It all started on a hot, humid July day. I was in my parents' garage, in a small spot I cleared, where I set up my drum kit in one corner, and amps next to it. On the wall, I mounted my guitar and bass next to each other. As you could have guessed it, I'm in a band. Kind of. It's a half band. My friend Thalia (everyone knows her as Tally), the bassist, and I, the lead guitarist and lead singer, formed the Semi-Automatic Safety Pins. It is a punk band, we play about everyday life. Anything you can think of: break ups, parents, school, dinner, anything and everything. Our third member, our drummer, we lost him to a drug OD. But, we don't talk much about that. I'll shorten it up because it is a long story.
Joey, my best friend since the second grade, developed an addiction to Xanax, a sleeping medication, because of his alcoholic father. He didn't know how to deal with the stress of going home and not knowing what was going to happen to him. Tally and I, well, we had to evict him from the band. His behavior was getting out of hand, it got so bad that we got banned from a few of our tour spots. He would fall asleep in the middle of a show, he would throw stuff at us and scream nonsense into the microphones. Yeah, it was really bad. After we booted him out of the band, he began to up his dosages. One day, after I had finished talking to him a couple hours earlier, his mother called me. We all refer to it as "The Call".
His mother knew of his addiction and didn't know how to stop him and gave up, she gave me the very grave news of what happened to Joey. I then realized that I had to tell Tally. We both became closer than ever in this dark time. For a while after, we had stopped playing music because all we did was scream about how much we miss Joey. We eventually started dating, because we grew closer and closer, and eventually we just sorta started dating.
So, before I go on, my name is Tom. Everyone calls me Blinky because I love Blink-182. I am 17, almost 18, years old, with long coffee bean colored hair. It covers my forehead and is parted to the left. I have pale skin, and I'm average height for my age. I was born on January 4, 1998. My mother is a waitress at the local Bully Billy's Burger joint, in town. My father was a Marine, until he was killed in action overseas. This is the number one reason I hate America. I am the oddball of the family. I am the only one who is into music and plays an instrument and blares my music at night. My mother had a miscarriage when I was younger. I don't really remember it, but I do remember my dad's face when my mom told him that something went wrong. That's all.
I don't enjoy talking about myself, so I'll give you the jist of Mikey, my older brother, who is a Marine. He is following the footsteps of Dad. I hope he doesn't follow all of Dad's steps. As much as I hate him, I need him. Mikey used to hit me because it made him feel better about what happened to dad. Once he was stronger than mom he did it nonstop. I suffer from traumatic stress, specifically flashbacks. He calls me names now, because the military whipped him into shape. But the names aren't friendly joking names, they are meant to hurt.
Thalia, is 16 years old. Her parents, well, she lost them to drugs. She was taken from her parents. She she was found by a police officer during the night in the squatter house while her parents were snorting coke, while others were shooting up heroin and (poor man's heroin). Others were taking XTC, acid and other harmful drugs. The officer called in a squad and they pursued the junkies and crackheads. She has told me the story at least a hundred times. I can't go into the details about the dogs, all I can say is that the police let them loose on the squatters and many of them died. The police took Tally to St. Agnes Foster Home For Girls. I met her after her foster parents adopted her. But I didn't know them for long. She lost them in a house fire caused by the gas line exploding. They were both caught in the explosion, and Tally has burn scars on ther back.
Our relationship started about couple weeks ago, officially. We were together before, but we hadn't asked each other yet. I love her with all my heart and I would do anything for her. We share my room, my mom let her stay with us because she knows how hard it is for her, and she knows she can't stop us from doing stuff anyway. My mom is pretty chill when it comes to living with Tally. She loves her as my significant other. My mom thinks she is perfect for me and gives me advice when I need some help with relationship troubles. I get pretty desperate sometimes because Tally has a habit of running away for a while when she gets upset. I'm lucky enough to know where she runs off to. Tally finds the old squatter house calming. She told me because when my dad's letter came with his Letter Of Condolence, I read his letter, sloppily written on a piece of his shirt that he had ripped off. He told me that he had to do the ultimate sacrifice to save his squad. His death was a critical turning point in the fight against Al Qaeda. I used to cut and still do when my depression gets really bad. I have the impulse to cut and to kill myself. Thalia gets the same urges. We both help each other, especially when it comes to suicidal thoughts. Now that I brought you up to date, I will start telling the story as it happens.
