Chaos can start with a simple beer bottle, and a foolish man. Once the bottle is empty the chaos breaks loose. A man coming home from some foreign place we never knew, yelling and screaming, yet trying to pull me to his side make me tell him that I loved him. Right then and there, did I? After all, he threw people around on the couches, and slammed the door enclosing all the stress there leaving it for us to deal with. “Why is Daddy doing this?”, I kept thinking to myself. “He has been doing this for so long that I think I might just fall into the deepest darkest place that hell will find for me to dwell in misery.”

When I go back to school everything is all hazy; my friends voices are muffled and hard to understand. I imagined that I was hiking in the desert, and someone was trying to tell me to keep walking and that my home was just a few hundred miles more. Really? Why is my home all the way out in the middle of the desert? Maybe because the metaphorical heat was the tension, stress, and sweat of our family. The distance between us and every other family was intended to keep the noise away from everyone, so they wouldn't be disturbed. They got to sleep and I stayed up and had to witness the event.

I'm now sitting in class staring blankly at the whiteboard as the teacher drew lines that made no sense whatsoever to me. They all looked so weird in my mind. Suddenly, the lines came to life. They moved, morphing into a picture. A beautiful picture, a picture of a dog; then the dog snapped at me. I woke up from my fantasy. The teacher had called my name.

“Do you?” he said.

“Um... Do I what?” I asked

A ripple of laughter was directed at me. My eyes had a fiery glare towards everyone. “How could you? Why is everyone mean to me?” I thought.

We finally went outside. Forming cliques was our thing. Telling other people that they couldn’t play football with them or even go to the same playset. That’s how bad it was. A wannabe “bad kid” group walked up to me.

“Hey stupid”, which was the normal phrase they would use to start picking on someone. “Wanna show us how stupid you are” They smiled with a nasty grin

“Brush your teeth and leave me alone!” I yelled in his face. He wasn't too big, infact I could fight him. We both glared. I knew he didn't want trouble they just wanted to make me feel bad about me. He brushed his shirt and left. I ran to the very far swing set where people usually go when they are sad. Most people called it the place for losers; others called it a hangout because sometimes people would come here and talk.

There was this other kid that was there sometimes. I would watch him get bullied and called a wuss in front of everyone, but I never did anything to help. He was the new kid, no wonder. I asked for his name he looked up and said Cameron. I did have friends myself but not very many. It felt like all my friends were being taken away from me by the popular group. Except for one, Chance, He was always there to hang out with when I wanted to. It wouldn't last long though because I'm going into 5th grade and Chance leaves next year. But this would be a great time to make friends with Cameron because we were both sort of the losers. We could be great friends I knew it! But how would I start?

Well it took me about a year to establish a friendship with him. Now I'm in 5th grade, and we are the best of friends! The first time we hung out was over the summer at a place called Town Center. It was a cool place or the hangout place for the middle schoolers. We still went there anyways even though the older kids didn't want us there. We did what we wanted. We went over to his house later to play my new favorite game called Left 4 Dead, which was a game about zombies. It was awesome, it was amazing, it was pure me! I couldn't wait to race over to Cameron’s house. I demanded for an Xbox now, the only game system that could play it. I stayed away from my home as much as I could to ignore that dreadful place. Some days were so bad that sometimes we didn't even go to school because my dad was sleeping out a legendary hangover and my mom was at work. We stayed home and caught up with homework we didn't do. Once we finished I would go play The Legend of Zelda on my Nintendo 64, and all my siblings would watch my impressive skills at trying to complete a level. On the days we could come to school, I would be dropped off by a green van that said Ebay in big font on the side. People always made fun of the car we had. I thought it was cool, but if they didn't then I wanted my old car back. The one that was stolen by some dumb people. It was the best car we had. The sound of the crankshaft pushing up into the combustion chamber and making a boom! Plus the exhaust made it sound like a racecar. Why would they do that?, I thought.

“Hey!” My mom called from the hollow wall’s of the house. “Were going to the library do you want to come?”

“Why not? I have nothing else to do it this house” I thought.

When my family and I got there, we split up. I fled to the art section. I found a drawing book. I loved it! It had drawings of magnificent cartoons and dragons. It had all the things that I could even think of and more! I took it home and instantaneously started looking for a roaming pencil that lay on the floor of my room that was yet to be uncovered by the things that didn't have a place to live. Once I got to work, there was no telling when I would stop. I loved drawing! I adored it even more than race cars, more than Left 4 Dead, more than the memories of my bunnies. I didn't feel bad about myself anymore! The thoughts all seemed to fall onto my paper and turned into my drawings, yet, every time I looked at them they would breath fire at me or the people would yell at me and swear at me, so I shut the sketch book never to be heard from again.

