*** is not love.

People do not love you when they take you for their own pleasure. They will leave you empty and cold, things are cold once they are gone.  That feeling is not love. People who love you do not make you feel like that. People who love you will make you as warm as the most pleasant spring day.  The resounding sound of trumpets will blare from your heart and then shake your entire being. It will rattle your bones through and through, shaking the fiber of your being and overfilling your soul with joy.  People who love you will make you feel like this on a daily basis.

*** is a factor in love but certainly not the entire thing. Do not allow yourself to think that someone truly loves you  when they only learned to love you because they became used to loving your body.
I warn you now but you will forget my words.

You will be caught in the gusts of young love. You will be fooled and then seduced by a coy young devil. This devil, heed him please, will invoke all the feelings that you thought you had long lost.  They will rekindle the fire of your heart. This devil will not use the wholesome wood that is the lumber of love to kindle this fire. This devil will use a poison that creates the worst of fires in your heart. THIS FIRE WILL BURN YOU TO ASHES. WARNING MY DEAR YOU ARE NOT A PHOENIX. YOU WILL NOT SURVIVE THESE BURNS. YOU WILL ONLY BE A SHELL OF FORMER YOURSELF.

Please do not forget what I tell you.  I am not telling you this because I had a premonition. I am speaking from my own experiences.  I am a burn victim. My shell is decrepit rotting shell. It can foster little emotion and even less empathy. I do not wish this fate upon anyone else.  I simply want the best for anyone, because no one should feel how I do currently.

You will be used in the same way I was, because you are ignorant to pain. You do not listen, because you are ignorant to what is right in front of your eyes. My words you see them right now, in fact they are in your head as soon as you read them, yet when I tell you to remember them you will not.  

You can be the thing that someone wants quite easily. It is very easy to feel wanted also. Many people will want you. They will say they want you because of this quality and because that quality, and when they say this you will easily feel accepted because you feel wanted.
But you are not what they need and they are not what you need.
Your heads will ****.  They will grow tired of you and realize that you are actually not needed only wanted.

This will destroy you. Some of these people will up and leave. But some of them will live the lie. They will make you think that they need you and you need them. These are the worst kind. It will not be noticed for a long time. It may take years to manifest its true form. But when it shows its self it will be horrid. It will have a putrid smell that makes tears swell from your eyes. It will show itself in the underlying face that is beneath the mask they have developed to fool you.  You will not be able to handle this. You will be torn into indistinguishable pieces. No one will ever be able to put you back together. Please remember my words so you will not be a victim.

I do not wish what I have felt on my worst enemy.
I do not wish this pain on those who have caused it for me.
I wish it only on myself, I was a fool. So naive, so innocent. I was easily broke.

It is so difficult. I am not a mind reader, I only know what I want not what someone else wants. How am I supposed to know that she wanted me to kiss her. How do I know anything at all.

. . .And indeed there will be time

She has texted me every night for three months.  We've read so many horrible teen romance novels that  I thought I was going insane.  And the worst part of it all was that she made me read them all aloud. ******* aloud. I hated reading aloud. She made me overcome my fear. She told me that I had a great voice and that I should be a radio show host.

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to ****** and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;

I'm sitting in this car half ******, half drunk. I am 15.  I am a freshman. She is 18.  She is a senior. I'm sitting here and everything is spinning but the only thing that is remaining still is her face. Especially her eyes. They have a glow to them that I cannot describe. She is wonderful in this artificial lighting. It is three am. My mother told me to be home at nine thirty so that I would have plenty of sleep for school on Monday.

Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

All those ****** ******* books, they were all so bad. The Twilight Series, that was torture. But I can recall reading one book that was so powerful to me at that fragile time in my life. The Perks of Being a Wall Flower. That book was so powerful too me. I connected so well to that Charlie. I thought at that time that Charlie was me. I was Charlie. And I knew his pain beyond anyone else's understanding of that character. I was him as he was me. I knew what it was like to love a girl who didn't love you.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

Now it is three fifteen in the morning.  I am so tired, so drowsy.  AND THE NERVE OF THIS BEAUTIFUL GIRL.  She prevents me from nodding off.  She places her hand on my thigh and asks me if I've ever been in love, to which I quickly reply, "I do not know what love is, so how could I have been in something that I am unaware of?"  She then laughs in my face, saying that I am funny.  I don't  think I'm funny,  I never did and I never will. But she does. I don't know why, maybe she is trying to ****** me, how am I supposed to know, I am not a mind reader.  

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Once we finished Perks, things were odd.  It was as though I'd just read her my diary.  If I had gone through that book and changed a few names this would have been true.  So I don't know about her, and I probably never will, but as for myself I was beat red with embarrassment. I felt as though she now knew everything, she knew my ins and outs, she knew the inner workings of my heart.  I was so exposed, my emotions were so naked and evident.  And I felt like she knew that I loved her then, but she wasn't Sam therefore she didn't love me, I knew she did not.  We had practically just read my published diary.  It was horrible. I was so scared.  

