CW: Lots of sensitive topics including abuse, suicide, and more coming up. You've been warned :/

I've made mistakes.

Over and over and over again.

I don't really know why this article exists. Maybe it's so that the reader knows they can make it past their own mistakes, even seemingly egregious ones. Maybe it's just for me to come to terms with what happened in my life. Maybe it doesn't actually serve any purpose.

Like everyone, I was born. The newcomer to a family of four, a fifth wheel. My parents got divorced when I was three years old. In the state I live in, the courts always side with the mom. So, even though she was wildly unfit to be a mother, that's where all three children ended up and stayed. Likely, this is the worst thing that could have happened to me. I'm not here to drag anyone through the mud or start a pity party, though.

Elementary school was lonely. I didn't understand how other kids would just go to school, have a fun time, talk to people, draw, etc. whereas it felt like all I did was sit there, and that took the entirety of my effort. Looking back, I can see now a stressed child—a neglected one. Why talk if the adults already made up their mind about everything and will steamroll my opinion anyway? Either way, I was quiet, I listened, and I was absolutely abysmal at social interactions (well, that was my feeling at the time). But at least I was "smart": every single teacher, authority figure, you name it, would mention my (apparent) intelligence and how I was so distinguished from any other child they know. That really made it hard to feel like I could ever fit in with my peers, as they were just children and took to saying and doing what the adults did (i.e. ostracising me). To make matters worse: I had to get (thick) glasses in 3rd grade at 8 years old (needed them much sooner tbh), I was small and skinny (probably somewhat due to malnourishment and somewhat due to genetics), and I had absolutely zero self esteem. This puts me smack-dab in the center of the "terrible childhood" starter kit. Hurray!

Most recesses (20 minutes of play time for young kids at school), I would simply get on the swings and swing as high as possible. It's hard to notice nobody talking to you when you're launching yourself 20 feet in the air :). Attempts at sports were met with blood, and attempts at friendship were met with bullying. It was during elementary school that I saved up for a laptop (which didn't matter because mom stole the savings, but she did buy me a laptop ig)—The first computer that was "mine". I got heavily into video games and stuff like that. Minecraft, Terraria, No More Room In Hell, Counter Strike, GMod, Happy Wheels… I started watching let's plays on YouTube, finding PewDiePie, Jacksepticeye, and Markiplier. I would host servers on Hamachi and beg/convince people at school to please try and play with me. I was able to convince one person in the 4th grade, and me and them played video games together all the time until about 7th/8th grade. I hosted a teamspeak server and we would hop in it and game all day.

When I got to middle school, things were about to go downhill, and fast (Note: "Middle school" is between primary and secondary school, usually just two to three years). As my home life kept worsening, so did my effort put forth in school. My mom began to constantly tell me that we were moving soon, but then, when it came time to pack up and go, it had actually been delayed by two weeks. When we did end up moving, it was only for a few months before the cycle would repeat. At the end of 7th grade, at 12 years old, we were living in a somewhat bad neighborhood, and my mom was behind on payments, so the house had no AC, and power would go out for a week or two every few months.

Needless to say, that summer absolutely sucked.

I tried to keep in touch with a few friends, but the school I went to for that school year was now nowhere near where I actually lived… Mostly, they forgot about me, and I forgot about them. I had a bike at that time, so I started going on bike rides every day; it was summer, and there wasn't anything else to do. At first, I'd just go out in the daytime, but it ended up getting so hot that that wasn't realistic anymore. So, I just sort of naturally started waking up earlier when it wasn't so hot and going on bike rides then. Eventually, this grew into waking up at 1–2am, and biking until 8–12am, every day.

