We all have our secrets. Some of us are murders, others rapists. Some will grow up quietly while being abused, while others will abuse themselves through drugs and cutting. Everyone has a tragedy in life that leaves them with wounds so deep they'll never heal; scars that will never be erasable because, like every other cut and scrape, it's there to stay. Eventually we have so many scars it gets to be where we can't escape from them. We'll be covered from head to toe in tragedy and drowning in our own misery all the while. It's times like these where we expect others to step up and comfort us- maybe whisper honeyed lies down our ears to keep us from what others like to call, "going overboard," but which I like to refer to as, "accepting reality." We've grown up knowing that no matter what we do there'll be someone there to save us. We have psychologists, close friends that shove fake bs down our throats for the sake of feeling good, hospitals, pills, lawyers when nothing else will do the fix, judges to tell us what's right, juries to tell us what's wrong, husbands, family, the chick next door, that waiter that has to be friendly to get a good tip, the boy frying the burgers, the nice person you adore, the person who works the cash register. Heck, there are even psychologists for people in prison! There'll ALWAYS be someone to save us, but this isn't facing reality. If we accept our own faults and fix them OURSELVES, that's where we'll learn the real truth, which is that we're all messed up. Just kidding, really if we're all messed up we'd be normal, so who's to judge?

Anyways, I'm not just pulling this stuff out of random places and throwing it on here because it sounds good. I know all this from experience. You can go to all the hospitals you want, but if you don't realize there's something wrong and help yourself, no amount of counseling in the world can fix you. People always say acceptance is the first step, after all, and you can't get to point B without first starting at point A. Maybe that's why Ralph Emerson said that we are only brave whenever we save ourselves- because the worst thing in life to people is admitting that they have flaws and willingly work to change them.

    Go Ask Alice is a book about a girl who drinks coke laced with LSD at a party and gets addicted. From there it's a downward, and when her parents are lucky, upward spiral. She does things she wouldn't have done before she went on drugs, gets caught up with a boy who draws her into the game deeper, and eventually moves to San Francisco with a friend so she can get away from the drugs and the hold they have on her. Yes, that's what drugs does to your brain kids. After this she goes through a series of relapses, each worse than the last, and after each relapse ends, she goes back to her family to be comforted and loved, just to start the cycle over again. Because she goes back to her family is why she never was able to completely end her addiction- they were there to comfort her and care for her, not to shove realtiy in her face. People rarely do that; if they had told her she was a twisted bleep, who didn't give a bleep about her bleeping family, and who was so caught up in drugs she couldn't tell her butt from her face, I guarantee she would have been astounded they felt so strongly and dug herself out of the pitiful hole she was in. Instead, they cater to her every need like she's a princess and they're her servants. This is her issue- even when she got away from drugs, she couldn't do it herself! No, she relies on other people to help her, instead of being self-reliant and helping herself.

    Not everyone ends up as a lost cause, though. Some people know that action needs to be taken, whether it's instinctive or they have someone pointing them in the right direction. Take Harry Potter, the show-off, tough, popular wizard in the famous books written by J.K. Rowling, for example- he had a piece of Voldemort, an evil and malicious wizard who wants to enslave all muggles (non-magical folk) and kill off all people who aren't of pure wizard descent, that he had to get rid of, and to kill it off he literally had to go through hell; to get rid of the part of Voldemort that had attached itself to him, he had to kill himself. Not only does he die, but he comes back to life and ends up killing Voldemort, his arch nemesis. Now THAT'S taking control of yourself and working out your issues. He knew what sacrifices had to be made for him to get better, and he made them. If you read the last part of The Deathly Hallows, you'll know that he's happily married to Ginny, Rons sister and the love of his life, with kids. He's only able to be like this because he knew he couldn't let other people decide what was best for him, or tell him what not to do; if he had let his friends handle his situation, they never would have let him kill himself, and then us humans would have a miserable life ahead of us.

    Everyone's situation is different. In Pink's, a famous rock singers, song called "Sober", she's an alcoholic who realizes she has an issue. This alcoholic is the one out partying all night until the neon light comes on and she won't be home, even at four o'clock in the morning. She accepts the fact that she's an alcoholic and goes through the phases: wondering if anything could help but thinking that nothing could compare to the feeling of being drunk, recognizing she has an issue, wondering if she's going too far with it all. The song never does say that she changes, honestly it sounds like she's dead if you really listen to it... but she knew what was going on, and she had the power to change it. She just didn't want to. It's people like this who don't have any courage, because they aren't willing to give up what means the most in the world to them, even if it hurts them and others.

    One of the most self-reliant acts ever is when Peter Parker tries to rip off his black suit. His extra layer of skin, if you will. Peter Parker is a web-slinging superhero, who has to fend off villains from his home of New York City. But there's one enemy that almost does him in, as it would anyone; one night, while he's hanging out with his girlfriend MaryJane, a meteor falls from the sky. On it is black goo, called venom, that has a mind of its own. It finds Peter and attaches to him, and pretty soon takes over him. It has complete dominance over him, and yet there's a time where he's in a church and he manages to rip it off. From the way he does it you can tell that it's putting him through an agony uncomparable to any other, and it's hard; everytime he rips one part, the sides crawl over him to attach back together and repair the hole. Yet he tries, again and again, and yet again, because he understands that the suit makes him do things he normally wouldn't. It makes him angry and jealous and every other thing anyone could possibly hate- angry enough to hit his ex when she tries to kick him out of her place of work when he makes a butt of himself.

The one small act of trying to get the suit off himself, without anyone's help, speaks wonders about him. It says he can handle his own problems, and not only that but is willing to. This means he's prepared for life, and shows he's more brave than an adult with a complex.