gone. - DISCONTINUED.

update - feel free to read.

wow. it's been forever, hasn't it? anyways, this story is extremely old and i've gained some followers since last posting in 2015, so i figured it's better to address the things i wanna talk about on here rather than try to re-figure out Wattpad and everything since taking a hiatus. let me reintroduce myself for a moment though - my name is jay, i also go by the pen name raja, and five years ago i decided to write a three part series: Acid, Gone, and a story in the works entitled Lost.

first and foremost, i still see every single comment you guys have made on this story. i see it all. some make me laugh, some make me smile, and some honestly get on my nerves. (i know this sounds rude from a reader perspective, but i'll explain why lol.) being that i see everything you all have commented and all your questions and whatnot, i wanna say that all of it honestly makes me want to try and pick this story back up where it left off. obviously, though, that'd be difficult for me: i stopped writing this story out of a lack of muse and out of respect, i wasn't in the right head space mentally due to going through a really bad episode of depression three years ago, i'm in college now and a writer elsewhere, priorities, life, a three year gap, a bunch of other things. but really, i do think about this story often. if anything, i daydream the sequel and it's final conclusion. this story initially started out as something for me and my friends to read on Tumblr, and never in my life would i have imagined i'd have 5k followers on Wattpad, over 300k reads, and readers from outside of the US. i mean...looking back on it now, everything i wrote in 2013 when i was thirteen years old sucks to me!! but it makes you guys happy, i love reading everything.

now, for the sour part. i understand how upset some of you may be when you're over 30 chapters deep into a story and it suddenly just ends with no explanation. trust me, i get that. but a lot of you don't understand my above point that i can SEE your comments. i can literally read everything you've sent via email, and some of it honestly ticks me off due to it's rude nature and tone and makes me believe you didn't read in full my explanation as to why i stopped writing. again, as everyone knows, the characters in this story are based off of real life people - one of who passed away in January of 2015, and who was a friend of one of my family members in reality. i don't know about you guys, but from a fan perspective and a common sense one, it would feel a little uncomfortable to continue writing someone who's now deceased. so again, out of respect, i refrained from writing and tried to figure out how to work around it. i mean really, i did try. but like i also mentioned, i was extremely depressed in 2015. i was in 10th grade with a 2.7 GPA, failing classes, suffering from severe depression and even had suicidal thoughts at that time. i'm not saying this to guilt trip, i'm saying this to emphasize that three years ago, my mind was NOT on finishing a Wattpad story when i had grades and my mental health to improve. i just wasn't feeling it, and i dropped out of a lot of apps besides this one until i got my head right. 2015 was just a bad year and a bad time for me, and coincidentally the year this story blew up the most and i was putting out chapters left and right. if you were a reader who continued to keep up back then, you probably noticed the decline of how often i was putting chapters out back in '13 and '14 compared to that year. again, i'm really sorry that i left a lot of you disappointed after having read such an intense chapter, but my mind was not in it at that time and i wasn't going to force myself to write chapters when i had other priorities that needed my attention. i'm very sorry.

but don't worry, there's good news too!! i'm kind of a ghost on Wattpad now in terms of writing and releasing content, and i've dropped hints here and there that not many of you have picked up because nothing is as high-traffic as this story managed to be, so i'll say it here: rather than continuing this story, which is chronologically the prequel to my first story Acid, i decided to move on and instead write out the sequel. since a lot of y'all are fans of Gone only (i assume because it's ranked on a content page? man, idfk how this website works anymore.) and don't even realize that the story is apart of a series i wanted to do. and like i said, i know how everything ends, i've even made playlists relating to this story to give myself some muse so...i figured i'd pick it back up eventually, just not here.

if you'd like to continue reading up on the lives of Hazel, Rakim, and everyone else within the story, all three story links are up on my profile and available. if you'd like to read the stories in order so you know exactly how everything happened (and cringe while you do so), then please keep in mind to read Acid first. it should be stylized on my page as "a c i d." the second story in the series, which is actually a prequel to the Acid and takes place five years before the events of Acid occur, is entitled Gone - obviously, the story you all read now and love to this day. and finally, despite the three year gap, the sequel to both Acid & Gone as well as the final book of the series is entitled Lost, written very recently. (as recently as i can write, i haven't updated that in a lil' while either. but the next draft is being written as we speak!) Lost takes place directly after the events of Acid, and flickers between flashbacks from the end of Acid and present day, so it offers some closure from the three year gap left between all of the stories. but for those of you who have been wondering about unanswered questions, all of the chapters that are written in the past perspective DO provide an explanation for y'all in terms of their relationship and things that have happened. all you gotta do is look on my page, my lovelies.

and with that, Gone is officially...gone, lol. no pun intended. but a little tea for some of y'all, you can piece together what happened with Hazel, Rakim, and their first daughter Shaela if you read the first story Acid. i'll continue updating Lost on my own time, so i do appreciate if some of the love y'all show for this story is shown to the other two stories as well. if anything, it'll most definitely motivate and encourage me to continue writing again finally cause i really do love y'alls commentary and feedback. but anyways, it's 3am where i'm at now so on that note: happy reading, and ily guys!

(oh, and some more tea: Hazel is black. she has a black father and black/german mother. i never once insinuated that she was white lmao, so hopefully that also solves some people's dilemmas as well.)