While it may sound advantageous for a young chap to ride a bicycle for 6–10 hours per day (and truthfully, it is), it's important to note a few things that culminated in this not going well. One: I was in a somewhat bad neighborhood. Two: I was only 12 to 13 years old during this. Three: I was going out at 1–2am. This is starting to paint a slightly more worrying picture, right? Imagine you had a 12 year old, and they snuck out every night at 2am…

Anyway, worst comes to worst, I end up finding leftover remnants of blunts and joints on the side of the road. At first, I just avoided them. But after seeing them so much, I decided to start to "collect" them (although I still avoided the orange-capped needles). It was exhilarating even interacting with these illicit things. Questions like "Am I doing something wrong?" and "Will I be caught and put in jail?" would go through my head. I'm not one to try and understand why I started doing something I knew was wrong, but, to me, at the time, it just felt like that there was nothing else to do, and not much of a point not to do it (other than the usual adult lies: thing bad). Eventually I found what is colloquially known as a "chillum". I'll save you the details, but it's a rudimentary smoking device; this one was made out of wood. This was different from all the ruined joints and blunts, as it was meant to be refilled and then used, not just thrown away. After a few weeks of anxiety, I tried to light whatever was still in it and inhaled; immediately it tasted horrible, I was coughing, and there was smoke coming out of me. Being a child with very little ability for accurate forethought, I did all this in my bedroom, which now strongly smelled of ash (and shame). In a panic to not get caught, I started opening windows; I turned on every fan I could in the house, etc., and then I microwaved popcorn right before my mom got home XD.

Now, let's take a moment and pause, as that was a lot (and I'm skipping a lot). Yes, I was 12, I guess I collected butts of weed off the side of the road and then smoked them in a smoking device I found on the side of the road, and that was my first experience with recreational drugs. YOU, READER, yes you, please don't do this. This article is called making mistakes (or something), and as such contains stuff you should NEVER do; not to mention at 12 years old.

A few months later, there was a drive-by shooting directly outside the house, aimed at the house across the street. No one was hurt, luckily. After that, with winter rolling around, there was a gigantic wind storm. It took out power for the entire town for multiple weeks in the winter. On top of this, my mom was (as always) behind on bills, and so we had no heating in the house at this time (we had been relying on electric space heaters). It got down under 60 in the house at night; I would sleep under three blankets and still be freezing when I woke up. We were then evicted and moved in with my mom's parents. Sadly, they are much the same as my mom.

Now, after a few more "chillum" attempts (and actually outside this time), I stopped trying. It just wasn't that fulfilling, and it tasted and smelled really strongly, and it was not good (I attribute that to the side-of-the-road source…). But I still felt "proud", I guess you could call it, for doing something myself. Soon enough, school started again: 8th grade.

When I went back to school, people were now talking about, like, going on vacation, or having gone on a cruise, or how they had an amazing birthday party or went snowboarding, or…

Well, I didn't do any of that. I just rode my (old) bike. So the whole first week in class of "Who are you?" and "meet each other" activities was just torture … "Oh, so you didn't do anything and just sat at home?" was a question I heard quite often. They couldn't understand that it wasn't a choice that I stayed home all summer—it was due to being in a less fortunate situation. So, immediately, I felt extra disconnected from everybody going into this year.

Because I was feeling so disconnected, different, and just straight-up bad, I started to believe that something was wrong with me; that I must be crazy or stupid or defective somehow for my life to feel so unfulfilling, different, and boring. And this is when I started my "chasing" phase, as I would call it. I was chasing feeling. Anything that made me feel was something I would do, because so much of my life felt like nothing. So I chased girls and said whatever I thought they wanted me to say to get what I wanted. I chased that feeling I had in the summer when I tried drugs for the first time. I chased acting out in class and socially just to see what would happen (often nothing happened, which is the saddest part). I would argue and disagree with people even when I knew I didn't actually think that way, and it didn't actually matter. If you have any experience with kids, I'm sure you can tell exactly what this is: attention seeking. I literally just needed somebody watching me/with me (ideally my parent(s) would have filled this role), but I had nobody. I did drugs at 12 with nobody catching me … that shows just how attentive my mom was as a parent. My mom would lie to my dad when asked how things were going, obviously, and so my situation flew under the radar.

