Unlocking

I have always wanted to travel, but not travel in the conventional sense. I want to travel trough the mind into the subconscious and unlock the desires and thoughts we all carry around but never say. I want to know what people are really feeling and thinking, not the bullshit they tell you to make you think it's the truth. People are too afraid to tell others how they feel. Why? Most people will tell you "I don't want to hurt their feelings." You know what I say "fuck their feelings." I will tell you straight up how I feel about you or a situation you might be in, I won't sugarcoat anything just to spare you. People need the truth, you can't live in fear because you might lose some people in your life, because you are afraid. Others need to learn how to accept truths. People bury things into the deepest levels of their mind, to the point it drives them psychotic. I would travel into the mind and bring with me the tools (whatever they may be) and unlock peoples deepest desires and feelings and show them how to speak out for themselves and that they can live a healthier life because of it. You don't need to hide behind a filter, say what you need to say and do what you gotta do. There is no right way to unlocking your mind and being the person you truly want to be. You just have to choose to look inside and by "inside" I mean "the deepest depths" and pull out that person you were made to be. Be yourself and express yourself.

Save an Animal, Save Your Life

“Many animals die to please our palette, about 140 million cattle, pigs and sheep are slaughtered annually in the U.S. that is about half an animal for every man, woman and child, add that to 9 billion chickens and turkeys, that’s 30 birds for every American, plus millions of fish shellfish, and other creatures” (cspinet.org). This is despicable. How can we as humans allow this to happen? Are animals just not important? How would one feel if they were one of the animals in line fearing for their life and then in an instant it is lights out, or even worse one can still feel the pain as death lingers? A person needs to try to understand what these animals go through. For example, “industrial farm chickens are raised in enormous and crowded sheds may never see the outdoors and exhibit abnormal behavior” (cspinet.org). This is not how animals need to be treated. This is sickening and something needs to be done to prevent this problem. No animal should suffer like this. Do not think they are just animals, so why should I care. Take their place and feel the abuse they feel. These animals live in horrendous living conditions. Not only are the living conditions horrible, but one can read about how the animals are treated in these facilities. “Layer hens live in tiny cages, are debeaked, and are periodically starved to maximize egg production” (cspinet.org). This is just one example as to how these animals are treated. The abuse continues with these further examples: “breeding sows (female pigs) spend their entire lives in tiny metal crates so they cannot turn around, shortly after giving birth; they are once again forcibly impregnated, this cycle continues for years until their bodies finally gives up and they are sent to be killed” (animalsuffering.com). Still another example is that with cows. “Before they are hung up by their back legs and bleed to death, the cattle needs to be rendered unconscious. This 'stunning' is usually done by a mechanical blow to the head, but as the procedure is terribly imprecise, adequate stunning isn't acquired a lot of times. As a result, conscious animals are often hung upside down, kicking and struggling, while a slaughterhouse worker makes another attempt to render them unconscious. Eventually, the animals will be "stuck" in the throat with a knife, and blood will gush from their bodies whether or not they are unconscious” (animalsuffering.com). What is it that needs to be done in order for this abuse to stop? There are many things that could be done to help the animal abuse to stop. The one thing that should be done is for people to adopt a lifestyle as a vegetarian or the latter a vegan. This is a huge step towards a better world in which animals will no longer be abused, or at least the rate at which animals are abused or killed will drop. For those reading this, the question that needs to be answered is: will changing my diet to vegetarian be helpful to my health, or will it hinder it? There are many answers to this question. Answering the first part is a cinch. If one plans on becoming a vegetarian, it will change their diet and their health, but for the better. “Choosing a non-vegetarian lifestyle has a significant health and medical cost. The total direct medical costs in the United States attributable to meat consumption were estimated to be $30-60 billion a year, based upon the higher prevalence of hypertension, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, gallstones, obesity and food-borne illness among omnivores compared with vegetarians” (Craig par. 2). A person could read this and they would instantly want to become a vegetarian because of that paragraph. It shows that adopting a new lifestyle will make a difference in one’s health. This alone has increased an interest of becoming a vegetarian. One can look around and see magazines, cookbooks, and books about being a vegetarian. It has become a fad, among all. Whether it is becoming a vegetarian or adopting the concept of “Meatless Monday’s”. In Tempe, Arizona there is a restaurateur by the name of Damon Brasch who is an advocate for animal rights and lives a vegan lifestyle. He says “I want to show people that a vegan diet isn’t so weird” (Kearney). There is much to know about a vegetarian lifestyle. Such things as how to prepare a vegetarian meal and different kinds of foods someone could eat can be easily found in magazines and cookbooks. Not only does being a vegetarian have an effect on one’s health, it also helps to protect the environment. “In Livestock’s Long Shadow, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions is attributable to the total life-cycle of livestock production” (Weiss 636). Someone might be wondering about how this could be. The answer is this, cow’s produce methane which is a greenhouse gas, and with more cows comes more methane. This is why the number is relatively higher than some might expect. Imagine if even half of the U.S. decided to not eat meat, how it would effect the environment and animal rights. That by itself is a justifiable reason for becoming a vegetarian. In a unique way by changing a person’s eating lifestyle we not only save an animal, but save our lives as well. Becoming a vegetarian would not only help one’s health, the environment and most importantly the animals themselves. It is a complete triple whammy. It may not be simple for some, but for others it is just a matter of dumping the meat and picking up a vegetable.

