Everyone Has Their Basketball Diary

So I'm watching a movie tonight that I haven't seen since I was in high school called The Basketball Diaries.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg.

The true story of author Jim Caroll and how he blew his many basketball scholarships by becoming addicted to drugs while he was in high school. I didn't realize it when I was watching it as a kid, but the drugs that ruined him were heroin and oxy contin.

My mom watched this with me at least once. She could never understand why I liked it so much because I obviously wasn't into drugs and I sure didn't like basketball.

For one thing, Leo is my age and I was inspired by the amount of talent he had. It is really a difficult role to dive into and pull off, especially for someone so young, and he just had "child prodigy" written all over him in this movie. I aspired to have that kind of comittment and talent.

But for another thing, what I could relate to was the teenage angst. I don't know what it is about us when we're that age, but we're all just so damned angry. It's a hellish existence, as you grow into the brain of an adult but still have the limiting legs of a child. It's so confusing and so incredibly annoying that no one can understand what is going on in your head except the people who are going through it with you at the time. It's the closest thing to purgatory here on Earth, those years between 16 and 19. Utter limbo.

Different kids deal with that angst in different ways, regardless of how they are brought up. It has to take some kind of form and the child, growing into an adult, chooses that form for themselves.

I liked to manipulate people to see how much I could get away with and I also became obsessed with sex.

For others, I guess it's oxycontin.

"You're growing up. And rain sort of remains on the branches of a tree that will someday rule the Earth. And it's good that there's rain. It clears the month of your sorry rainbow expressions and it clears the streets of the silent armies so that we can dance. I love this mansion. Though it's too many windows to open half-way each morning. To close half-way each night." - Jim Caroll, The Basketball Diaries

Let me just say a couple things. Whether I see them ever again, whether they may find this or not, I'd like to apologize to the people who I hurt during those years and I'd aso like to forgive myself for it for the first time. Secondly, I know someone who is going through that angst right now and I'd like her to know that I'm here for her if she needs me. It hasn't been too long for me to forget what it feels like and I do understand.