For this one we're gonna go back a little ways...

When I was a kid,
my favorite outfit was a vomit green shirt
with matching shorts.
It had the Tasmanian Devil on it
and I wore it everywhere.
When I got a little older,
I used to make up stories
like I could do a backflip on my bike...
or I invented Pepsi Blue
in a laboratory underneath my dad’s garage
using a well orchestrated army of lab rats.
I had an active imagination.
I started swearing at age 11
and, when my stepmom found out,
I got a lecture from my dad.
He told me, “cut that shit out”.
I had an active imagination.
When I got to middle school,
the teachers kept trying to tell me to skip a grade.
They told my mom that the reason
I hated school was because I was bored,
when really it was that my dad owed me $300
because I’d had straight As since 4th grade math
and he made a really stupid bet.
When I was in high school,
I got stood up by the same girl eight times.
I’ve always been a hopeless romantic.
When I was a freshman in college,
I went to lunch with a girl and her boyfriend
because I was too nice to say no
and she was too nice to tell me she had one the night before.
I’ve always been a hopeless romantic.
When I was a sophomore,
I met this girl who I thought I’d marry.
I’m not married.
You see,
back when I loved that matching outfit,
it was captured in the last picture of a friend before she died of cancer.
I still have that picture.
I survived cancer.
And back when I made up stories,
my dad married his best friend’s ex-wife.
And back when I started swearing,
I first thought about killing myself.
And back when I made all those As,
my first kiss moved to Tampa.
and I haven’t seen her since.
And back when I was in high school,
I first went to therapy.
And back when I was a freshman in college,
I found out that God might not have cured my depression.
And then I went back to therapy.
And now…
I’m violently way too high
strung
and sometimes I can’t sleep
because I think back to that time I invented Pepsi Blue
and the woman I thought I’d marry
and that puke green pair of shorts.