Comfort Zone

Rhett's Journal

Dear diary,

Gosh, that sounds stupid. Let me start off by saying, I'm not writing this of my own free will.

Ever since my parent's divorce seven months ago, things have been pretty hectic. My mom won custody of me, because my dad can't hold a job to save his life, but after the summer she decided that she didn't want to put up with me anymore. She never really wanted me in the first place, but what would her friends think if she didn't fight to save her child from her evil ex? So the second I became too much to handle she had no problem shipping me off to some Podunk town in Texas to live with my dad, his sister, and her daughter.

Don't get me wrong, I love Aunt Amy and Arabella, but my dad? He's a mess. He can't ever settle on one job, he dropped out of college when my mom got pregnant with me and he started working in real-estate. She was two years older and had already graduated. He's always resented her for that.

When I was fourteen he decided that he hated being a real-estate agent. So he quite his cushy job and went out in search of happiness. The problem is, he couldn't seem to find it. So he bounced around so much that my mom finally had enough and filed the divorce papers.

That, and the fact that he cheated on her. Granted, I'm sure that she cheated on him too, they never had a super happy marriage, but it was his job hopping and his infidelity with none other than my mother's best friend that finally ended it.

I guess neither of them are great parents, but they're the cards I've been dealt.

Anyways, back to the reason I'm writing all of this down in this stupid thing. After the divorce my dad hightailed it out of New York. He got a job laying dry wall in Berkley, Texas and moved in with my Aunt. Maybe that's another reason I'm so mad at him. He left me.

He left me with just my mom. She can't cook for shit (my dad always did that) and her job as a lawyer at a fancy law firm takes up the majority of her time. So, she mostly just left me by myself with a wad of cash for food. Except, I didn't spend it on food. I spent it on whatever kind of drugs I could get my hands on, weed, Vicodin, ADHD medication, never hard stuff, like heroin or meth, just anything to take my mind off my mess of a life.

I started hanging with a new crowd, people far less judgment than my old friends, who didn't know how to handle themselves around me now that my seemingly perfect life had fallen apart. With them, I started going to wild parties, drinking, hooking up with girls, and getting high.

One day, me and a couple of my buddies were smoking some joints down over by the neighborhood park when we heard sirens. The police cuffed us, put us in the back of their squad car, and took us to the station. I have never seen my mother look as disappointed as she did when she picked me up that night. Her perfect, straight A student son, wasn't as perfect as she thought.

The next morning she told me I was moving to my dad's. I put up a hell of a fight, but it didn't matter. She had made up her mind.

She claims that it was to get me away from the crowd I was hanging with and all the drug exposure. I know the real reason, though. She thinks I'm too much trouble.

So now, not only am I living with my dad and his family , thousands of miles away from home, but my dad has insisted on getting me therapy.

He claims the divorce was too hard on me and that I need some help working through my feelings.

Again, I put up quite a fight, but no one ever listens to me. I went this morning and the guy was a total joke (I know you said you wouldn't read this Mr. Fredrickson, but I don't believe you and hope you read that). He said that he wanted me to write down my feelings everyday and sort through them. As if I don't already know what's going on inside my own head.