life is so worthless that you have to become dependent on a substance, does that make you a person at all? In my opinion, it doesn’t. Some days I cry myself to sleep at night, hoping that I’ll wake up in a brand new world, where everyone is their own person, everyone thought for themselves 100% of the time, but then I woke up and the world kept going into the ground. With these moral ethics that I bring into question, comes the actions and behaviors of many of my friends. I love my main core of friends  to pieces (Jones, Mees, Pittman, Zac, etc) but all of them know that I don’t condone a lot of their actions…Pittman has self control and common sense and only does it all in moderation and same with Big Zac to an extent, but the other two have had their problems in the past, but both have confronted me recently and have been trying to change their behaviors and better their lives. I just want to know how I’ve always been drawn in to hang out with people who’s beliefs all far different than mine? That’s a question I can’t really answer…I do know that back in late middle school/early High School that hanging out with Brindan/Smitty/Steven woke me up to the things I’d confront later on in life, as my 3 best friends at the time I saw what all of their actions did to them and all the negative repercussions that were in store and while drugs never appealed to me then, after seeing the shit that went down, I made sure I’d never do them and end up like that. Now to talk about suicide. MC Lars announced yesterday that he wanted people to e-mail him stories/photos of loved ones that had committed suicide, so I sent him the story about Brindan’s overdose, etc and Lars emailed me back and asked if I could fill out a form to get Brindan’s photo/story into the next MC Lars music video which is for his song titled “Twenty-Three” which is about Lars’ roommate at Stanford, Pat, who went overseas to try and escape all the bad that he saw in the world, but he became really depressed over there too, and ended up committing suicide. However, I have no contact information for either Brindan’s mom or grandma (the only 2 family members of his who I’ve met). Suicide just hits too close to home, because I’ve contemplated it more than enough times, as  has almost everyone I know, including a few people that actually did commit suicide. So I was hoping that by putting Brindan’s story in the video it would help people open their eyes to one of the biggest problems facing young people today. Well I know that I’m just rambling on and on, but I feel as if I need something all the time, I’m constantly searching to find out what that is and I doubt that I’ll ever find it. In a world where people substitute dreams for sedatives and ambition with mary jane and hopes with a red cup…I choose not to medicate life…because when you medicate life you aren’t actually living you’re just numbing the pain and hoping to get through life and not actually live it. I hope all of this gives you new perspectives into the way I think. If you have any questions do not hesitate to ask me. I’m always looking for any positive people to talk to.