A REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE- GETTING OUT OF THE SHELL

(…sometime in April… back home)

The sky gets dark everyday these days. It’s abnormal they say on TV, rainy season is coming early. I love how it creates an atmosphere of worry among people. They run for cover like water droplets could kill. It’s beautiful actually when you think of it. Standing at the roof top of this apartment at the side of La Trinidad Valley, people look like ants running for shelter when it happens. Some say it’s the tears of the sky coz of people’s harshness towards nature… blah, blah, blah… Whatever it is that’s not the reason I’m clicking on my keyboard.

I see myself on how kids behave I see around, at the park, on the road and in the bars. Rebels they say! So I am, a rebel… but that is before I realize it’s an act of pussy boys and attention-seeking gurlz. I don’t feel good looking at these creatures but I understand why. I guess I’ve been thru what they’ve had one way or another. But I blame no one but myself now.
I was emotionally disenfranchised because I cannot achieve the standards of my dad’s competitive calling. He brought us up in a very creative old school way… reward and punishment. I don’t remember much of reward then, dude! I’m hard-headed kid… hehehe. At school I’m doing well but fear is all around me, not just at home. I was the smallest boy in the room back then and anyone could just spank me in the head and I wouldn’t complain or fight back. Elementary days went good though with perfect attendance from grades 1 to 6. My thinking became violent but never put it into action, somehow. That place is so small to do some wrecking!!!

Head-spank is over after graduation and I left my old place for hi-school. Dude! The place is quite big, I see kids I know I can be with, punks! I sneak out of the house at night if my dad is not around. Wow! The feeling man... Belongingness! These dudes are the people I really wanna be with. Man, I learned a lot. Petty crimes, chasing along the road with other groups, fist fight under the bridge and at the back of the school blg… lucky I never got a black –eye or else daddy would hit me when I get home, hematoma is all over my body though. Not long when I got kicked out and got transferred to a Catholic school. Surprise! My first time to enter a church! Dude! I don’t know what I’m doing!!! I’m so freakin’ funny that day, damn!

I believe violent teens are failures. Some are failures to achieve, due to learning problems, lack of physical prowess, or "emotional problems." Others are failures to "fit in" to an inhuman social structure. They call them (US actually) failures, implicitly, and then wonder why we are angry and discontent. People around tell that we are not good enough, hold before us the bleak prospects of a future that is not good enough, and then send us to counselors to learn self-esteem and positive thinking then hopingly we become a whole well rounded person. I guess that’s disengaging us from society, and then wonder why we are antisocial... what's up with these people...