Just shut the fuck up.  Or rather
Here's a thought (and this can apply to all who read this):  Whenever you have any conflict, whenever there is a problem at all, be it between you and another person, you and an animal, you and the goddamn stereo, stop yourself, clear your head and say out loud to yourself "Is this my fault?"

because if you whine and whine all the goddamn time about the same shit and it isn't getting fixed, IT PROBABLY IS, YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER.


Haaa... Sorry about that folks just bout tired of these pansies.

1st Thought:  A man should ALWAYS name his boat.  Its bad luck not to.

2nd Thought:  I've been questioning a lot of views that society holds about sex.  Just wondering if anyone else does the same...

3rd Thought:  I don't think I'm fully trusted anymore by ANYone.  Probably my fault for the neglect on all sides.  It appears that I'm enjoying a period of pseudo-isolation.  And though its not on any huge scale, I can feel people drifting away.  Meh.  Not too concerned about it.


Well. I'm done.  Peace
~Easy

If is one of the most powerful words.

This post is very long and was only written for myself, so do not think that you must read this.




I'm writing this because I want to know if I'm really okay.  I believe I am, and I know myself very well, but everyone keeps giving me doubts and stuff, so i figure I better write it down so that I can see for myself whats going on in my head.

PTSD-- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder occurs after the onset of a particular event that causes a great amount of mental and emotional stress to someone.  Many people show the symptoms of PTSD immediately after the event takes place, but for some, it takes much longer.  Some people even go years with PTSD, showing minimal signs of stress until a breakdown occus sometimes much later.

Mentally, I believe I am a very stable person.  I take stress and emotion and feeling as they come.  I don't usually experience the extremes of any emotion very often at all, and when I do, I am able to reconcile with them almost immediately.  I'd like to believe I have a good intellect, and I know myself inside and out.  There are very few unexplored places in the part of my mind that I can control.

Good Friday, 2009, a series EF4 tornado tore through the North Murfreesboro area damaging and area that stretched from the Blackman area to Thompson Lane, through River View, through Battleground and D'Ann, into Victoria Park, and a few houses near Compton Road.  I live in what was once the quaint little neighborhood of Victoria Park.  Here is my story:


It was about 12:15pm.  I had woken up maybe an hour before and had started to play Rome: Total War on my laptop.  The last time a thunderstorm had come, it knocked out our power and my game was lost.  I had heard the news in the den, and heard the warnings about heavy storms coming through.  I was not watching the news. I'd been through countless would-be tornadoes to let this one affect me, but just in case I was caught unawares again, I saved my game.  "Haha!" I thought, "That tornado won't kill my game this time.  I am prepared!!" I imagined myself holding a gleaming silver sword to a black, swirling sky, but I had my pjpants on so it didn't have the epic effect I was hoping for. Nevertheless, I was determined to stick it out til I was stuck in darkness.  It wouldn't be long til that part came true.
No more than twenty minutes after I had saved my game, darkness took the room and I heard the VRRrrrmm... that a house makes when everything shuts down. I felt triumphant if not annoyed that I couldn't play anymore.  My dad had come in about five minutes before this and warned me that we were under a Tornado Warning and that we should start getting ready.  I blew it off, but when the power went out, I figured I might as well be smart rather than one of those poor fools you hear about who laugh at danger and then die.  I came out of my room and told Sean to look out the window of my parent's room to see what the sky looked like while I went to look out the Kitchen window, which (before the storm) provided a perfect westward look at the part of the sky that most storms come from.  The rain was heavy and the wind was loud, but beyond that I heard the siren at MTSU.  The hair on my arms and neck stood up straight as pillars at this point, and I listened closer for the sound I did not want to hear.  But heard it I did: a great roaring, at first from a ways away, but growing much louder faster than I wanted to hear.  It was at this point that I ran from the window and got into the hallway with my dad and my brother and a god damn blanket.  What the hell was a blanket going to do??
My Dad was on the phone with my mom when the roaring was at its loudest.  Burrying his head in the blanket and my lap, he yelled into the phone "Oh God!! Its coming!!" And other vanities.  That was the last thing my mom heard before the phone cut off.  I still wasn't scared at this point.  We had a funnel pass over our house years ago, doing no damage, so I wasn't scared at all.  The air pressure changed all of the sudden, my ears started popping and my eyes felt like they were being squeezed.  I still wasn't scared.  My dad's screaming got worse and Sean had now taken cover, leaving me sitting up against the wall, gazing away to where my cat had scrambled under the couch.  I still wasn't scared.  Then I heard huge bangs and rips all over the house.  I was now scared, but not like an "Oh shit I'ma die!" scared.  More like "If the roof comes off and I'm being sucked up, grab the door frame if its still there.  Damn I should have gotten in the dryer," kind of scared.  And as soon as the thing was heard, it was gone.  I scrambled up despite my dad telling me hysterically to get down.  I looked, our kitchen was still there, no broken windows, but oh shit.  The garage was destroyed.  there were gutters hanging down and branches strewn about.  It looked like one of those paintings where there are ruins of modern society with trees and brush growing in and through them, taking back what man was borrowing.  I stood there for no more than three seconds before rushing to the front door.  What I saw astounded me.
I got the door and walked out into the pouring rain, looking out at a neighborhood that once was.  I took only a moment to wonder how it all had happened before I snapped into hero mode.  "Sean!! Come on! We gotta go help!!" I yelled through the rain.  I nearly ran down the street without shoes on, but I thought better of it and went inside and grabbed some as well as a jacket over my bare chest, shoving it all on in record time.  I was no longer myself.  To say that adrenaline was pumping was an understatement.  I was adrenaline, but I was no longer scared.  I ran out the door, roaring into the rain and wind "IS EVERYONE OKAY!!" I heard screams and yells but it sounded so far away.  I screamed it again and took off running, accidentally meeting up with another neighbor who looked more coolheaded than me.  Seeing him made me calm down and start thinking straight.  We headed over to the worst looking house (really, it was two that had collapsed on each other).  An old neighbor, Alexis was crawling out of the rubble when we got there.  We helped her and tried to calm her down.  Her face was bloody and her foot was hurt.  She was in hysterics, telling us to go back in for her dogs.  There was a gas leak, though and we had to get her out of there.  I saw old Mr. Hilly on the way back, he was hurt, okay, but obviously not in the right state of mind.  I asked him if he was fine and he said the tornado had thrown him into the field behind his house.  I was the first one he saw when he walked back, so I told him to go to a neighbor's house that was mostly untouched. She watched over him while we checked the nearby destroyed houses.  There were very few people home at the time so it was mostly a matter of calming down the people who were freaking out.  They all wanted to go back to their houses but there were gas leaks everywhere so it wasn't safe.  I was soaked by this point, but finally back to my normal state of mind.  I looked down and noticed that I was wearing two different pairs of shoes and no socks.  "I look like a right idiot" I thought with a laugh.  I went in a dressed in some more respectable clothes-- you know, the kind with socks.  We talked to the police and told them about the gas leaks.  This is when we learned that multiple neighborhoods were hit and rescue crews all over were scrambling like crazy. 
I hung around, listening to the more distraught people's stories.  I'd never known many of the people I talked to, but I knew they needed to talk so I spoke with many of them while trying to calm my dad down.  He was quite literally, hysterical.  Sean was looking pretty rough, but he was okay. Standing around, I think the cops were tired of maneuvering around the people.  They sent out a dispatch to tell people to find a standing house to stay in because another tornado was coming.  This was the second and final time that I was scared that day.  I thought with despair about a second one blowing through this way.  "Impossible." I thought.  And so it was.  I reasoned that the cops wanted people to stop wandering around the damage area with rescue crews running through it.  This theory proved true and I stopped worrying.  The day wore on with me comforting a lot of people and resisting my aunts' and uncles' pleas to leave the area ahead of the next storm.  I knew there was no second storm, so there was no reason to leave or take cover.  Where would we take cover this time anyway?