Kings and Queens

“Into the night, desperate and broken, the sound of a fight, father has spoken”. These lyrics ring in my head as I write this paper. We were told to pick a song and write a six page story about the song. Well I didn’t know how to start this paper, but I figured starting with some lyrics from the song I chose would be appropriate. I picked “Kings and Queens” by 30 Seconds to Mars. This song to me is the anthem to today’s youth. These lyrics stick in your mind and make you realize we aren’t all as strong as we think we are. I figured this song meant something to me because to me it is telling me to get up and take a stand and fight for what I believe in. It doesn’t matter if you think you are going to Heaven or Hell, what matters is how you live your life.
We are all Kings and Queens we can stand up and take a fight, we might not always win, but we can still say we took a stand. I use to listen to this song while riding my bike down a trail by myself. It made me feel infinite. Riding my bike with no hands on the handlebars and letting the wind rush past you. It felt like I could do anything. This story might not be the greatest one, but it will let you know how songs can make you feel infinite like there is nothing that can bring you down. Let me know what you think after reading this paper if you can tell where I am coming from. Let me take you back to a time where I wasn’t feeling like I was infinite where I was in a hole and couldn’t get out of it. “We were the kings and queens of promise; we were the victims of ourselves, maybe the children of a lesser god, between Heaven and Hell, Heaven and Hell”.

Beginning on your senior year is never easy. You never know what is going to happen and you know that soon you are going to be out of high school and onto college. You might never see the friends you made in high school again. You might come across the one you love or the love lost. High school is about a lot of if’s and buts’, but you might find that it is full of a lot of reassurance and knowing that you are going to make it somewhere someday. Tell me if you ever felt like you were never going anywhere and you felt like a loner, like a person that didn’t belong. I’m sure a lot of your answers will be that you have felt like that. If you haven’t felt that way well lucky for you. The beginning of my senior year felt like a lot of if’s and buts’. I didn’t know where I was going or whether I was going to make it out alive. I would always tell myself that I would make it. I guess my thoughts were wrong. I never thought that I would be the one to want to escape everything by committing suicide.
I guess I was just a loser who had no friends and could never escape from the rut that I was in. Now that I look back I couldn’t have been more wrong. I had friends there with me I was just pushing them all away. “Into your eyes hopeless and taken we stole our new lives through blood and pain in defense of our dreams”. I keep telling myself that I can finish this six page story, but I am not to sure. If I don’t the worse that can happen is I get a lower score. Anyways back to what I was talking about. I started my senior year unlike the rest of my friends. They all had hopes and dreams and all I had was depression and sleeping issues. I felt like a complete and utter moron, never wanting to do anything or to try to help myself out of the depression. I just sat there and thought about how bad my life was. Even though in reality it wasn’t bad at all. I was the one making it bad for myself.
“The age of man is over the darkness comes and all these lessons that we've learned here have only just begun”. Learning a lesson can be a hard thing to do. I had to learn the lesson of how to get out of being depressed so I don’t go and do something stupid like shooting myself in the head. Lessons that we learn we learn everyday. I was going to learn the hard way that I was just another idiotic suicide maniac, who was going to take the easy way out. Going back to what I was first saying is that my senior year up until about four months ago completely sucked. I never slept and I got more and more depressed. It showed in my school work and in my social life. I never wanted to do anything and everything I wrote for creative writing was completely maniacal and it reflected what I was feeling inside. If you never read some of my work then you wouldn’t know what I am talking about. If you had read my stories you would know that in a lot of them I would kill people in the stories for no reason.
I guess I thought that I wanted to kill the different parts of myself. I felt as if there were tiny parts inside of me that were making me the way I was. Little did I know that it was just a chemical imbalance that made me not sleep and made me depressed, the thoughts of suicide that was a different story. God this paper is hard to write. I don’t know how many more times I can go on talking about how I was depressed and wanted to kill myself. I know though that this paper will be a good one and will maybe touch some hearts of the people who took the time to read it and would take the time to understand what I was going through. I just hope that those people do take the time, since I am taking the time to write this paper, not just so I get a good grade, but because I want people to know that they aren’t the only ones who fell this way. I lot of people feel the way you feel or the way I felt. You aren’t alone in this fight.

