Day Forty-seven - Sweet tears

Getting back on track, and moving on to my final year in school - the ninth grade, of which there were three different attempts - all of the unsucessfull at that, and all to be discussed in the near future. So, guess what? New school, new people, same old story. I had to begin from srcatch again. And if in a way this was probably the best school I'd attended so far, it was also probably the one I disliked the most. This would have been circa 1993, and by then I was full on hardcore on my metal phase. I only wore metal related t-shirts, and my wardrobe had hoodies as well shorts, and when, on the first day, my sorry ass first set foot in the school sporting a Napalm Death t-shirt and cammo shorts, I was soon the kid everyone looked at sideways. Even though there was an - admittedly - very small contingent of headbangers there, I didn't really get along with them, and nor did I try to actually buddy up with any of that lot. They were also my seniors, and as I knew that my time in that school would be short lived, I had no plans on getting to know anyone there. Understand that if until then I'd trudged along, albeit mostly unwillingly, doing just enough to pass the year, when I got to the ninth grade, somehow I already knew that that would be my last year in school. Probably not forever, but at least for the foreseeable future. See, life at home at gotten incredibly hard. The year before, in '92, my brother got arrested for breaking and entering - somewhere along the way he'd gotten addicted to drugs, and he ended up serving over three years in jail. And the establishment he got sent to was quite far from where we lived, so we could only visit him in the weekend. My mother and grandmother would spend most of the week cooking food to give him so he could eat something decent - which meant that for the rest of us, my mother, my grandmother, myself and my sister, food became scarce. It's not like we were going hungry, but most days there just wasn't enough food, and I knew deep down that sooner rather than later I'd be forced to start working, if I didn't want things to get any worse. I'll tell you all about it pretty soon.

So when I started that school year, I'd sort of given up already. I mean, I didn't even try - it's as if for most of the classes I attended I was there in spirit only, my mind already elsewhere. That might help account for how long that school year seemed to stretch on - more than any other year in the past, this one felt truly neverending, and not for the best reasons. But I didn't count on that year actually surprising me in some ways, and though I went into it not really wanting to make any connection with anyone, I ended up making some that would last to this very day.