I've been thinking about a lot of things lately, mostly concerning my origins. Where do I come from? I come from a little shit-town in a joke of a state called Idaho. There is a point, trust me.

The people I shared my childhood with, who I grew up with and grew close to are all fuck-ups. Huffing gas, or waking up in the emergency room not knowing how they got there, doing meth, wasting their lives, FUCK! I was so unbelievably pissed off about it earlier...I get so mad at them that part of me just wants to stab them so they can't fuck up anymore.

I fuck up, I know that I do, but them...Jesus, man...they're out of fucking control.

Look at Holly for example - one of the smartest girls I know to this day...at least I *remember* her being smart as hell. Before I started to fuck up, she was one of the girls who would help me along with my schoolwork when I was too busy being a fucking lunatic to care. I remember her back, way back when I freaked out and started crying for no reason in class, back in the fourth grade. She cared, she put her arm around me and asked me what was wrong, and when I didn't say anything, she told Mr. Nacc that I was crying, and I was in the counselor's office, laughing through tears because she was so nice to me.  She was one of the few people in that town who actually did nice things for me.

The last thing I heard about Holly was that she got pregnant, and the father put meth in her coffee. I don't know if she got addicted or anything...it's kind of sitting in the back of my brain, rotting.

Danielle is another tweek junkie who was an unbelievable bitch, but fuck. I remember she would come to school with tears all over her face, and she'd ask me to leave whenever I tried to help. When a girl at the local high school got cancer, and when the chemotherapy took her hair away, Danielle and her friends all shaved their heads to support her, and to tell everyone else to fuck off. She had potential.

All of us did.

Every time I get news from up there, it's always bad. Someone's on heroin, or someone's beating their wife, or someone took a bunch of LSD and ran over a tent full of babies at a barter fair.

I saw my friend Dan when I moved up there last time, and he seemed completely normal - a bit of a heavy smoker, but that was about it. He gave me a ride back to my parents' place before I moved out again, and we talked. It was fine.

The last time I went to visit, I saw a video of Dan that someone recorded with a digital camera and saved, because it was the last thing anyone had seen of him. In it, he was about fifty pounds heavier, shirtless, and spouting off in some language that doesn't exist. They left him in a parking lot somewhere around noon the next day, because he wouldn't stop screaming in this bizarre tongue...that's the last thing anyone's ever seen of him.

I grew up with these people. I know them like I know myself, which is to say halfway decently...what is it?

What is it about that fucking place that made us this way?

Everyone.