For the First Time

The video takes about 20 seconds before anything actually happens.  Just a song I did for the assembly last Friday.  The new tech guy is awesome and records everything that happens 

For The First Time

-The Script

She's all laid up in bed with a broken heart
While I'm drinking jack all alone in my local bar
And we don't know how we got into this mad situation
Only doing things out of frustration

Trying to make it work but man these times are hard
She needs me now but I can't seem to find a time
got a new job now in the unemployment line
And we don't know how

Trying to make it work but man these times are hard
We're gunna start by drinking old cheap bottles of wine
Sit talking up all night
Saying things we haven't for a while, a while yeah
We're smiling but we're close to tears
Even after all these years
We just now got the feeling that we're meeting
For the first time

She's in line at the door with her head held high
I just lost my job but didn't lose my pride
And we don't know how yeah

Trying to make it work but man these times are hard
We're gunna start by drinking old cheap bottles of wine
Sit talking up all night
Saying things we haven't for a while, a while yeah
We're smiling but we're close to tears
Even after all these years
We just now got the feeling that we're meeting
For the first time

Oh these times are hard
they're making us crazy
Don't give up on me baby
Oh these times are hard
Yeah they're making us crazy
Don't give up on me baby

Every Time I Blink

"When you close your eyes what do you see?  

If it's just darkness, rejoice in your innocence."
-William Hordyk

Every time I close my eyes, I see something horrible.  I hardly dare to blink, because when I do, I see a moment of the crash, a moment of a funeral. I see the crying face of your mom. Most often though, I see your broken body.
I won't ever be allowed to forget this.  It's not that I want to forget, but I could live without the constant reminders.  

 

**Check out Will's blog for more of his writing: http://wileh.blogspot.com/   **

Cut Up

And we don't know how we got in this mess it's a gods test
someone help us because we are doing our best
Trying to make it work but man these times are hard

I didn't go to school again today.  I saw the cuts on my hands when I woke up this morning.  They made me physically sick.  I walked over to the china cabinet in my living room.  Three cups, two saucers and four plates are all that is left of the collection that my mother prized.  She won't be happy when she finds out, but probably too tired to do anything about it.

I wandered around my house. Looking for the place that I could feel the safest.   I went through nearly ever place in the house until I walked into Paul's nearly empty room. I rested the back of my head on his untouched bed.  I drew my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.  And I listened to the scripts new album.

I saw my brothers car pull into the driveway.  No doubt my dad asked him to check on me.  His wife, Michelle, was with him.  I didn't feel like talking to either of them.  So I went to my room across the hall and went through my window to climb on the roof. 

It was cold outside today and their was a cool breeze coming off the ocean. The roof was warm, emanating heat so I stretched out on it and hoped that no one would find me.

I need a new hiding spot. I had been going on the roof for years and within a few minutes I saw Paul's hands grab onto the roof as he pulled himself up out of my window.  I ignored him. Once he was on the roof he sat next to me and just waited.  He grabbed my arm and looked at the cuts on my hands.  
"I saw mom today," he said.  "She wants to see you. But she understands why it's so hard for you to visit."
"I cut my hands because I threw her good china yesterday."
"I know. Dad called me. He is worried about you."
"I don't care."
"He didn't ask me to come here you know."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because I'm worried about you."
Tears started to roll down my face. "Don't be."  Though I doubt I was convincing seeing as I was crying. "I puked when I saw the blood on my hands. It reminded me...of things."
"I don't know how you do it." His voice became very low as if trying to keep the birds from hearing.  "I probably would have given up on everything by now.  A lot of people, including me admire you."
I didn't respond to him, he always knew when not to press me for a response.  We sat on the roof for a few more minutes.  He stood up and excused himself. Just before his head disappeared from my sight, he spoke up, "Michelle is making lunch, if you want it."  He tilted his head as if deciding whether or not to say something else, then disappeared off the rooftop.  

