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I was always a serious child. Adults told me I was like a little man, expected to be introspective and quiet - and always failing to disappoint. I preferred reading and writing to more social pursuits, and I was sure that someday it would pay off-bringing me fame, fortune, and more friends than I could handle-but in the depths of my heart I felt even then like a failure. I couldn't play sports, or socialize at parties, or do any of the things that seemed to make other kids happy, and so I was unpopular, and not socially 'ept'. I always seemed to have more detractors than defenders, a target of bullies and cruel pranks. The few friends I did have were drawn from the pool of other social rejects, since even talking to me could cause a popular kid to lose favor with his cohorts. For these and other, similar reasons I was often a very unhappy child. I remember friends often asking me what was wrong, and when I said "Nothing, why," they responded "Because you looked like you were about to cry." They knew I was depressed before I did.

At 16 my father gave me a car, and I obtained a driver's license. I got a job at the local McDonald's and started working full time after school, arriving home after midnight. I was now a Junior at Northeast High and- because I tended to hang out with the older students- almost all my friends had graduated in the Spring of that year. In my sophomore year I had begun using marijuana, and realized for the first time that I was generally a sad young man.Somehow I knew that the feeling I got from smoking it was not much different than the way other kids felt normally. I remember thinking to myself "Oh, so this is how life is supposed to feel...no wonder everybody's always laughing!" But, of course, I was wrong... I just wasn't suicidal anymore. I started staying out later and later, and became very defiant. My father knew something was wrong, he just didn't know what. One warm, sunny day I visited him at work. We were both quiet for awhile, until he turned to me and said,"Son, uhh- do you think that maybe your mom's leaving affected you more than you know?" My mom left when I was four, so I didn't think my sadness had anything to do with her. "No, Dad. Uhh... I don't really even think about her anymore." "Well," he said, "would you be interested in maybe talking to someone

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