Chapter 1: Hello. My name is Charlie.

I never really know how to start something like this.

Whether it was a homework assignment that I had 3-months to finish and started the night before, or if it's an entry in a blog I created no less than 10 minutes ago, I still find difficulty.

My English teacher Ms. Kettwig always told me to grab your reader by their throat as soon as they start reading, and never relinquish that grasp until your piece is finished. I never really imagined my writing having that quality; being able to keep someone so immersed into my writing that they'd never want it to stop.

Maybe that's why I stopped writing.
And maybe that's why I decided to start again. To rise up from the ashes, like the phoenix; fire burning with intensity in its belly, and create something so astounding that any person who happens upon this, may shudder and feel the immense weight of its power and realise the awesome potential within.

Or perhaps...

I'll start with a blog, and see where that takes me.

Either way, I'm going to tell stories, I'm going to speak my mind, and I'm going to grow; as a writer and as a human being. I always felt like something was missing from my very simple, yet complicated life. And this may possibly fill that void, or another void that has been empty for nearly far too long. On another note, I just realised you have no idea who I am.

My name is Charlie. It's not my birth-given name, but it is a name that I've adapted to and made my own. I use my real name, which isn't Charlie, just for "serious" things, like bills and job applications, but I like using my "nickname", even though it was never deemed my "nickname" by anyone except myself. As I grew older, that being 13 years old and on, I always felt like I was 3 people in one body.

There was the person I was at school, the person behind closed doors and the person who yelled and screamed and pouted when he didn't get his way. Charlie is the person who came out of that whole part of my life. I found my love for photography, music, and writing in that period of my life, which are the 3 most important things to me, besides my family and friends. Eventually I found that I wasn't schizophrenic or losing my mind, as I once thought, but with a few counselors and my doctor's help I found that I was bipolar. Come to think of it, I did a report on manic-depressives in 9th grade. Huh. Just remembered that. Anyway!

My point is that I was living a double life, multiple actually. Everyone nowadays it seems is living a double life or lying all the time about their lives, myself included. We even steal each other's own identities. Of course this isn't news to anyone, we know it's going on and continue to let it fall by the way side.

What if though...

One day it happens to you and suddenly you're the victim now, you scream, "WHY WON'T ANYBODY HELP ME? I'VE BEEN RAPED AND SODOMISED, PLEASE SOMEONE!" But no one's listening. They're all like you: averting gaze, muting everything around you, except for what is important to you and what you have your sights set on. The cycle repeats itself, day-in-and-day-out.

I hear you saying, "What about you 'CHARLIE'? I know that's not your real name!" Believe me, I know I'm a hypocrite, preaching about double lives and being raped, while I sit here in my room, still living at home, typing away at a laptop that is only 1/4 of the way paid off, working a dead end job at slightly more than minimum wage, yearning to be the next great Photographer in TIME or in National Geographic, but enrolling in college and sitting around hoping that it will happen is the way I think it's really going to happen. SPOILER ALERT: It's not how the world works. I know that, I'm just lazy, and you all know it too, but you're lazy like me. That's why you're reading my blog and I'm writing it. We've become a nation of consumers and that's about it.

There's nothing you can really say to defend it, especially me. I weight 310 pounds and I've been "fat" most of my goddamn life. I always complain about being overweight, yet I never go to the gym, eat the right foods, and continue to consume candy and soda like there's no tomorrow.

But I want to change, I really, really do. I want to make my generation be the one that people see in 40 years and say we were the ones who flipped the way that the world was going, that they saw the light and shined those lights, ever so brightly upon the rest of the world, but with Eco-friendly light bulbs of course, as to not piss of Al Gore. You get on his bad side and he'll send Leonardo DiCaprio on yo' ass.

Sarcasm and humor aside, I love America and I love the people in it. America is the dictionary definition of a melting pot. It's absolutely ridiculous how many diverse people there are here. People even sneak across our borders daily, just to get a shot at it, to find that "American Way" we always hear about. Whether we like it or not people, we're all interconnected. What you do in your life will eventually impact someone else. We all have the same hometown as well; Earth. What you do to it and in it eventually impacts someone else the same. If we're not careful, we will lose it. If we lose the earth, we lose each other, we lose our heritage and we lose everything we thought was valid.

Many of you do not think how I do, and that's what's awesome. We as Americans have the right, to say what we want and vote for who we want in office. I consider myself a republican of sorts. I consider myself a democrat of sorts. I don't want to choose a side, simply because there are those who would ridicule me for simply being a democrat or say that I was dumb and stupid for simply being a republican. I believe there is a god, but I don't believe that Jesus was a real person. I like chocolate WAY more than vanilla, but both of them together is a treat to my taste buds.

But I think Bob Ross, my favorite painter of all time, said it best, "This world's all we got boy... We need to stick together."