The Blood is on My Hands

I lose my way
And it's not too long before you point out 
I cannot cry 
Because I know that's weakness in your eyes 
I'm forced to fake, a smile a laugh 
Every day of my life

I know I should be asleep. But something has been bothering me tonight and I don't know what it is.  I know that I will be questioning whether or not I should post this because of the sentence that is coming up next, I'm embarrassed by it.  Today, I cried. tears falling from my eyes, collecting in the hollow of my cheeks and dripping down my lips . All day long I cried.

I broke down today.  And I don't have the answers as to why.  I am sure that you can all guess as to the broad reasons why. I know them.  My girlfriend is dead. My best friend is dead. My knee is still fucked up.  

I don't know if my tears were from sadness though.  Part of me thinks it was from frustration. Anger. 

God knows I was angry today. I didn't hide it.  I refused to go to school. I didn't really face much opposition though, my dad leaves for work before I get up.  But when he got home he found me, lying on my back on the formal dinning room floor.  Cradling my cut up hands.  I don't know how I got there exactly or how I started to throw the china my mom adored.  But there I was, blood covered hands and tear covered cheeks, not from the physical pain but from emotional anguish.  

He just said that I'd better clean my hand.  He swept up the broken pieces.  Whether he was mad or not, I'm not sure, but my mom did love them. I don't think I threw them all. 

I would have told him about the fresh hole in my wall but he has decided not to fix them anymore.  

I've never talked about what I saw after the crash.  I don't know how I am going to describe it, I never have but what happened in that god-damned van might not be something you can feel comfortable reading.  

I only saw two people in the van.  My best friend. And my girlfriend.  

I saw Evan first.  He was gone when I found him.  Dead. His hand was still wrapped around the steering wheel with his elbow bent the wrong way.  The back of his head crammed down at the bottom of the windshield where it met the dashboard.  Blood trickled from the ear facing down, but you could see that it had been coming out of both ears. The track went two ways, one down his face, falling down his ear, collecting along the hollow of his cheek, and dripping down his already crimson lips. And the other, the blood trail was already drying, leaving a dark path down the back of his blonde hair.

His eyes were open. I kept praying for them to blink at any second but they only grew more and more yellow.  

When I fell because of my knee, my eyes were drawn to see the pain.  I only caught a glimpse.  A deep gouge along the entirety of my knee cap.  Blood was seeping from my knee and spreading a pool over the floor of the van, waterfalling over the edge.  The bone was chipped and cracked, parts of it could be seen through the mass amounts of blood.  

The sights I had been seeing were disgusting me so I looked away from what I knew.  

And my eyes fell upon her. Hannah.  Still beautiful though severely broken.  Her back was contorted and bent, following the reconstructed shape of the side of the van.  She was forced into an unnatural arch, trapped by the seat belt that was digging into her side.  Hannah's neck was not holding up the head and her chin lolled against her chest.  The blood was beginning to appear in the corners of her mouth and bubbling out her nose with her raged breathing.  

I remember the smell of blood revolted me just before I passed out.       

Because of you
I am afraid
I watched you die
I heard you cry
Every night in my sleep

   

The Wall

He wished he was five again. He missed the days when the streets were covered in his chalk art and not the blood of his fallen comrades.

Let the Dysfunction Begin

I don't know your family. It might be broken. It could be whole.  I don't know if your family is as together as the family in the Brady Bunch. Or if it is as dysfunctional as the family in 8 Simple Rules.  Me? My family is more like the Hennessy's than the Brady's.

My family was a family of four.  Mother, father, brother and myself.  My mom was a nurse. But she didn't work for a few years while me and my brother were younger.  She had a lot of strange hours and she would always be stressed out.  She was an ER nurse and I don't think that she ever forgot some of the things she saw there.

My dad is a lawyer. And a pretty good one too.  He has a law firm and his hours are, generally, better than my mom's were. 

Because of our parent's jobs, my family was always pretty well off. Money was never an issue.  I went to an uppity school where from Kindergarten, I was surrounded by other persnickety kids. From kindergarten to grade 4 we were forced to take private piano and violin lessons from the school. The school did not accept bad grades, and if your behavior was bad, you would get a very strict punishment.  We dressed in suits and had a headmaster. Yeah a headmaster. We were snobs.

