The best relationship of my life has just found it’s way to the end. It wasn’t the longest; only 11 weeks and two days, or 79 days or 1,896 hours, which seems like so much time when I actually put it all into perspective.

See, I haven’t ever found too much reliance in other people. I think it’s interesting how the school systems and parents all are always constantly breathing down your neck to spend time with the “good influences,” the perfect role model. I would regain faith if such a thing ever came into existence. I think that’s why what I had with you was special. As little as you know, I am not the luckiest person on the planet. I am lucky enough to have a family who loves me and a roof under my hood but that is where it stops. I think I play the tormented artist role very well. It took me almost 18 years of my life to find any friends that I could find dependable, and even they have their problems. But something awful happened to me my first year, such a strange circumstance that in fact turned my entire world upside down. The worst part is that when it’s something that myself did cause there is no way to turn it around. It’s like dropping a bomb and finally seeing what it does in the aftermath. I think because of that I became a stronger person. You learn who really cares bout you, and at the time it was nobody.

Nobody?

Really, that can’t be.

But I dare you to go through two years of your life going unnoticed, having nobody to depend on other than your kin. No friends. The only person I could really open up to was my tennis coach. He was a family friend and I always talked to him about my life problems, because unlike my parents he could help me without me having to feel judged by my family. Out ofthe blue, he passed away January of my freshman year.

So there, as a sophomore I actually don’t think I talked to people. It’s funny though because people make fun of you for being quiet. Really? It’s funny that I go home and sit doing nothing with nobody to talk to? Nobody to vent to, nobody willing to listen to what I have to say?

Then I learned how to write. I mean, of course, I always knew how to write. I was always good at dragging my pencil across my paper, making words. But, I found an outlet; songwriting.

It’s funny because whenever people ask when I started, I relate it to middle school, because that’s when I wrote my first song. But I think my career (if I can call it that) took off my sophomore year with my song I played at my first show, called “Pull You Down.” It was mostly about the necessity of someone in my life, one of those “good influences.” Just somebody to talk to. To know somebody would be there, and someone would always be there. To know that for once in my life someone else could look at me and want to venture into the unknown with me; to be there with me through every circumstance that time would provide us with. That explains by neediness. I have grown up on my own for the most part, making the most out of my abilities and my disabilities.

I think I found something there.

For the rest of that year, I would continue to write and eventually start posting stuff online and making CDs for the few people who cared. Then it get’s ridiculous. I have never been ridiculed or made fun of me in my life other than those two years. It is actually crazy to think about how much I was picked on when I started releasing music. I had never thought anything bad about myself, as I said look how deep my song could be! It was my life, it meant everything, it was the only friend I had. But when you get criticized it puts you down, it creates something within you that nobody on this planet has ever wanted to live with; insecurity. Thinking that I was on my own and now had to live for the pleasure of others, was an odd change that I never would have expected.

I remember coming home crying from school one day because of something someone said to me about one of my YouTube videos, I ended up deleting my account and taking everything down so that nothing would ever happen again.

I remember my dad, who must have heard me, came into my room. He told me something that will stick with me for the rest of my life.

Hey, Matthew. I don’t know why you’re so upset. If you’re doing something to please someone else, you might as well not do it at all. The thoughts are yours, the creativity is yours. The dream is yours, if you let them take your dream, they will. Don’t.

I think that is the wisest thing anyone has ever said to me. But still, now this is where my “oversensitivity” (as you would put it) originates. But I learned then, and I follow suit now. Live for me and only me. Those words carried me through sophomore year, through junior year, and now I sit a lonely senior. Still needing the same things. Someone to be there, and always be there. So maybe it makes me a little bit of a hassle sometimes, but aren’t I worth it? Is that such a big problem in the time span of 1,896 hours? Is it that difficult to accept?

Nobody’s perfect. Perfection isn’t even perfect, as we all perceive it differently. I know nobody’s perfect, I ask my BEST FRIENDS now if they knew who I was as a sophomore, and they say no with all honesty. I don’t understand.

And I realize that absolutely none of that had to do with you, maybe it’s all me. Maybe I need to find who I once became. Am I losing sight of it all? No, not at all. I know my place. I know where I fit. I dare anyone to make fun of my voice that sounds “worse than a thousand cats with glass in their throats drowning” (first youtube comment I ever recieved) when my album comes out. I dare someone to tell me my place in this world, and to tell me I’m doing something wrong, or just anyone to tell me how to live my life!

That is where you come in. I was so happy the entire time, but yet you had this drive to push me away. As if I was something you didn’t want, or I didn’t live up to the standards you set so high for yourself. I can’t be who anyone else wants me to be, because I’ve tried it. I lived it. I was tortured by it. And when you put that wall up, that wall that barrier I questioned if I was doing it right… and that brings back the old me; the one with the insecurities, and the necessities. I think that you have it in your head though that that needs changing, like that is something about me that causes problems or hurts you or whatever. But it doesn’t. It just explains how I need people, someone, you.

I needed love, sheltering, guidance.

I need your strengths to give me strength, your love to let me love. Your openness to let me open up. Your honesty to force me to be truthful. That was all I needed, and that is all I would ever need.

I needed you, not just anybody.

My biggest regret is not being able to say that, not being able to say goodbye, not being able to find those words, but I found them now.

I’m sorry if I ever hurt you by not being perfect.

My flaws are my flaws, and I own up to them.

Your place in my heart will always be there.