My Senior Year Part 3 (Thankful for Giving)

     In the midst of everything with my friend whom had a tumor. That unfortunately wasn't the end of the suffering, not only for my friends, but also me. These two events had a huge impact on me, Helping my first friend through hard times, it made it even harder on me when I got the news I did, setting at the table for the family get together, forty minutes away.

     This story I assume will be fairly short, but it will make it easier hopefully to follow when I have the full story in sections, that way I can refer to different friends in a post to keep their names out of it. This story is very sketchy me, I remember most of what happened afterwards more than I do before hand.

     My oldest brother; step brother came down for Thanksgiving, it had been a while since he was able to make it to one of our family gatherings, so I was glad he was able to make it that year. He rode up with us, being ornery as usual, making the dull ride a but more enjoyable, though I was listening to music anyways. I know him enough to know if he is trying to be funny or not.

     We get into the building our dinner is hosted at by relatives, if you saw my uncle you would understand where my oldest brother got the ornery eye from. Ritually, my family brought in the food we prepaid for the dinner, Greeted what few family members were there at the time, helped with the finishing touches, and welcomed member pulling in. Being nice we waited for a few last minute arrivals and said our grace, then everyone waited for the first person to start collecting their plate.

     One I get mine, with the small amount of food I consume, I set at the tables with my family, a little nervous to eat. I don't like eating in public, so I avoid it when I can, but this wasn't an occasion I could avoid. I get a text, at first I just kind of ignored it, because I was trying to be polite and wait until I finished my food at least. Hoping to make it through the whole "socializing", I didn't. I can't remember if I got another text or if worry crept upon me. Being Thanksgiving, I passed the text off as a "Happy Thanksgiving" from my friends as I had just wished it to those among my contact list.

     I figure it would be best to check my phone, I do believe I had just finished eating, and it read along the lines something like "my dad past" or "didn't make it". By then I just stared at my phone, I spaced out. Everything just felt like a dream, I kept reading the text to makes sure I was reading it right. My mind was playing tricks on me, I normally miss read, switch a word for another, or misinterpret what I read. This wasn't the case, I showed it to my mom getting a bit emotional.  I didn't know what to think.

     How could a day that's suppose to bring people together, and show their thankfulness for what they have, bring such devastation. Don't take anything for granite, you don't hear that enough these days. Now I didn't know this friends father all to well, we recently became friends and I had seen once or twice, and heard him through my headphones when gaming with this friend.

     I didn't even get a chance to get desert, my parents gathered my siblings and off we went. Trying to hold my tears back, I text the friend I shared with the friend from my last story My Senior Year Part 2. I told him what happened and asked him to pray, at the time he was Christian, and fairly kind. He ended up reply Okay, so I knew he didn't care what had happened. I'm sure a lot of you would think he did, but he didn't, I know him well enough to know when he cares of something.

     And so is the beginning of my next part to this story. The friend of who "was" a christian was actually one of my best friends. He had gotten my into anime more than I once was, and started me on a path I really enjoyed and plan to explore again. Anime brought more than just something to do for me, it helped me discover my creative side. I was creative to begin with, but I only wanted to become more creative, I really enjoyed the style of drawing choose for Anime. 

My Senior Year Part 2 (Change of Mind)

     A person who I never thought would be my friend. The very person who tormented me more than anyone else in my grade. The one who tried to make things right, in piano class which we shared. In which I still didn't trust him. It wasn't so much the fact I held a grudge, as he had done stuff like this before. He would get on my good side than just use me to get gold on an online game we played, I would say together but he rarely grouped up with me for anything... unless he wanted gold.

     I remember one year when my best friend kept asking me who I liked that year. He would list off a few names, which at the time I truthfully didn't like anyone. Well he kept asking me with the same list of people, it was a narrow list, so eventually I finally gave, I was tired of him asking me every to near everyday. Well I should have known it wouldn't stop there. I don't remember questions he asked, but questions just kept coming. Some how eventually word got out to this kid who always tormented me. He would be nice one second only to throw it back in my face one way or another.

     Of course he couldn't just leave it at I "liked" someone. I never really got the chance to tell anyone my true feelings for this girl. Yeah she was winsome don't get me wrong, but I didn't like her enough to be in a relationship with her. I didn't and truthfully still don't care all that much for a relationship. I find beauty in everything, it's hard to explain the way I am about this stuff so I'm not going to get into it, maybe save it for another post; when I know what I mean. Word ended up getting around to this girl, which she was snoody about the whole ordeal. Of course though it was't just one classmate picking on me about this, it was two. One Of course I got along with better, but that's mostly because we were I suppose off and on again friends.

     Never, not once did I think the person I stood by through hard times, would become friends. It was a thought out of mind for me. Things changed though as he changed. Through out the year we had piano class together, I think it was the year before this incident, him and I did start to get alone a bit better. Now I have to rephrase that sentence a little because I can't speak for him, I don't know if he wanted to be my friend or not, and I don't know how he felt about me throughout piano. The point here though, is that I started to change the way I felt about him, he wasn't so much the bad guy anymore as it was just trying to fit in with the right people. I say that because him and I shared a friend at the time, so we were around each other a bit more.

