Not Review-Related (A Personal Message)

For years, I was taught how not to forgive or how to let my past wither away like the dream it's supposed to be. I was never shown how to give affection, or how to build. I was shown how to destroy, and it's taken this long for me to understand the consequences of my actions. While I try to move forward and strengthen my new self, I find it impossible to continue without feeling the ever-present weight of guilt and remorse. My lamentations increase with everyday that I haven't resolved my previous actions.

Back when I was a child, transitioning into a new school and a new way of life, I remember destroying a peer's life by issuing constant torment and physical aggression. He was smaller than I was. He was frail and had no control over what others thought of him. I focused the pain from old "friendships," the ones where things were thrown at me, I was beaten, abused, and shown no mercy. I still went back, only because I was alone otherwise. To relieve those terrible acts of violence, I passed it onto another individual, who truthfully wasn't much different from me. Now I understand that his abilities today, more so than they were before, are greatly limited. I was told he twitches, and that he has developed some sort of mental sickness.

I can't fully describe what this pain entails. Psychologically, I was ruthless against someone who told me I was worthless in high school. Granted this is to be expected, I took it so personally, the actions of this girl that didn't understand what kind of a monster I was. Over all those years, I had learned nothing, and after that year had finished, I issued forth an email that brought her parents great fear, and her to tears. I had been punished in some form or another, but it hadn't changed my behavior in the least. I was still unforgiving, no regret or conscience resisting my inability to let the past be gone. I brought grief on her for the next two years, until finally she cracked from being coerced and signed my yearbook with "I love you." I almost broke in half.

It wasn't until a few years later that I attempted suicide due to the strain that my conscience had developed. I felt so much guilt and a great hatred for myself that it felt like my brain was preventing me from performing the simple actions of day-to-day life. My skin was open from the self-inflicted wounds, and my heart slowed to a soft beat, so much that I couldn't feel it any longer. I downed the canister of medications and awaited my fate, only to have called the paramedics at the last moment. When I was placed in the hospital, my perception was plagued with the chemicals taking their effect.

All around me there were voices of people watching me. Everything was shrouded with a domineering darkness, only so much that I couldn't perceive what was fully in my surroundings. The little television blared silently from the ceiling, and then the visions truly began. A hand reached for my chest, tugging at the hospital gown I was forced to attire. A little girl appeared on the window sill, and as soon as I turned to see her, she frowned and instantly disappeared. My heart raced. I distinctly heard the words, "What's happening to my baby boy" in a broken voice, issuing forth the greatest sound of anguish that only a mother could speak it, but she wasn't there. All around me, these visions and callings echoed throughout the night, and from the fear of it all, I succumbed to the horror and disappeared from consciousness.

For days I was alone. I felt so outcast from the life I had created, and the burning in my heart was at its greatest peak of depression. My sorrows had known no end, and it rained all throughout my treatment. There was no more hope, and I had regretted calling them in the first place. Then, an epiphany occurred. Something happened while I laid in my tears, in complete helplessness. I realized that I alone could not possibly cause the downfall of the two lives I sought to destroy. The fact that they were still alive was proof enough that I did not greatly force them into the eternal void which I had so effortlessly tried to enter. There was no pain nor unpleasantness I'd made that ended lives. The things said about me in the past weren't true either, as the opinions of me were those of children. I understood, by myself, that the lessons that weren't taught by my family to me then would come from experience, and I only had to become willing to learn them.

I was born again, and now that I aim to change what once was, there is nothing that can stop me. I withstood trials and tribulations beyond what the human body is capable of in the circumstances I had enforced on myself, and I would march on and destroy those demons I had created. Should there be a day I cross those I've hurt, I will offer to them a sacrifice in which they can return the favors on me abusively. I will allow them to either hurt me in any way possible, or to forgive me and let me continue my quest of enlightenment. Until those days come, I will remain vigilant, and I will not victimize anyone ever again.

Because of this, I am the phoenix. I have risen from the dead, and now I have come to conquer my guilt once and for all. To Michael and Alexi: I am truly sorry, and I will allow you to unleash the furies I have brought you upon me.