Dallas

My name is Dallas and I was born on January 21st, 1981. I must say it was a great day. My parents saw me and said that the world will be a better place because I was born. Yeah, right! For the first few years of my life we lived in the countryside. I liked living on a farm. We had two dogs, some horses, and it was always so quiet there. One day we just picked up and moved to a small town in Oklahoma. I still don't know why; my parents just said it was the right thing to do.
The first day of school was the worst day of my life. Being the new kid in town, I had no friends and felt like an outsider. Even tough I didn't have a knack for it right away, I tried my hand at soccer. I figured it was a good way to make some friends. After that things started to look up a bit. Then my parents divorced. I was still pretty young, so I didn't understand the problems in our family. My dad tried to explain it to me, but I didn't understand. My mom moved to Oklahoma City, so I stayed with my dad. I would visit my mom on most weekends, and I liked going to see her; she would always have candy for me. Then, one day, I was told that she was very sick and had to have two operations. She steadily got worse for about a year and a half. I was twelve when I found out that she had cancer of the lungs. I really didn't know how serious her condition could become. Three months later she died. I felt a immense sadness, but also a sense of relief because I knew that her pain and suffering was over. I missed her very much.
I became very depressed. When my grades took a turn for the worse, my dad took me to see a counselor. It helped a little, but not as much as this girl I met. Kara took me away from the sad memories and brought some light into my life. I was in seventh grade and things were starting to look up.
When I was 13, I got selected to play on a traveling soccer team. We went all over the United States. The bad part was that my grades continued to slump with no hope of improvement. It was at this point that my dad and step mom (dad had remarried after the divorce) decided to send me to military school. Of course, I protested (ok, kicking and screaming is more like it), but I also knew that I needed this swift kick to get my GPA up. I had plans of playing soccer in college, and with my poor academic performance so far, it didn't look like I'd get there without it.
The first few day were pure hell on earth. Everyone was yelling and telling me what to do. And, no matter what I did, nothing was right. There were younger boys who, by the fact that they had been there longer, were ordering me around. One of the good things about the place was that it had a soccer team. It wasn't much; just a bunch of other misfits trying to kick a ball around, but, now I could work on getting my grades up and still play the game I love. One of the toughest things was to be separated from Kara. We were now in the ninth grade.
The Military School had a student body that consisted of Junior High Students all the way through two years of college. And, before too long I had gotten to know some older guys who were sent to this place because of their drug and alcohol habits back home. Being at this school didn't change this, it just moved it to a different location. It was incredible how easily these guys were able to access whatever they wanted. Of course, they peer pressured me into partaking of their recreational habits. Now, I wasn't a virgin to the illegal stuff, but I soon learned to like the escape it provided for me. It made my time apart from Kara go by faster.
Then, one day in October, the platoon leader, found some marijuana in my dresser. No one had ever checked my room like that before. I was totally convinced someone narced me out. In any case, the Commandant dealt a severe blow to me...no more soccer. I was also restricted to campus for the remainder of the fall semester, but that didn't phase me as much as not getting to play anymore. One of the positive things that came out of being confined to my room, was that my grades started to improve. They improved so much that my dad decided that I could return home after the school year. My troubles were over. I could play soccer again and be with Kara again. Except that Kara had other ideas. The long separation caused us to grow apart and she found some new friends to hang out with. I reacted by turning to that recreational habit that had left me comfortably numb at military school. The guys I hung around with weren't the sharpest tools in the shed, but they knew how to have a good time and they knew where to get things.
I was sixteen now, and, once again, my dad threatened to send me back to the military school if I didn't clean up my act. I played the part perfectly. My grades were good and I didn't stay out past curfew. Of course, that didn't mean that I stopped partying. I just got more and more clever about hiding it. By now, my soccer playing days were virtually over. It was difficult to maintain the lifestyle I led and keep my fitness up at the same time...something had to go.
It was a warm spring day and my "friends" and I decided to skip the afternoon classes to do some geese hunting. One of the guys had a father who was an avid hunter and had plenty of guns for us to play with. Of course, no afternoon hunting excursion at the local golf course was complete without lots of mind altering substances. We were about as inebriated as we could get when some of the local constances on patrol took offense at our trying to aid with the fowl nuisance at the 18th green. We ran to the car, and took off as fast as we could. The goose security didn't appreciate that either and began to chase us. Pretty soon I gathered that half of Oklahoma's police force was after us.
It was at that point that I experienced an immense moment of clarity. I had dreams of going to Oklahoma State with Kara and playing soccer. The pain of realizing that nothing even close to that would ever happen now had to go away. With millions of red and blue lights flashing all around me, and a twelve gauge sitting on my lap, I knew how I could relieve myself from ever having to endure such pain. It ended my mom's pain, surely it would do the same for me. There was no hope. It had to end. It was actually quite simple. In one split second, all of the sirens became silent. I watched my mom's eyes close. Then I closed mine. No more pain.