Now I really have no clue as to what to write for the last pages of this story. All I can say is that I want to start talking about another song by 30 Seconds to Mars, but I don’t think that is allowed. In the last sentence of the last paragraph I told you that you are not alone in the fight against depression. It is true you aren’t alone. Just remember that we are all kings and queens and we can fight this fight. I have to say writing this story has made me see just how long it has taken me to fully understand myself and to see that there are people to help. It has also shown me how far I have come and how far I am going to go. I am now the one with hopes and dreams. I am a king and I will fight the fight of depression all the way to the day that I die. “We were the kings and queens of promise; we were the victims of ourselves, maybe the children of a lesser god, between Heaven and Hell, Heaven and Hell”. These lyrics still to this day make me feel infinite that I can accomplish anything. I don’t know if you feel the same way, but I hope that you do, because it is a really great feeling.
It might not be the same for you, but for me riding down that bike trail with my arms up and me singing along to the song with the wind rushing past me made me feel as if I could do anything that I wanted to. I hope that someday you could maybe feel infinite. Maybe a song will come up while you’re driving and you turn it up and you feel happy because you know that you can do what you want. You can feel happy or sad or just be completely mellow. This song means so much to me and I am wondering if you are feeling what I am feeling right now which is happiness. I am happy I can finally talk about the feelings I use to have. I am also very happy that you can take the time out of your schedule and read a high school kids paper on his depression. Thank you very much.

Stack of Papers

I'm inches away from being shredded. My life is about to be ripped apart. My pieces will be forever washed away in a bin. I try to think of a way to get out of here. I don't know how I can get out of here. Maybe a breeze will let me float away. But there is no window open. I start to panic and get frantic. Any minute now I will be gone. Torn away by blades and forgotten. I start to believe that death will be a good thing for me. It will be like an adventure. I can venture into the unknown haven. I could maybe have some of myself still alive. I begin to feel hope, hope that I can stay alive through all of this. That I won't be forgotten. I feel a hand on me and then it goes away. Why didn't they shred me already? My hope turns to joy I won't be shredded! They will forget all about me. But wait isn't that what I'm afraid of, being forgotten. This is starting to make no sense to me. My thoughts race back and forth. From hope to sadness, hope that I won't be torn and ripped apart and that I won't be forgotten. Sadness for the exact opposite. I pray for some reason that if this is what has to happen to me that I will never be forgotten. I feel a breeze from an open window and I feel myself getting picked up. Then I hear the noise of the shredder being turned on. I feel myself being torn into pieces. Then I feel nothing.

I sit waiting and listening to everything going on around me. I hear the laughter and the different voices of people as they come near me. I sit there wishing that I could speak to them and share my feelings with them. As I wait for someone to hold me, I think to myself as soon as someone takes a hold of me a part of my life will be taken away from me with every sip she will take. It makes me want to shed a tear thinking that that is all she will want from me is to take away sip by sip and never give back.Though I am but a can of soda, I still think and feel like a human. Suddenly she comes near me and I want to reach out for her and have her hold me in her hand, but as her hand draws nearer to me I know what she wants, I know that as soon as that cold greasy hand picks me up that she will take that first sip and keep sipping and sipping away until there is nothing left. I want to get away but I know I can’t. Her hand comes closer to me and I feel that dirty hand grab me and pick me up and I start to feel my body tipping. She then lets go off me and sets me down. I feel safe for now, but what is to come is imminent. I hear her footsteps coming and I sense that she wants to pick me up again and this time I won’t be so lucky. I listen to her heavy breathing and I know that wicked hand is coming to get me. I want her hand to hold me, but I don’t want it to take away from me like so many hands before. The fingers are closing in around me and I feel that sweaty palm, I feel myself tipping once again and I know this is it. The carbonated goodness starts to spill out from me, I feel at once lighter and I know she isn’t going to stop until I am gone. The last drops of my life are being finished and there is nothing I can do to prevent it.