Look, I'm also a (bad) writer! Here's the opening of one my short stories entitled 'True Friends', about 4 orphans that grow up together and what life throws at them. I'm currently working on a sort of book which I'll publish my stories, along with pictures taken by myself, and others, as well as art work. So look out for that. But for now, here's the opening of one of stories.
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(True Friends.)
"One loyal friend is better than ten thousand family members." – Unknown
“You just reminded me of what's really important in life, friends…best friends.” She said to me.
It hasn’t even been a week and already I’m holding Megumi in my arms telling here we’re going to be alright. We’re only 26, so it’s not like we’re married or anything, it’s just that, the group we were in, the guys we hung around with, we were different from all the other groups and cliques around us. The difference between us and them was simple: we had a connection to each other. We didn’t team up because we thought the other person was cool or was rich or was hot or anything like that. To be honest, none of that actually mattered to us, well, not to me, but I knew everyone felt the same. It’s like was C.S Lewis once wrote: “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one”. And that was true for us, there was that connection that no one really had before, we smiled and laughed and cried and walked together in the same way as families. Which was essential for us, because, well, we didn’t really have families, I mean, we had families, we just didn’t have the type of family you’d see in the fake pictures when you buy a picture frame; perfect smiles all around, being happy. Happy. And that’s what made everything so much harder.
There were four of us; Megumi, Adam, Eliza and me. We were all more or less the same age, just a few months apart, so I guess that accounts to why we were so close.
We were orphans, we were, each of us, left at the doorstep of an orphanage in London mere hours after we were actually born, and we grew up together, we formed our own little family. The people that owned the orphanage knew no one would adopt us because we couldn’t bare the sight of losing each other. But they didn’t really care to be honest, what mattered was that we were happy, and that’s all that mattered, right? It doesn’t take a family to make a person happy, it takes people. And therein lies the dilemma of most human beings, they might have families to go to in times of happiness or sadness, but are those families really people? Or do they just think they need to be there for that said person because they have a certain blood flowing through their veins? With us, none of that mattered, we were different, Eliza was an Italian girl, Megumi was Japanese, Adam was English and I was just me, we were all different, and yet we felt the same connection and love that takes years to build for a normal family. We were our own family, and we didn’t need anything else in our lives. Or at least that’s what we thought when we were younger.
But by the time we go to the age of around 10, we had been adopted out to families, but luckily we lived near each other, it was good, actually, it helped us through it all, know other people are around us, we could go out and meet up and catch up on things and learn new things too. It was different this time around, we have families, we were allowed to go out and see the world we were locked up from, and we had freedom. But we didn’t really notice this at first, most of the time we just stayed at someone else’s home and hung out there for a while.
I guess I sound like a guy whose going to tell a story with morals and touching on social issues like those stupid NSPCC adverts on the TV and make disgustingly optimistic people think that actually giving £2 a month will change the fact that there’s still another child out there being beaten to a pulp until he or she is knocked just so the parents can say she fell down the stairs.
But that’s not the kind of story I’m about to tell, to be honest, I don’t really care about those kids in the adverts, I never have, I just care about my life and the people around me. What’s the point of trying so hard to help people you don’t even know, and not notice what the people closest to you are going through? I mean, it’s not that daunting if you actually look around and see what other people have to deal with. I sound like a guy whose story has no basis or anything, no solid foundation to actually grow up on, I mean, in less than one and a half pages I’ve pretty much gone through my entire life; living in an orphanage, my friends and things like that. But that’s not the point of my story, it’s not about where I began, it’s not going to end with where I end up, it’s the small bit in between, the journey. Because at the end of it all, the journey is more important than the end of the start. But before we get into anything about what this story is about, let me tell you what this is not about; this has no logical narrative, I am telling this as it runs through my head, some of it might not make sense, some of it might just seem unreal, but that is the purpose of this. This story is written from my memory, and there is a distinct difference between memory and fact. Fact is telling someone the colour of a car is red, memory is assuming the car was red, or it might have been blue, possibly green, I don’t know, and some of it, if not most of it, may or may not be extremely exaggerated. If you can understand that sentence, then you know what will follow in this story.
I miss the way things used to be, I miss the way I could hang out with friends, talk to them on the phone, send random text messages to each other, do whatever the fuck we would do. Eliza eventually got a boyfriend, but nothing had changed, we still sent texts and called each other, nothing changing. Nothing. I hate it when things ‘change’ because of a relationship, I mean, I know you have to spend time with that person, but that doesn’t mean you need to give less time to your other friends, and using excuses like “I’ve been busy”, “I’ve had so much work, I just get tired” are a bunch of fucking excuses because none of that fucking mattered before you were in the relationship.
You spend so long trying to change who you are, trying be something you never were, being different so you can get on with life, and you just wind up back to where you were in the first place, full circle, I dunno, maybe I’m not cut out for this. I’ve seen too many old westerns where the cowboys make a run for the border. I need my Mexico. I just don’t want to forget my friends when I get there. But after everything that’s just happened, I don’t know anymore. I must tell you one thing though, this story, my story, isn’t an easy one to read, where there seems to be happiness, there will be pain. Welcome to my life, enjoy your stay. The weather today is partly angry, leading to resignation and madness.
