#lifes path

Life Is A Journey, go on and journey; enjoy Life's Path.

"Everyday is a journey to where you want to be and who you are becoming."

Off the rails

Out of my mind

No route to follow

No road to find.

Who cares really?

I’ll make the rails.

There’s always a way

And a way I can follow.

Even if it’s the beating of my heart,

Still chug-chugging along,

And the whistle is a scream,

Just wanting to belong.

I’ll make new rails as we go,

Cause the path don’t have to be

Being so young I can tell you it’s a hard life. I know a lot of kids my age say that and the adults around them tell them “you don’t know how hard life can get yet, kid.”

I am not talking about the hard life some of these kids face though. The bullying and constant need to fit in and be accepted. Even though I have faced my fair share of these things, they are not what makes my life so difficult. I am sick. I was diagnosed when I was very young and there is nothing the doctors can do for me. There was a treatment, but the chances were slim, there was a chance I would be doing the treatment until I died. I am 17 and my mother has coddled me so much that for a long time I thought it was normal, that was until I met Dylan. He is my best friend and my mom’s worst enemy. His parents were never really around, so he was the kid who was blowing up his toys in the yard because he thought Syd from Toy Story was a bad ass.

I met Dylan when I was eight. The doctors had to told my mom that I might not live to see ten so why bother putting in me in school. But my mom believed in quality of life, and for the simple fact that I kicked and screamed the whole year when I was 7, that I wanted to go to school, she finally broke down and got me in the following year. I had to be tested to see if I were even smart enough to be in the third grade, but I was, I was a quick learner and absorbed information like I was a sponge. So even though my mom was teaching me on her own, without knowing what she was doing, I still got lucky and learned everything I needed to know from her.

So I walked in that classroom my first year and was surrounded by kids I didn’t know. I had been kept out of the world my whole life. My mom didn’t even take me to the park because she was so afraid I would get hurt and my life span would be cut shorter than it was already. So this, being surrounded by about 30 kids, 30 tiny human beings like me, it blew my mind and I went and had a seizure, peeing myself in front of my whole class.

So that day was a bust. My mom didn’t want to send me back but I pleaded with her my case, finally she couldn’t take my kicking and screaming anymore so she gave in and sent me back the following week. Immediately when I walked in, the kids started whispering to each other and pointing at me. I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t know that was how kids were talking about you, I’d never been around them before. However I found out fairly quick on the playground at recess. A bunch of kids from my class came up to me while I was sitting on a swing and started taunting me, not very original taunts, but for third graders, what would you expect. They started calling me peepee boy and asking if I was going to fake another seizure to get out of class and just going on and on. I was heartbroken. All this time I wanted to be around kids my age and this was the first interaction I get from them? I wanted to run off and cry, but I didn’t, I sat there and let their blows of hatred wash over me and I felt myself getting smaller.

And then a shadow appeared over my shoulder, like a dark angel of the night, I looked back and saw him standing there listening to what the kids were saying to me. But then they saw him and they stopped. They looked at each other and then wandered off in different directions. He came around to face me and said the weirdest thing. “You need a push?” I was confused but from that day on Dylan and I were best friends.

All the other kids in class were naturally scared of him, he was a little bit insane, especially for an eight year old. He had been sent to the principal’s office more times in his second grade year than he cared to count. He had almost been kicked out, but our school had a thing about needing to help troubled kids, so they kept him, gave him counseling and hoped he would change. They saw a bit of a difference when he and I became friends, he was still the same, but the fact that he now cared for another kid was a big improvement and gave them hope.

Being that he was the same, still the same bad ass kid, getting into trouble and blowing up his toys after he saw Toy Story one day at my house, my mom was very uneasy about our relationship. And since she didn’t have a husband to discuss me with, she went to the school. But like I told you, the school was trying to help Dylan be a normal kid, so they told her she should let us continue to be friends. There was of course the issue that I was sick and might not live very long, and when I do leave the earth plane, what would that do to Dylan? They thought though, if he made one friend he could make another. I was there to show him how awesome being friends with someone was.