What's worse? The society I live in. Attention seeking kids are ignored and/or ridiculed, usually by adults and children. Adults don't want to "give in" to the attention seeking behaviour of the child, and other children make fun of the child ("you're just doing that for attention"). None of this is what an attention seeking child needs. But, nonetheless, it's what they get.

It started subtly. I stopped caring about my outfit or wardrobe, just grabbing whatever and putting it on. Shorts in the winter and jeans in the summer; just whatever I happened to grab. I stopped showering (unless to get away from everybody for 30 minutes), and I stopped paying attention in school. All of these things felt "wrong", but nobody stopped me from doing them. In fact, nobody even noticed or cared.

I thought, "I'll have to go more extreme, I guess."

It grew less subtle. I began actively trying to change things, even if it was for the worse. So I started messing up my hair every morning before school, purposefully staining my clothes, staying up all night so that I'd be dead tired all day at school, etc. I changed from the "Alright team, we can still do this!" team player in counter strike to "I wonder if I can kill all 4 teammates before I get vote-kicked." I began seeking avenues of obtaining drugs, once more.

I began cutting myself every day. It started out in hidden places, and places that wouldn't hurt so bad. Struggling to get anyone to help me or notice my situation, I began to run out of hidden places that weren't already cut/still healing. I can remember a pivotal point where my mindset shifted as I sat and wept. "Fuck it, I'm done hiding", I thought. I cut both of my forearms so much that there was nothing but blood, it seemed. All the way from wrist to elbow. They were small, shallow cuts, but there sure were a lot of them. The next morning I woke up and knew exactly what to do. I put on a short-sleeved tshirt, and headed off to school. To be honest, there was a pit in my stomach. "What's going to happen to me?"… "Are they going to tell my parents?"… so many questions rushed through my head.

However, my wishes were not fulfilled on this day. Mostly, my faith in humanity was lost.

I showed up to first period 10 minutes early. Most kids will socialise in the halls as long as possible and show up late even, so it was just me, one or two other classmates, and the teacher. I walked in, sat at my assigned seat, and put my arms on the desk in front of me. The scabs had opened just from walking through the halls and bumping into people, so I was now actually oozing blood out of a few of my wounds. I expected there to be a commotion from the teacher, something like "Oh my God, what happened?", and I planned to say "I cut my arms." My plans were dashed, however, as the teacher looked up, saw me, and looked back at their phone. The bell rang, and they began to hand out papers. "Surely, at this point, this seemingly kind and sweet teacher will talk to me about my absolute horror show going on." But no; she walked by my desk, locked eyes with me, set the paper on my bleeding arms, then moved on to the next. "Surely, at this point, she has seen the situation, doesn't know what to do, and will like email the school counselor and then they'll come get me." But no; I was hoping that when she sat back at her desk and started typing that that is what she was doing, but it wasn't. I had tried, in the most extreme way, to get attention, and it had not worked. I felt bad. Not, like, just bad, like life is not worth living bad. The rest of that schoolday, my classmates gave the response I needed an adult to give, and the adults gave me the response I needed the classmates to give. The children were in shock that I would do something like that to myself, and a lot of them asked me why I did it. The adults ignored me; I laughed as the principal walked by at lunch, we locked eyes, I held my arms up, and they just looked away and kept going on with their life.

So, let's do a sad little recap, shall we? I was already in such a bad place mentally (and physically) at 12 years old that I thought it a good idea to try recreational drugs. When I got back to school, everyone else's life was so different that I just didn't understand where to fit in anymore, which drove me even further away and made me more different. This kept getting more and more extreme, to the point that I began cutting myself, both for attention and control, which culminated in me giving up on hiding anything or trying to be anybody. I started just being 100% honest with people. "How'd you cut your arm?" was now answered in a monotone voice, "With a blade." I began to think that the school did know about my situation, but that they just didn't care (which almost 100% had to be the case; I didn't hide much from that point on). This reinforced my bad self-esteem even further. Things were now … serious.

