Don’t Be My World

by Chuck Bantam

Sometimes you’re up, sailing around with your friends in bliss. The wind pushes you along and all of the forces of nature seem to be on your side. Behind you are the rough spots that were hard to make it through, but your friends were there to force you so things were actually favorable. Then the weather turns and the bottom drops out. Storms rain down blood from the sky and huge blasts of lightning tear your footing out from under you. Your world changes.

I remember a time when the trees provided my playground, my friends all rode bicycles and a fruitless joke would be our fuel for the day. We didn’t know what bills were and a relationship was something that grown-ups had. We had girlfriends but they were the same as our boyfriends and we all played the same games. Everything was free back then because our parents had paid for it. Everyone was around all of the time. That was our world then and we thought it would be that way forever.

I didn’t see the new things coming. It was as if they were always there. Music was somehow important enough to determine what friends I was going to be around the most. The amount of money that kids were brought up with determined this too. Girls started to look different to us. We started competing for their attention. We learned how to curse, sneak out at night, and do things we weren’t suppose to do, but worst of all we learned how to hate. Jealousy drove us insane.

All of this concluded who we were going to be during the next few years of a maddening prison called High School. In this world we had to make decisions. What were we going to do when we graduated? What type of career? What sports were we going to play? Who did we want to go out with? How were we going to make money at that point in time? Do I really love this girl or am I too young to understand just what that is? Should I do this drug everyone is doing? Is it all right to drink and drive? What college do I want to go to? Do I have enough money? Should I try for a scholarship? Should I break this asshole’s face? Should I kill myself? Why? I was always tortured by that miserable fuck of a question “Why?”. My world had changed again.

Now who gives a shit why? Nothing makes sense. Everything is surreal. My blood-covered ship has disolved into the ocean. There are no reasons why. Friends are gone. Loved ones die. Grim diseases plague our world now. Things get worse to get better and then get worse again. The people we trust betray us. Our enemies become our friends. Nature is beautiful even when it devastates. I wish I never learned that there are things worse than death. I wish you weren’t my world right now.