Now.


My dad bragged on me to his brothers and sisters and neighbors and such, acting like I was some hero.  Because I didn't lose my mind in a moment of high stress?  I promise you, I'm not bragging, in fact, I think sometimes its a bad thing.  I am a stone wall to many things.  Katie has said jokingly that I have no emotions before.  I dunno, maybe I need to be a bit more sensitive to my own emotions instead so much to other peoples?? But my way has worked out so far I think.  I mean, I helped two people without losing my head after a truly terrifying event.

But I keep thinking

Is it gonna hit me sometime? Am I gonna lose my mind soon? And yet, I really doubt it.  My personality has not changed at all recently.  I don't get more stressed than usual (not that I get stressed easily at all), school hasn't changed at all.  I still hang out with my friends as if nothing happened. But it's not like I've put it out of my mind.  I've told this story like 50 times.  It doesn't get more depressing, more epic, more crazy.  I honestly have seen no change in my personality or my subconscious since the event.  I think I really am okay.
My aunt came over today and told me that she's been seeing a psychologist about the whole thing.  (She lived in the neighborhood behind mine)  She said that her counselour told her that she wished EVERYone came in at least once to talk because a lot of people who went through it thought they were okay and then they get in there and just lose it.  I don't believe that I am one of those people... I have confidence in my own stability.  I think I could go through another one right now and be less scared than I was before because I would know what to do and how to deal with it.  Preparation is key.  I think I'm prepared for many things.  Not everything of course, but enough that I can live peacefully when all the world is in chaos.
I'm like a damn cockroach. Peace
~Easy

Its all balancing out.







I hate balance.  I wish I could just have one REALLY good day with no consequences for it and no bad days to balance it out.  Just one to remember.

So... Birthday's coming up.  March 29.  I'll be 20, very odd, awkward age.  You cant drink legally but you feel like you should be able to.  People are planning something behind my back.  There are whispers and questions and distracted faces.  I hope its a good birthday. I've had some shitty ones haha.

Weather is warming up again.  Maybe this will inspire a good mood.  Not that I'm feeling hateful or grumpy or anything.  Just nothing has really gone to greatly recently.  Ah well.  We'll see how the week plays out.

Peace
~Elliot

Please?!  Just a pulse?  Just a goddamn pulse. 

Give me passion! 
Give me willingness to improve!

If you cannot improve, then die.  Please.
______________________


On another note.  Something is pulling at me lately... I have an idea of what it is, but I dont know why.  The other day I was sitting in health class drawing between notes (something I do when the material is so easy I dont have to listen).  I drew three small, simple pictures while listening to Festival by Sigur Ros.  I was feeling... something... I can't explain it.  Something very sad.  All three of my little pictures were similar in nature.  One was a person flying through some undefined space, no color, no detail except for simple long sleeve shirt and basics of a body. The Second was a person doing a very graceful back flip, but in mid-air, they were suspended, as if floating at the peak of the jump.  The third was a dragon who's wings had been nailed to the ground, his head and neck were stretching into the air giving a final bellow to the sky, mourning the earth's loss of such a treasured creature.

I stopped taking notes for a moment and put the pictures together and came up with a word to describe what I wanted at that moment.

Freedom.

I suppose I feel trapped at the moment by so many obligations.  Behind on my car payments, Looking fruitlessly for a job, Repairing mine and others' relationships, worrying about things I wish I didn't have to worry about.  I hate obligations with every fiber of my being.  Those things that you MUST do during a given timeline.  They threaten to steal my freedom, my time.  But how do you escape it?  By doing them?  What if you can't?  Shit.

Freedom.  Free-dom.  Free-dame.  Free-dam. 
A free man is what I am not.  Peace

~Easy