And that's exactly when it got worse :)

At 13, I managed to get a hold of drugs I should not have been able to get a hold of, due to my parent and grandparents leaving pill bottles around. While they are childproof, they aren't foolproof, as I managed to get them open. At first I planned to take every pill in every bottle I could find. But then I got worried that I would just end up eating like ten benadryl, and I wouldn't die, I'd just get really sick and have to tell everybody what had happened. So I started doing research on the names on the sides of the pill bottles to find out exactly which ones to take and how many. This led to me discovering that when you take some pills you actually feel good from it and get high. This immediately sparked that old feeling from the summer before, like I was doing something wrong, but it felt good and I could get away with it, so why not. I discovered a bottle of hydrocodone, a very strong opiate painkiller. I took just one, and that was the moment I completely lost control. It may sound like a fear-mongering campaign, but it really is true. At that time, my life sucked so bad and felt so awful that having a pill that would actually make me feel warm and joyful and just laugh at nothing available literally at my fingertips was … well, more than unfortunate.

For a while, it was just from time to time. Steal a pill once or twice a week, and take one when you feel so awful that you can think of nothing except suicide. At this point, I began to tell everybody at school when I was on pills, and how great they made me feel compared to "normal". Of course, nobody actually believed me. It was the same as before. I would do something that I thought would have irreversible consequences, and not only would there be no consequences, nobody would even believe that I did it when I loudly bragged about it. It felt like, no matter what I did, my life would have the same outcome, and I had no control over it.

After a little bit of this (exact times are hazy from this time period, go figure), my addiction grew. It grew from my "helper" from time to time into an almost everyday occurence. This was helped by the fact that one of my grandparents was now getting extra hydrocodone from their friend every month (illegally, now that I think about it), so the supply had gone up. Along with more hydros, I started to steal and take other pills, too. When summer rolled around, I was left alone, and one or all of tramadol, lorazepam, and hydrocodone were now coursing through my veins almost 24/7. This is when the people that would come over to my house to hang out began to see this happen, and most of them stopped interacting with me altogether because of this. I don't blame them, that was the healthiest decision they could have made for themselves. Eventually, a few other people got involved, and it was basically a constant party/hangout at my place with lots of bad decisions being made.

I would say this is a good point to stop and point out a clear mistake: don't give up on school and friends just to start taking pills everyday at thirteen years old. It doesn't turn out well, I promise you.

9th grade rolled around: "high school" in American terms. This new school had way more people in it, but to me, not much changed. I was still just an invisible cog in a useless machine that they ran for profit. My test being completed got them grant money, that's it. With my addiction worsening, I now felt like I had to take multiple doses per day just to feel normal; this meant I was now taking pills to school with me. And now, people did finally believe me (kind of hard to doubt something happening right in front of you, lol). This is when other people started wanting them…

I'll skip over some details here for legal and privacy reasons, but I will sum it up. Before, only one or two people actually knew about it and believed me, and they weren't focused on that part of life, so they didn't even want to take pills that much or anything. High school changed all of that, though, and in an instant. All of a sudden, lots of people were very interested in this sort of thing, and in their eyes, I was the avenue to get it. I'll leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.

You may be surprised to hear that I wasn't actually failing school during all this. At the start, my addiction hadn't affected my life very much; it was just something I did "for fun" once or twice a week. As my 8th grade year went on, sure, my grades got worse, but I still managed to keep up and pass every class that year. 9th grade, going into high school, I had an over 100% grade in every class for the first six months, through extra credit that I would complete in school and just doing marginally well on tests.

The addiction kept getting worse, though, and as 9th grade progressed, I stopped going to school as much. I would wake up for school, take a pill (or ten), then just lay back in bed and do nothing all day. After a few days I would go into school, each class hands me "what I missed", I finish it in like 15 minutes and then leave for the bathroom and never come back. I realised that I pretty much already knew everything they put on the tests (as it was covered in the first two weeks of the semester), so I didn't really even have to be at school to pass. This is a clear failure of the system, as I should not have been able to pass whilst basically not going at all. But that's what happened. I passed 9th grade with my lowest grade being a 74% (in like social studies, or something).

