(warning to anyone who reads this.  The following document is true, every word of it.  So if you
hate or can't stand hearing about how low the lows are of my life, you may as well just turn back
now and continue with your life as normal.  Chris)

The date- 9/23/1999
Five months since my love's affirmation
And on any aniversary of that day, something bad always happens...

Turn around and what do I see, sparks, as usual.  Waking up at 5:25AM is never a pleasure, but
it is a burden I choose to bear.  I am in school, the gateway to my future.  I leave the alarm
on because it is play the album Who's Next (you know, the one the Who made with four of them
standing around some rock) from the beginning.  The very first thing I notice is the chill of the
morning, a woeful 41 degrees outside.  A warm shower in the morning and I am awake enough to get
by.  I'm too lazy this morning to fix breakfast, so I eat the last pop-tarts I will ever have for
a good long time.  I then studied for a theatre test that I have today, the first and one of the
few of the year.  Today was looking to be a pretty boring A day, but anything would be better
than yesterday when I wallowed in the pits of my self-constrainment.  I catch the bus and like
a blur I am at school, walking slowly to see if I made the cut for the play with horrible gas
pains in my belly.  I should've taken that for a warning, and I was feeling sick as well.

I went to see if I made a part in the play Noises Off.  And you know the obvious answer to this
question, of course I didn't.  I was a little dissapointed, but then again there were only 7
parts so its understandable that I didn't get a part.  I didn't think I did that well either, I
was a bit on the melodramatic side.  I didn't pay much attention to who else got any other parts.

American Studies, my first class and two of my three AP classes all smashed into one.  AP
History and AP English 11.  Firstly, I went to get my picture taken for the yearbook, which most
likely won't look too wonderful, as usual.  I get back and we discuss a few things.  Truely a
very ho-hum sort of American Studies class, but thats a good thing for that early in the
morning.

Third period was where the problems began.  I took the test, it was fairly easy, even for a 130-
some question test.  Afterwards we played a fun game that confused the hell out of someone who
has been bugging me for a long time any way.  It was fun, but there was one thing that I am
noticing more and more.  To understand this, I will explain a small amount of background, but I
will keep names other than my own out of this for her sake and for mine.  I speak of a girl who
has been a good friend of mine since about this time last year.  We used to talk a lot about many
things, and there was even a time when she liked me and I liked her.  But of course (in perfect
Chris fashion might I add) I didn't take advantage of the moment.  Well, those feeling began to
arise again, and I had a friend of mine tell her (which if I could do it again I wouldn't let my
friend say anything).  Well, on recieving this bit of information, my good friend of around a
year got a little riled up, she didn't like me back which wasn't surprising at all.  Now she is
really nervous to be around me, and we can hardly...barely in fact as I see it, talk at all now.
I guess it was something she REALLY didn't want to hear.  What bugs me is the fear that I may
have just lost a very good friend (or at least being very good friends with her) just because she
is so nervous to be around me.  Maybe I push too hard, maybe I pushed too hard, maybe I was just
way too much for her in the first place...then again, these things could all be flase (I for one
hope they are).  I really do wish I could talk to her right now because I need to talk to
someone and she is one of the few people I know that would actually understand where I'm coming
from, what I'm talking about, and not interlude with all sorts of problems of her own.  It
reminds me of all the problems I'm having being able to meet and talk to new people, maybe I'm
just too much for them, or even worse, what if I'm looking in all the wrong places.

Next came lunch, which was where things got worse.  To put it shortly, I am getting sick of a few
things at lunch.  A, the conversations my friends there have are all the same all the time, or
they are completly IB related, which means that I can't really include anything.  So what did
this sickness cause me to do?  Nothing against anyone there of course, but I left to sit at a
different place at lunch indefinantly because I need some time alone to at least think, even
though I've gotten a slight indication from a few people that they don't want me there anyhow.
I ate most of my lunch alone beside a big tree in the corner of the quad where I used to eat and
have some of the best times I had in school last year.  Last year...sigh.  I'll discuss that
a little later.

Continuing to fifth period.  This is where it finally hits me that my day is getting real bad
really quickly.  Tech theatre, usually a fun class where I get to work with power tools and such.
Today though, the person I worked with was really pissy at me.  Just my luck that I got to be the
victem of her period (or at least I'll just assume that and thus make an ASS out of myself).  An
hour and a half of that is very much hard to bear, and I indeed didn't bear it well.  We didn't
get finished with what we were supposed to and in the end I left with a very helpless and
disgracful feeling in my mind.

My seventh and final period was Gym, and as always, Gym outright sucks.  We were playing 
Softball, and the teacher made me bat.  I embarassed myself completly by striking out after
hitting about 20 foul balls.  People laughed at me but I didn't let it get to me because I know
I suck at Baseball and Softball in general anyhow.  I actually got over a lot of the grief I was
feeling with a few good laughs from some other people talking.  Then, when I got back in, my day
got worse...again.  I go back into the gym to find that someone rummaged through my stuff (which
dumbass me left sitting out).  I lost nothing except for $9.  But I did almost lose my graphing
calculator, which someone foudn under the bleachers and was about to keep for himself.
Fortunantly, he was kind enough to give it back to me when I told him it was mine.  A major bullet
dodged because there would have been no feasible way for me to explain that to my parents.  All
of those bad feelings and many more came back.  At least they didn't steal my writing notebook,
then I might not even be here right now.

The ride on the bus home was no bowl of cherries.  As my friend Matt Brady would say in a
situation like this "How the hell can all those people be so happy."  I would have loved to talk
to someone and at least vent a little bit of my grief, but there was no one on the bus that I
felt I could really talk to.  Instead, I listened to some NOFX, which got me some laughs and
jeers from other people on the bus.  I didn't care, for by then, my day had been bad enough.
When I think "How the hell can people be so happy?" though, I always thing back to "How the hell
am I so sad?" or "Why the hell am I so sad?" or "What the fuck is wrong with me?"  I actually
had two of my own poems running though my head while waiting on the buslot.  One was called
Oblivion, and the other I don't remember the name of but can be found on this page as the poem
before Oblivion.  Trust me, this is not a good thing.

Home, a shocking reality as I see my grandmother there, expecting me to be all bright and cheery
as she is.  She says hello, how are you, and I respond "Okay, just rather burnt out."  A
convenient excuse I must say, but not a good one.  Just to think, I will be cooked up in this
house with her for a week while my parents are gone.  They brought her here to babysit me, but I
will be the one doing the baby sitting.  Some people would call me ungracious to my parents and
grandparents, they are quite right.  This week at home will be spent living behind a mask, and
that for me is a very unhealthy thing.

I think back to one thing though when I remember this, and that is the 7th grade.  So far this
is turning out to be a lot like it in the sense that the work is a lot harder, but it is much
easier to find rejection in the minds of other people.  Another common ground is the fact that
this year came after such a wonderful 10th grade year, just like 7th grade came after a wonderful
6th.  If these things come in cycles it will indeed be a very bad, long year.  And I have a
horrible feeling that I might be right about such bad things as usual.  Last year I made so many
new friends, and the good part was that the people I kept close to were actually loyal friends.
But at the same time I grew apart from most of my longstanding friends, which is starting to come
back and haunt me.  I don't know if I like the me of now more than the me of 9th grade, but I
wish times would be almost as good as they were in the 10th at least, because that was the best
year I've ever had in school.  And also one of the only two truely good years I've had in school.
Enough reminicing, and enough ranting about todays problems.  I'm sure you (the reader) have had
enough of my complaining about my life, which is all that my page seems to be about anyhow.

There's always tomorrow, and I grimace at the thought

Chris Ward