     Still I skeptical of this friendship just because the way he treated me before, I knew what he was like. I'm not the time of person to hold a grudge, so becoming friends or letting my guard down was just second nature at that time. I love helping and being friendly to people, though I did ease my way into trusting him, to the fullest someone could trust another that's used them more than once.

     Well as he kept missing school, and when he was at school, he would always be down in the nurses office. I remember one day; at lunch I believe it was, he looked like he was in a lot of pain. He had his head laying on the table and arms covering his eyes. I hadn't seen anyone in as much pain as he was in that day.  At this point I didn't know a whole lot of what was going on, though the friend we shared knew a bit more than me, but he kept it to himself.  Things... they only got worse from that point.

     I remember sometime in the fall, it was just getting cold outside, cold enough to need a coat but warm enough you didn't. I text my mom earlier that day in despair. The friend we shared was upset, to the point he went to the bathroom to punch a wall I believe, tears rolled down his cheeks. I've never even seen this friend upset or mad now that I think of it. He told us before hand that our friend had a tumor. That's all I knew from that point, I didn't know if it was cancerous or not. I text my mom to let her know what was happening. It was one of those days where I wanted to go home but at the same time needed to keep my mind else where.

    Later that day when I got home from school, I don't remember how it all happened, but we ended up heading down the road a few miles to check up on his family to hear what was actually happening. I went inside to see him, and me as quite as I am didn't talk much to him, which I felt bad because his dad told me that he wasn't as talk active as he use to be due to everything that was happening, I don't remember all of what was happening so I can't say for sure if he was on medication at the time or anything like that.

     My mom and his were setting outside talking about the whole thing, my mom wanted to help out you know, and early that day- actually I remember a bit of why we went over in the first place, I wanted help, and I wanted to see how bad the situation was because it was unclear to me rather or not it was cancerous, either way I wanted to help. I was in a bit better of a mood when I got to see that he was doing decent. We were there were a while, so my mom and his could talk.

     We were heading home and I found out it was the unfortunate C. I was devastated, not to mention the fact if I am correct, it was a rare form of cancer. I stuck beside him from the beginning til the end. My mom and I tried the best we could to help support them for both emotional and financial cares. If wasn't a whole lot, but we set out donation cans, with their permission of course, and tried out very best to be there for their family. We got clearance from the school to sell t-shirt to help raise money. The friend we shared, his best friend wasn't going to help raise money for him. It was a task for him to spend a little bit for a good cause, that hurt me more than anything. Who dumps their best friend like that?

     This is where I stop for tonight, but through all that Thanksgiving came with little thanks to give for why someone was taken, but plenty of  thanks for what's been received, for another one of my friends hit a rough patch. 

A Big Thanks!

     I know I said I would be doing a post over my Pokemon collection, but it turns out I bit off more than I could chew. I have been sorting all my cards out by sets, there are 68 sets, so sorting through roughly seven thousand, eight thousand cards, that alone took me around ten hours to separate. A few hours ago I recently was able to sort the sets out by when they came out, that didn't take but ten to fifteen minutes, but I started with the first set. I looked and set aside any duplicates, than sorted the cards out by the order they go in for the set. So far each set has taken me about thirty minutes to sort and put into binders. Anyways, I will go more into this whenever I get it done...

      With this blog being started about two weeks ago, I had a blog similar to this one a few years ago. It was something I did while I was going through everything my senior year, though I didn't really mention anything that was going on. All the content dealt mostly with writing exercises, and a few hundred word short stories I wrote to keep me busy, and hope to help with my book "Akio"

      It was last year or maybe the year before, school years are a little confusing because that was how I use to base what happened during that year. That blog started running really slow for some reason, at first, being a new blogger, I though it had something to do with how many posts I had. I think it was around three hundred, so I deleted a lot of them. The blog was still sluggish, so overall I gave up on it, Moved my short stories to Lorekeepers Inn. I never really shared any of my posts on facebook either, I was still new and didn't quite like other people reading what I wrote. At least people I knew.

     Still it is hard for me to share this kind of stuff on facebook, though ironically facebook seems to be a good source of traffic. People may just be a bit noisy or they could actually care about whats going on, and find some of this stuff quite entertaining, or even helpful. I know I haven't really gone over a whole lot of helpful stuff, but I always felt better knowing that I wasn't alone.

     Rounding the one thousand view mark I believe I will hit it either this Sunday or Monday, which is a big deal! I couldn't have done it with out my loyal readers. They put up with my poorly conducted sentence structure, and still come bad for more! I want to thank each and everyone of you. I know who a few of the readers are, but the mystery of the others is very suspenseful. I often hit the refresh button a few times, when I see a view from facebook I check to see who is on, and try to guess who may be reading my posts. Anyways again thank you everyone for the support, it really helps!