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

I've got this crazy idea. I know what to do. Girls like it when boys make the first move right? So I know what to do, I will just lean in to kiss the girl! But wait, she is much older than I am. She has had much more experience with guys, right? So if she wanted to kiss me she would just lean in and do it.  I am so unsure, what the hell is going on? Why did she even invite me to hang out with her?  I hate the way I feel when I'm in her presence.  She is so mature and beautiful and I am so . . . not.  I don't get why she even wants to see me.  But oh god, I do want to see her, she is gorgeous! THOSE LIPS! I've got to do it. All I have to do is lean in and touch my lips to hers. It is that simple.  

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

It is 9th period, I used to have off then. I would sit with my three friends and her.  At some point we decided, the girl of my dreams and myself, that I would take her to prom. This was very odd because at that time I was in sophomore and she was a senior. So the planning commenced and we began to hangout more and more. Eventually we made mutual friends with Patrick.  He is now my best friend. But her stole love from me.

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the ****-ends of my days and ways?
               And how should I presume?

I failed.  I didn't kiss her.  The pressure is too much.  I cannot bear it. This pressure to kiss a girl that I've kindred feelings for so long, it is unfathomable. How am I expected to do such a task with such little prior experience? She should have kissed me first, I wish she had. It would have been wonderful. I know it would of been. Now she is tired so she asks if I want to go home. I do not want to go home, not one bit, but  promptly say, "Yeah, it is getting really late." So we're off back to my house. We finally arrive and just as I  get out she says something under her breath. I ask her what it was she said, and she tells me. She tells me and it breaks my little heart. She said, "I wish you would have kissed me, that would have made this night perfect. I am dead.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
               So how should I presume?

Prom was a horrible time for me.  I pretended to be happy.  At that time my happiness was dependant on making others feel good, on making others happy.  It was an unfortunate turn of events for me, in hindsight. By some divine intervention our plans to go to prom were abolished.  Patrick was the new candidate to take her to prom.  But she didn't want to disappoint me so I was still invited to go. Then there were three, the three of us would go to prom as a trio. And that was the most awkward thing ever.  Everyone who encountered me would ask things such as, "Hey JohnMichael, funny seeing you here. You're a sophomore why are you at the senior prom, who are you here with." I would either walk away or laugh at those comments, I didn't feel like explaining my horrid situation to anyone who did not already know.  It finally ended. I was tired from dancing with myself and being alone. Patrick and my love were of course hitting it off who knows where, I kept them out of sight the entire time. I didn't even go home with them, I had my cousin pick me up early, he lived surprisingly close to the hall.  Once I go home I cried and cried and smoked more cigarettes than fathomable.  I was a wreck and everyone knew it, my mom, my dad, my brother, even the dog.  They didn't question anything. I felt like Charlie. He understood me because he was me at the time. I was him.  I knew what it felt like to love someone who didn't love you, as did he. He knew my trials and tribulations.  

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Quotes provided from:
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"  by T.S. Eliot

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast;
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart;
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
   But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
   Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

After you left not much had changed,
But the fact that you would no longer lay by my side was a
Constant reminder that my
Days would no longer be filled with
Eternal joy.
Frankly, I never considered you to be a
Girl with a strong set of morals and I
Have not encountered someone who
Is worse at making
Jokes, but recently your name has the ability to
Kindle a fire in my chest and
Let me say that this is not a proficient fire. It is not a fire that
Makes sufficient heat. It is something that spews wretched flames that
No one should have to witness.
Only I, the forsaken one, should have such
Pungent tones and
Questions that impose such
Radical ideas continually
Shot  at me.
Time to think only has
Unveiled to me that you're a
Vile person. You lack any sense of
Willpower, you are so easily captivated by love. You make me want to use
Xanax to
Yield myself some
ZZZ's.

A 40 year old wine mom sits in the same room as me.
She says that her problem was destroying her life.
She share stories about how in the course of a day she would drink a bottle of wine and how her problem was getting really "out of hand."
I guess she never knew what it was like to drink to stay warm, what it is like to look at a bottle of wine and know that it will do nothing to me, it is as good as water.
She then breaks down saying that she were growing apart from her family, I guess she never ran from home. She had never deserted everything she had once knew and loved in an attempt to chase after yet another high.
But sitting in these rooms has made me realize that pain is universal. That the wine mom may not be going through the same things that I am but she knows pain. Pain is something that we all know. Pain teaches a lesson to all of us. We can all learn from pain. We can think that we have suffered more or less than others but in the end we all have been hurt somehow. All we can do now for each other is try to understand, to be a set of ears.

the most dangerous weapons are depressed minds with sharp objects