That summer it got way more intense. The "endless party" vibe was basically my life now. Invite friends, get really fucked up together and do stupid shit, wake up, then do it all again. I didn't tell anybody, but, for a long time, I would take as many pills as I had to try and see if it would kill me. Most of the time, I'd just wake up a few days later, and go back to the monotony. I felt severe shame over not being able to control the end of my life, even…

At this point, I had very minimal cashflow (but still some), so I began purchasing things online. I bought drug paraphernalia, mostly. Bongs, legal plant extracts, and more. I even found some unsavory places and bought some less-than-legal things online, as well. Needless to say, expanding an addict's reach is never a good thing.

My newfound reach was met with newfound curiosity; I was still chasing that feeling, any feeling. I had seen a lot of people mention psychedelics online, and the writings and reports that resulted from such activities greatly piqued my interest. So, I made it a mission to source some. While I was working on that, I started going on walks into the woods, just trying to get away from everybody and everything. On the way to the woods, on one of these walks, I saw what looked like a Nintendo DS case: a small, zippered container about six to eight inches in its longest dimension. I grabbed it and kept walking, wondering what might be in it (I could tell something was in there).

After I got home, I opened the case, expecting a handheld game console to reveal itself to me. But, alas, I was not so lucky. I opened it to see a spoon, about ten little baggies, some full, some empty, a lighter, some needles… I had found somebodies stash that they threw out the window when getting pulled over.

Now me, being an addict and an idiot all in one, decided it'd be a great idea to order some needles of my own and try to do some of the drugs I found on the side of the road (and people call me "smart", lol). And I did. Not only this, but there was somebody else there who video'd the whole thing. I'm not proud :(

Although it is quite embarassing, I still uphold that that day was probably the best I have ever felt in my entire life. I just sat for four straight hours laughing and giggling at stupid, meaningless TV shows, and I felt like I was getting a warm hug the whole time. From this point on, I would take even more pills to try and get this feeling again (which I never did, and now believe never will).

In the passing days, I forgot about my previous curiosities with psychedelics, but eventually they swayed back into my mind. I found out that there are actually legal psychedelics, and I ordered some of those online. A little baggy showed up with small bits of leaf inside it, dark-colored; the label read "20x–40x STRONG — not for human consumption". That sure instilled confidence in me XD. This baggy sat in my stash for some time, as I gained the courage to try it. However, that wasn't the only venture I made; I had also obtained another infamous substance: LSD. That was the first psychedelic I tried; I did just one, then after an hour of not noticing anything, I took one more (classic!). A few minutes after taking the second one, it started. As I looked at my bed, the wrinkles of sheets along the side began to fly, as if there was a great gust of wind blowing through an open window. But, when looking to the windows, they were all closed. That's when I realised it wasn't actually happening; I was just seeing it. This caused me to laugh and giggle at it, just watching as it blew in the ephemeral wind. I discovered a new genre of music that I really liked. I "saw" unity and what that actually means. I met myself for the first time, realising what I must be like, look like, talk like, and walk like. The universe shifted to make room for me, and I shifted to make room for the universe; overall, it was as if a great tension was undone on that day.

After the first time, I waited a week or two, then did it all over again. I was looking forward to it so much that I didn't even realise I had stopped taking pills every day (and confused as to why I had withdrawal symptoms; I thought I was sick with cancer or something as I was throwing up everyday, couldn't eat, etc). Eventually, that little baggy made its way back into my mind. "Oh yeah, that!", I exclaimed. Having had some real-life experience, I was a bit over-confident assuming I could do any psychedelic and handle it really well. I was wrong :).

I loaded the "STRONG" extract into a pipe and, as I was instructed to do for this substance, held a flame as close to it and for as long as possible. Apparently, the substance in the extract requires lots of heat to be vaporised. After one long, hot inhalation, I quickly realised I had gotten myself into something way bigger than I thought. The room vibrated (like an earthquake), and I felt weird. A fractal-like pattern started growing out of the center of my vision, obscuring the real world; I had a bit of a panic that I was still holding my pipe, and I didn't want to break it, so I quickly sat it down. As soon as I sat it down, I was gone. This body and this world were no longer available to my experience; I had gone elsewhere. I remember feeling like I was falling backwards at 1000000mph, reaching out to catch myself and failing (more like flailing, ha!). Other than that, there aren't really words to describe what I experienced (sorry).