I remember the day. I was 10, Paul was 16.  I walked into my home and saw my parents waiting for us behind the glass of the doors to our formal living room.  This was strange for two reasons. One, my parents weren't usually home from work yet, and two because only the maid went into the living room once every other week to vacuum and dust.  That room was specially reserved only in the event that the queen or other extremely notable figure walked into our house. My dad got up, opened the doors and ushered me and my brother inside the room.  We walked in but had no idea what to do. I had never been in the room and the couches had never actually been used.  My dad told us to sit.  My mom was crying.  

My dad leaned in and grabbed my mom's hand. "We've got some bad news." He whispered.

And life was changed. 

The ultimate choice for a man, in as much as he is given to transcend himself, is to create or destroy, to love or to hate.

-Erich Fromm 

Who am I and is It Good Enough?

Why is my reflection someone 
I don't know?
Somehow I cannot hide
Who I am
Though I've tried.
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?

 

Who am I?  I question the things that define me a lot as I try to find out who I really am.  Sure, I am William Hagendoerm, but I don't know much else about myself.  Sometimes I just look at myself in a mirror and question if I really am me.

Other people seem to know me better than I do.  Even people who I think are complete strangers can at least recognize me as the kid who was in the crash.  My parents seem to know me as their son, and someone who is going to make something of myself one day.  My Grandmother knows me as, well her memory is going so I'm not completely sure if she knows who I am.  My teachers have called me a resilient and hard working student. My peers know me as someone who is involved in school extracurricular activities. At my Profession of Faith, my pastor said that I was full of love and perseverance.   My aunts and uncles probably know me as the loud and annoying nephew.  They say that I am these things, but, I don't know if I am. I am afraid of these titles because what if I let them down?

I don't know who I am. I guess that I am more artsy than athletic or academic.  Though I am sort of athletic and not dumb.  

I play piano, cello, guitar.  I sing a lot.  But I am not good enough to make it into a career or anything.  I can paint and sketch, but they are really just doodles compared to the work of others.  I can take pictures and alter them but I am not a photographer.  

I play golf sometimes.  Mostly because my dad and my brother like it.  I was on the volleyball team last year but I doubt I can play this year with my knee the way it is.  And I wasn't really the athletic type anyways.  I am not a jock. I won't be getting any full ride sports scholarships.

My grades are decent.  I take the music and the art classes, but also the maths and the sciences. I always manage honors.  But I am not a genius.  I wouldn't be accepted into medical school. And there is no way I would be able to become a lawyer, no matter how badly my dad wants me to take over his firm.
I am not horrible at very many things.  But I am not the best at any of them.  Everyone has a talent but I just have half talents really, I can manage doing a lot of things, but good at something would be pushing it.
A lot of the time, it is just easier to point out our faults. It is easiest to say that we are not god enough.  We push away what we are good at and just focus on what needs to be done better. It is what our society has done.  We are never perfect.  Never smart enough, never athletic enough, never original.  If you have a six-pack, alright, but Taylor Lautner has an eight-pack.  So what, you are going to Med school, you don't look like the doctors on the TV dramas.  Meh, you can sing, so what? Finn can sing, dance and he is the star quarterback. You might find out who you are, but when you do, you still don't feel like who you are is good enough. 
I find myself trying to live up to how others see me and how society thinks I should be without just being content with who I am. 
Maybe if I just accept who I am, I won't be wondering, I'll know.  Maybe if we all start to accept ourselves, people won't be traveling around the world to find themselves or going through midlife crises to rediscover who they are.
I am seventeen, and people are expecting me to tell them my life's plans. They want to know where I am going to university, what job I am going to get after. They want to know who I will be in ten years. I don't even know who I am today, let alone tomorrow or ten years down the road.  Why can't they just be satisfied with, "I don't know?"