“Dear Diary: The Story”

“So I wish I could tell you my life’s been nothing more than merely your average walk down a path, but I’d be lying. That would be a vast understatement. A major mouth catastrophy that quite frankly, I don’t want to be responsible for. Luckily, I kept a diary-something my father had given me to pass the time while he was away on long trips-I faithfully noted every encounter from the barely audible to the amazing. So that leaves me right her…Right where I awkwardly, didn’t want to be left.
I’ll start from the beginning…”

01. Boy Moves To A New Town With Optimistic Outlook

After that, I felt like I could take on the world…Going through the certain stress of moving to a new town. New friends. New school…should have been a sureshot tragedy…But somehow I came out on top…still not sure how…Fighting the good fight of fitting in, has almost always seemed like a losing battle.

02. The Unavoidable Battle Of Feeling On The Outside

I seem to have won the battle, at least for now, and what comes next, I could have never prepared for…She was extra-terrestrial, there was no question. I’m not sure I knew, until that point, that someone could make such a lasting impression, in such a split second. I was stunned, stuck in the tractor beam of a flying saucer…speechless.

03. Boy Meets Girl (And Vice Versa)

In the days to follow, I became friends with E.T., she was like no one I had ever met…filled with awe of the worlds [world’s] many secrets, and yet still grounded, and relatable. She asked questions, but also had the strength to listen to the answers, and always seemed to know when to say the right thing. She had a purpose. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but I would find it…because I was drawn to it. Her purpose seemed to glow around her, like she was plugged in…it was contagious It made me question my own motives…or did I even know what that meant? Did I even have a purpose? Or was I sent here to blend in? Time would tell. E.T. encouraged me to say something, to have a voice, to live my life for a reason. Until now, the only reasoning my days have seen, was to play my guitar for hours on end, until felt like my uncertainty was gone. It helped me see myself…It helped me keep my mind off of my parents, and their inability to see eye to eye. Maybe I felt like if I wrote the right song, they would see it…whatever it was they were both looking for…but not finding.

04. Sometimes You Can Forget Who You Are

Knowing who you are, at a high-school level, was like a black art…it was frowned upon, and the thought of achieving it, was by most authorities [authorities’] standards, less likely to happen that [than] a meteor shower hitting our high-school. But I knew…who I was…at least I thought I did…but maybe it was fondness of the meteor shower theory that was catchy…or perhaps it was E.T’s glow rubbing off on me…not sure. I remember walking out the front doors of the school (from what the teachers liked to call after school detention-not sure what you call it when you’re innocent) and almost tripping over a homeless man sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. I’d never seen him before, he was happy, yet homeless, it was a strange combination. I stopped for a minute to search my pockets for change, while he blurted out bits and pieces of the national anthem in the best Tom Waits impersonation I’ve heard. He held a sig teat read “Money. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.” I thought that took a lot of guts to hold a sign like that. So I sat with him and asked him what he would do if he had all the money in the world…I kept a mental note of all the things he said, and later that night wrote them in my diary. It’s funny, how clearly you can see the solution to someone else’s problems, when most of the time, we spend dodging the fact that we have our own. Things are always blurry from inside the bubble.

05. Man Watcha Doin?

E.T. took me to a meeting at her church today, that led to some interesting soul searching…not something I saw coming. A few things the man said resonated with me, like going to class when you’re half asleep, and only waking up for key moments. But I didn’t want to get side tracked, I was still trying to answer those hard questions…this new information out of left field…but what if he was right? What if God really did care…about me and my family, and wanted things to be right again? I think I had wrote off the possibility of that…until now. This was new information, which meant the potential of new results. It was both exciting and scary at the same time, to consider something outside the box of my families safe zone…something outside my guidelines. I wanted to dig deeper…