But I didn’t die when I was 10 like the doctors had promised my mom. Nor did I die at 11, or 12, 13, 14, 15, not even at 16. I was now 17 years old and one of the smartest kids in my class. But I was also one of the most troubling. Dylan and I were now going into our senior year of high school. We were suspended more times than we could count, almost expelled about three times, but the school was always lenient with us because I was ill and Dylan was my only friend. Honestly I didn’t have room for any other friends besides Dylan. Between constantly defending him from my mom and being a bad ass friend to him, and all the awesome stuff we do, who has time for anything else? I know I didn’t, and neither did Dylan.

When I wasn’t home being berated by my mom of how Dylan is going to kill me, I was off with him, riding bikes in the most extreme ways. No really, like x-games style. Not lying.

Dylan had a part time job after school sometimes, sweeping up the hair at a local barber shop in town. It paid well enough to keep our bikes looking fresh, and for the occasional expense we had. We didn’t pay for much of anything. We had a five finger discount all over town. The trick was not getting caught. We would sneak into movies with our previously lifted snacks from a nearby liquor store. One time we crashed some kids party at the bowling alley, got our own lane within his party because the kids at school were still too scared of Dylan to do anything about it. We stopped being jerks for a while though, when I found out my mom would pay off everyone in town, when we stole candy from a grocery store, they would call her and she would go pay for it. I felt horrible that she didn’t even confront me about it, she just went and payed like oh there’s Scott again, being a rebellious teen, he’ll grow out of it. Oh yeah, that’s my name, Scott, in case you were wondering. When I told Dylan about what my mom had been doing he was so shocked that she cared enough to do it. He thought I always got away with way too much with her, in his eyes she was an angel. She cared for me, always wanting the best for me, and she did let me get away with a lot. It was more than likely because I was sick but I honestly didn’t know if she would be the same if I wasn’t. This was normal for me. For Dylan, not so much. Like I said, his parents were never around, he said they were gypsies, I think he lied but it would explain their absence.

So we stopped being jerks, sort of. We stopped stealing, and whatever we didn’t spend out Dylan’s paycheck, I found out he had put away. He had planned to pay my mom back for all the money she had dished out for us. I think he didn’t tell me because like I said, this was normal for me, I didn’t realize the real sacrifice my mom was doing, I didn’t understand her real struggle. And even though Dylan wasn’t a mother, he understood loss, to some extent. He knew that one day I would no longer be around, and we were all basically waiting for that day to come. We never really focused on my future because we thought I wouldn’t have one. But here I was at 17 years old, my senior year in school and no idea how to prepare for a future I might actually have.  

I decided one morning while still lying in bed, contemplating what we would do with our Saturday afternoon, that the best thing I could do with whatever time I did have left, would be devoted to helping Dylan find his path. Since I was 8, since I met him that day on the playground, in a way I feel I have been here solely to be his sort of guardian angel. It’s taken me 9 years to figure out what those teachers already knew back then. I was simply a lost cause, my life was not as important as his, or maybe it was as important because of him.

So that’s what I did, I helped him, and in return he helped me find my purpose out of life. My life was short, but at least it was meaningful. In the end I did do something great, I helped someone find the love they thought they would never have in their life. Dylan’s parents were lost, and in return so was he. He took a chance on a new kid and in the end he was hurt. I did die. Dylan went off to college after high school, but my health deteriorated so I stayed behind. My mom would cry all the time, not in front of me, but I could see her puffy eyes, and it broke my heart every day. Dylan wanted to take the year off, to stick around for the end, but I told him his future was more important than my end. My life was amazing because he made it so, so the least I could do was make him get started on his new life without me in it. College would bring on a whole new slew of friends, girlfriends and enemies for him, better to start while I was still alive than to carry the weight of my death on his shoulders to his first year of school. When I did finally kick the bucket he came home for the funeral. He brought home a girl, my mom gushed over her as if Dylan was her own son, in a way I guess he was. They mourned and went their separate ways. At least that’s what I assumed they would do. It didn’t click that they were closer than I thought. But they were. My mom had a new son, Dylan had a parent who loved him, and me well I was gone but I brought two people who would need love together. I thought my mission was simply to help Dylan succeed out of life, which he did, but I had forgot about my mom, Dylan didn’t though.