Another one of those nights. My dad had not yet returned, and it was late too. We tried to go to sleep quickly so when he came home wasted he would just pass out on the couch, and we wouldn't have to go to school the next day. We were too slow he returned. It was silent. He looked at us we looked at him. He looked mad, crazy, mislead by his thoughts from the alcohol. He walked toward us but fumbled, and fell onto the ground making the mail fly into the air twirling to the ground. He recovered and stood back up. He smelled nasty! He grabbed my mom and lifted her and threw her onto the couch. “Wow, I never knew my dad was that strong!” I thought. He yelled at her and screamed while we watched. My siblings ran to their rooms. I however, sprinted right out the door. The cool air raiding my warm skin giving me goosebumps. My pajamas rubbed on my thighs and made it feel staticy all over my legs. I was barefoot, which made it seem even more cold. I ran to the park right across the street. I kept running and didn't stop. It was about an hour’s worth of running because it was a little over 8 o'clock and I came back at around 9 o'clock. Everyone was silent except for my mom. She was crying and had purple bruises on her arms and hand marks on her wrists. No one even came to get me when I ran.

My feet were so sore and cut up from the sidewalk, broken glass, and pebbles I stepped on from running last night. We had P.E and we had to do fitness testing and everyone voted the mile. “Why? Why? Why! Come on, please, why does this always happen to me? Why does everyone always seem to be against me sometimes? Fine, be like that, life! Be brutal, be tough. This will only make me stronger and make me stand firm. I gave it my best, yet I knew my scabs and cuts had reopened and bleed again in my white socks. I ran an eight minute mile. I thought that was pretty good, but others did better. I limped around the whole day. People laughed at me and called me a wuss because they thought that I was a wimp and that I couldn't handle just one mile. They were shorter than me I could easily tackle them and spit in their face, even though I never did I thought I could, but maybe just maybe, I was a wimp. Maybe I couldn't handle it.

When I got home, I started drawing. Then I was crying. My paper was wet and my picture was smudged. I ran out again for what seemed an hour. I didn't do any homework because that night I drew and ran, opening my cuts even more and pushing the limits of creativity. Who knew what action was next. Eventually, I realized that I had to stop running or my feet would lose too much blood. I just drew, and drew and drew never knowing when to stop. I wore my body so much that I passed out on my bed at 6 o'clock.

I woke up the next morning and it was, 7:45! I was going to be late for school, but no one was up. My dad was passed out, and I knew what happened already. My dad came home way late and was now in a hangover. I didn't bother him, so I went back to bed and dreamt of a perfect family/ we had no problems, we were happy, we didn't hit each other for toys and whose was what. suddenly a tornado came and swept it all away, Like a great paragraph abruptly ending. Then I was with my real Family. They all turned into scary monsters trying to get me. I ran in my dream and then as I ran people who told me I a was wuss and a wimp and weak were on the sidelines chanting:“Wuss! Wimp! Weak!

I cried running faster and faster until I ran out the door and the sun woke me up. It was my brother.

“Wake up! Lets play!” He yelled.

“Okay...” I grumbled. I never forgot that dream, nor will I ever get the chant out of my head.

Eventually, My parents got a restraining order on each other and my Dad left to a Hotel. Now I'm 13, my drawing continued. I lost all the drawings I had when my Father was an alcoholic. I didn't give much care to them, but now I hang them up on my wall and look at them whenever I enter my small room. I also became faster and faster every mile. I started to run the Bolder Boulder with friends. We have a running group of three, and we would run places and time each other. We just had fun. Right when I completely forgot about the problems that occurred earlier in my life, they came back to haunt me. One day after school on a Tuesday I come home and my mother talked to us about our Dad. She just goes on and on until she eventually says: “Well me and your dad have had a divorce for about a year now I just wanted you guys to know that.”

‘’So we've been lied to? They never told us that they had gotten a divorce?’’ I got up and stormed to my room. I got out my sketchbook and drew. The lines I drew seemed to not make sense at first, then I shaped them into a dragon drawing that I remembered I had seen while looking at Leonardo Da Vinci art online. I started to cry, it had been not too long since the last time I cried, earlier this year my dog had died. She was hit by a car and didn't make it. I remember feeling her hair for the last time and feeling her wet slippery lick that I always called kisses. “Man all these bad things have been happening to me lately,” I thought to myself and sniffed, “ What's next?” I named the drawing Leonardo Da Vinci, then closed the book, looking up at the ceiling imagining my dog running after a squirrel in heaven. I smiled, closed my eyes and said: “You will always be in my heart.”