06. The Voyage Of Beliefs
My new found information felt like I had found the golden ticket in a Willy Wonka Bar. It was refreshing I still didn’t claim to understand, but I recognized that hope and faith were two things that helped a person cope…it gave them a window to look out a room with a view. I believed in God, but my idea of Him had seemed like He was way too busy to see or hear the things going on in my small life. Maybe I was wrong.
What came next, was a whole world of unexpected. I saw her world come crashing down that day…Like the meteor shower that was meant for our high school. E.T.’s father had killed himself. Right there in their own home, on the same couch they watched tv on. I watched from across the street through my bedroom window, feeling so helpless. My best friend’s dad just killed himself, and I wasn’t there…to save her…to protect her…maybe she wouldn’t want me there…maybe if I had have been there instead of watching old house re-runs, it might not have happened. Why? How could this happen to such a great person, such a great family? He always seemed so happy…and E.T. was the best person I knew…she had purpose. She didn’t deserve this. I wanted so badly to be there with her…to somehow be the light in her dark corner for once…and to help her say goodbye.

07. Her Father’s Song

After that E.T. seemed like a different person. Understandably so, after going through such a life tragedy. But something else was missing. Could it be, that the very person ho sparked my interest in finding my purpose, had lost theirs? That the faith and hope E.T. had told me about, had abandoned her in her time of need? If that was the case, if these things were nothing more than a nice jacket people wear to cover their filthy rags beneath, than I wanted nothing to do with them. I was happy before in my old jeans and t-shirt, and I wasn’t going to fall into the trap for the naive. For a minute, I was embarrassed I ad even embraced it, but then…I felt sick, this strange, warm feeling came over me, like a heated blanket my mother would put over me when I was sick…not a glowing white robe pointing the way…but a warm, simple, peace..letting me know…I was O.K. Just like that. My doubts and fears, and the walls I had built up to protect myself…were gone. Like that battles I had learned about in history, except it was as through my battle had been fought for me…and we won.

08. Take Me As I Am

I felt for the first time that God…was real, and He had answered me. Not with a lightning bolt from heaven, and not from on top of a flaming white horse, but with a soft, quiet peace, that only I could feel. I had this sudden realization, that I wasn’t perfect…and that was O.K. That I could still have purpose, and feel loved, and not have to live my life feeling “on the outside.” I pulled out the Bible my grandmother had given me was I was 10 years old for the first time, and it said that He will always be with me. That meant that through the windy storms of change in my life, and the quiet times between… I wasn’t alone. UI was so excited, I wanted to call E.T. and share with her my new found glory, but she wasn’t home…and she didn’t answer my calls. This was so unlike her, I had to find out for myself if she was alright…
Her mother answered the door, and with tears in her eyes, told me that her and E.T. would be moving away…far away, and that she had gone on ahead with her cousin to prepare things. Was this is it? No goodbye, no explanation or plans to write? No, encouraging words? As crushed as I felt, I knew that my new decisions were ones I had to make on my own, and that in some painful way, maybe not having E.T. there to hold me up, was a good thing. I sat down in my room that night, and wrote a letter to God, I hadn’t yet realized that I could talk to him like I’m talking to you, so I thought this might be the most direct way of communicating. I wrote the letter…and mailed it out…to no fixed addressee..hoping He would get it.

09. Dear God

It was official I had written my letter, and got several responses over the next few months, in different unexpected ways…mostly ways that involved me having to listen. Most importantly, I knew I wasn’t alone…and for the first time in my life I had a purpose…not all the answers, but purpose. And that was enough for me…I had a feeling there would be a lot more in store, and I was right. In the last few months of school, I got accepted into a college I hoped I would get into, and it turns out E.T. had the same idea. She got into the same school, and although we hadn’t been in touch all summer, it was like we had never left. She talked about her new relations and I talked about mine…and we both set off down the paths before us…only this time, with something in common…a purpose. Things weren’t always perfect, in fact, far from it, and I stopped the letters, and graduated into talking to God like I would a friend, or a father. Who knows what’s around the next corner? I kind of like it that…guess that’s where faith comes in.

10. The Shindig (Off To College)

Yours Truly,
Dear Diary.