Bang. Cold and quick.


The first thing I’m going to disclose about this journal is that it wasn’t written of my own accord. Not that I couldn’t write a stupid open yourself up to the world journal if I wanted, but that’s just it I wouldn’t want to. So any grievances you have with the way I write this can be taken up directly with my therapist and my mother.

Now that that’s settled I can move on. The truth is I don’t really want to be here. In this office, in this god forsaken town, and among this population to be more specific. But who would? War, death, destruction, sadness, betrayal, lies, deceit. They fill in the empty space in our minds and believe me there is more than enough of it in the average person.

With that said, I guess there has to be something of worth on this planet. Have I found any of it? Do I even know what I’m looking for? No, but I’ll know it when I see it. My mom wants me to deal with my grief. God sometimes I think she’s taking her cues directly from Good Mother Magazine. I mean really, she must sit around while I’m in school and turn on Oprah and The View and map out how she is going to deal with me. Even more so since the whole Liz thing. I’m now the only person she has to mandate.

This year’s been hard for all of us but you don’t see me going all Stepford son on her. Even my Dad took Liz’s accident (I guess that’s what we’re supposed to call it now) hard and he’s a former Army Cadet. I’d never even seen him cry before last February. My family’s never been one for sharing our feelings and maybe that’s why Liz got into so much trouble a while back.

I don’t know exactly what happened, Liz was always the free bird of our family. She was colorful. She drew outside the lines and lived every moment like there was no tomorrow. I never heard of a moment with her that wasn’t spontaneous and magical. Even after what happened people would gather around and tell stories about her. You could see the way their eyes would light up when they talked about her. Everyone loved Liz. I had to go around and remind them what happened before they would snap out of it and remember that maybe she wasn’t always happy.

They say that’s the way most people like Liz are. The happy, outgoing exterior and the dark, guarded underneath. But I think everyone is like that. You know what they say about people who live in glass houses. Well, I think everyone sits around living their lives everyday deciding when they can throw a stone. It’s all in the timing. If they throw it at the wrong time, it’s all out war.

Anyway, my brother Chris couldn’t do it anymore. After Liz, he took off. He’s traveling through Europe right now, sleeping on park benches and making friends in the way that only Chris can. But don’t worry he’ll come back in a couple of months and tell us all about it until he leaves again. That’s Chris.

We were some happy family. You could have put our picture in an Abercrombie ad that’s how put together we were. One day I just woke up and we weren’t anymore, sometime around February.