What being away from my body and away from this world made me realise is that I wanted nothing more than to be in my body and in this world; I was begging to please just let me go back to "my bed", even though that was completely gone and didn't exist anymore. When I did start to come down (about five minutes later) and back into my body, I bee-lined it for my bed, laid down, and tried to forget all about the terrifying experience I'd just had.

This was the experience that changed my life from being a loser, an addict, and bound to die before thirty into what it is now: without this experience, I would not have understood the full range of possible experiences. The universe allows for mistakes, it allows for you to exist; you might be a terrible, rotten person now, but that doesn't mean you can't buy a candy store and give 1000s and 1000s of people joy and happiness through little desserts and treats. Well, it might be tough to get a loan as a felon, but you get my point.

This experience lit a fire under my ass, and fast. I immediately unenrolled from school; at this point in my life, it was a burden that drained my mental and physical health, as well as a source of bad decisions. So, a few months into the 10th grade, I was no longer in high school. As per the terms of my unenrollment, I had to do some program that would supposedly help me get my GED; I won't go into it now, I will just say that that program exists solely to destroy lives, and everyone within it is a selfish demon who deserves immediate (and slow) dismemberment. I didn't get my GED.

A week or two after I unenrolled from school, my mother texted (yes, texted) me that she didn't know what to do anymore and that I needed to move out by the end of the day. I was shocked to receive such a message, and didn't exactly know what to do. I was either going to become homeless, kill myself using up the last of my stash, or move in somewhere else… I figured that last one sounded better than the second, albeit unrealistic (who would want to deal with me at this point in my life); so, I called my dad and told him the situation. He was generous and kind enough to let me move in with him that day, and I can't thank him enough for that. I easily would have made some very bad decisions that day if that call had gone even slightly differently. So, I packed everything I wanted (not much) into my school backpack, and he picked me up later that day. Just like that, I was gone.

My mother texted relentlessly for weeks about how she didn't mean it and how I needed to move back in with her "or else". I just ignored her, as I still do. What is written here is simply what I am willing to share publicly, and it doesn't paint her in a nice light, to say the least. She is an abuser, she is manipulative, and she is a liar. That text message kicking me out was my saving grace; without it, I'd still be tangled in her shitty life.

The best thing I ever did was separate myself from that wretch of a human.

For a few years, it was tough just existing; I was still dealing with the impulses of addiction, while at the same time being 16 and dealing with regular teenager problems. I didn't enjoy this part of my life; it felt like a major "downgrade" compared to before. Instead of being high all day, every day, I wasn't, and that really put a hamper in my mood.

Eventually, though, things changed. The "old me" is no longer someone I can even relate to; I can barely understand why they did the things they did. But I can also see that that person was abused. That person was neglected. That person was treated so poorly that nothing else even seemed possible.

But that's not me. That's just how I had to deal with the cards I was dealt. Left to my own devices, I am so much more than that. For a long time, I didn't believe in these sorts of ideas. I thought that the reason my childhood went so poorly was my fault, and that I must be defective and unable to cope with things in a normal way. However, when I finally escaped my addiction, escaped my abusers, escaped the terrible situation I was born into, I didn't do any of that. On my own, I just liked learning and creating new things. I made music, I made video games, I baked bread, and I built electronics. And so, it all of a sudden was very clear to me: "I" am not my actions. "I" am not my past. "I" exist, and that's pretty much the only objective thing that can be said about me (or anything, for that matter). "I" is a plastic, an unbaked clay, not an unchanging stone, or a molded sculpture.

A few years after this mess, I began low-level programming. About a year after starting that, I began streaming content to Twitch and uploading the VODs to YouTube, and the rest is history.

Again, I don't really know why this article exists, but I hope that you at least got something out of it.