Chapter 1 - Introduction

We were young, blinded by what we thought was important, we walked blindfolded through those overflowing halls teeming with life blindfolded just as we were. We made strides through doors of education to only neglect and ignore it, too busy within our own minds to give care to what really mattered. It was a separate life, an inception of personalities, a whole other universe with swirling galaxies, fiery stars, black holes, and empty space. A silently loud emptiness, a loneliness, an everlasting room. We floated on, day in and day out, eyes wide open at nightfall, shut tight on a desk at dawn. We flew through space, questioning existence, purpose, reason, all while soaring at breakneck speeds around the sun.

Just as galaxies and planets and stars are separated as were we all. Some clustered together in the halls like galaxies, others on what seemed to be their own planet with few to company them, a moon maybe, and some gravitating to others like a star in a solar system among billions of others. I was none of these. I like to compare myself to a lone comet with a trail of bright blue light following as I fly through space and time watching the never ending depth of what I shoot through. I stop by planets, I'll fly through the galaxies, I reach for stars, but none stay. Permanence lacks in space. 

This is a time we have all lived in or will live in at one point in our existence. A swirling ball of color and chaos with blues, and oranges, and pinks, and yellows, and greens, and reds, and purples, and every other color imaginable exploding right in front of your eyes. Devastation, construction, violence, hatred, love and peace. This is the life of a teenager. A life so confusing, so lost, so unaware. 

We spend our time in front of bright screens, holding cellphones, checking the time, working on papers, working for money and grades and the future. We work for acceptance, belonging, smiles, high fives, laughs, love, friends, admiration, memories and more. We keep ourselves busy for the fear that when we are alone we will hear ourselves tell us how we really feel. Empty. Empty as the space we soar through, empty as the heart beating in our chests and empty as a world so full of life, life too as empty as the rest.

Conformity makes prisoners of us all. It keeps us from being our true selves, following our true dreams and speaking what we truly mean. Those who are different are driven out, casted down like scum or the gum cemented down into the streets that we walk on every day. To be an individual is to be alone. The savages will taunt you at first sight, pollute your air with insults and threats and questions. These savages are conformists running around in packs. These savages are the dream crushers spitting out the gum we see cemented into the street we walk on every day and one question pounds on the walls in my mind. What will save us?

My name Jedediah Wilson and I am a soaring comet. I have black hair, blue eyes, I like to listen to music, I like to read, I usually wear eyeliner, black nail polish, dark skin-tight clothes, I live off the highway in an apartment complex with my Mom, Im a Junior in High School and I have no friends.

Everyone who knows me calls me Jed, so in other words, my Mom calls me Jed.

"The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even dead fish can go with the flow."

Jim Hightower