You know, the hardest part about it is that I really don't know where to begin. The idea that the band is finally coming to an end is one of the hardest truths I've had to cough up to in my life, but at this point there's really no way around it. This morning I woke up and I was so depressed, so empty, that I was pushed back into a realm of my past that I've fought for years now to never return to. And just an hour ago I was so full of rage and hate that I was damn fucking ready to go out and blow this whole shit world up. The past month or so has been very much an emotional roller coaster for me and I've hated every second of it.
I was having a conversation a few nights ago with Dallas and the two of us talked about band issues and what, supposedly, makes a band work or not. For the past five years of my life I have worked my ass off not to create a successful band, but to merely have those closest to me, my true friends, establish a high and true level of faith in me, and that is the biggest disappointment of failure for me right now. I didn't EXPECT that much from the people around me, I merely HOPED for a lot, primarily because that is how I've lived my entire life. Dallas had been saying that he found it impossible to put in as much effort as I do and to completely rely on what I had been saying this whole time; that I know this thing will work. I don't hope, I KNOW it will work. But to those who aren't me, it requires a good deal of faith to follow a testimony like that. I had been talking to him about the potential of the band, and he was taking everything at face value, of sheer potential, and he felt that the odds of this potential was, for the most part, against us. I kept secret a lot of what happened to me after the show in March, but because I knew it, I valued the state of the band as much more than fucking potential. People went fucking crazy after that show. You can't even begin to imagine how many offers I got to play at people's parties, gigs, etc. The promised payments were mindblowing. We were there. We were fucking there when, right on schedule, everything imploded.
I internalized a lot of my emotions and feelings for a long time. If you take someone with a fragile emotional sense and fuck with them until their eyes blow out, like Chris did to me, you're going to run into some fucking problems. There's a lot that people don't know about, regarding the situation and the burdens I was carrying with me at that time, but now is not the time for me to divulge it. I HATE to make this comparison, but what do YOU think happened to make the shooters at Columbine do what they did? People just kept pushing them and pushing them until they couldn't take it anymore and pushed back. That's what happened to me on a very internal level. Chris had changed. He wasn't the same person we knew and had loved before and I tried everything I could to fix the situation and to make everything work. Hell, we could take this all the way back to last November if we really want to get down to it. I compromised my heart and soul out and sacrificed the ideals I had for the band to make him happy, and it wasn't enough. It should never have even had to come down to a situation like that, no matter what the problem was. I had never said up until that point that "I was the leader" or that "It was all about me". NO. And yet suddenly I find myself being penalized for it. The problem was, after all that was said and done, which took about two weeks to do, the issues still weren't resolved, but I forced myself to believe that they were. The animosity that was born from the situation grew, sucking out all the love, life, and hope that once existed in the band. But we kept going. As time passed, Chris began to turn his back on me more and more as he acted out and fucked with those whom I love, or those whom I had once loved. But I didn't want to pay attention to it, I knew we were so close to finally reaching the plane of existence that I worked so hard to get to, that I felt this consistent punishment would someday, soon, be worth it.
"And I rot in my skin, as a piece of me dies everyday."
When we got up and played at the show, it was fucking insane. Inject heroin on the peak of a roller coaster at the same time you're having an orgasm. That was where I had always wanted to be. In those forty five minutes, we owned everyone. All the shit I had experienced in the past five years of my life couldn't hold a flame to it. I fed on the crowd's energy and the crowd fed on me. I could feel them in bones. We had made it, we were there. That was what I was trying to get across to Dallas. We didn't have some small amount of potential to someday, maybe, achieve some sort of success. WE WERE THERE. The door was open, and all we had to do was walk through. I knew 100% in my mind that just weeks later, if things had stayed the way they were, we could become successful like I always promised and that the constant practice that we had done for two years would finally show its worth. But as life always likes to point out to me, that just wasn't the case.
At this point in time I'm too exhausted (mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally) to delve into the events and reasons that led up to Chris and the Rotting Apples spliting ways a necessity. Those close enough to the band already know the basic jist of the matter, despite the fact that even to this day I have kept quite a bit of the details secret from them too. To ensure any possible happiness in the band, we had to bid farewell, shed a few tears, and move on with our lives without him. Unfortunately, though, it looks like the band's future has become very short-lived. There were only two times in the course of the band's existence when I was, surprisingly, the hottest topic in the public eye. The first was shortly after the band's March show, when everyone wanted a piece of me and I was on top of the world, and the other time was shortly after Chris' ejection when I was beaten and raped by every fucking person I came in contact with, that it's my fault the band's falling apart and that if anyone should be kicked out, it should be me. The knives always come out when you're down, and they always hit you twice as hard. It amazes me, and yet in another mindframe I'm not surprised at all. Humble. Egocentric. A winner. A loser. A lover. A hater. Rewarded. Robbed. The best. The worst. Beautiful. Ugly. Happy. Sad. Determined and motivated. Apathetic and jaded. The names just keep coming.
The band started in August of 2000, but you could arguably say it really started 3 months later when my girlfriend blew her brains out while she was on the phone with me. People have always told me that the prime reason behind why I work so hard at this is that the band supposedly fills a hole inside of me, and I don't know whether or not to accept that. I always felt that when I had friends and I had true love from the one that I love that the black hole inside of me was filled and that the sadness that I always feel was just the scars trying to heal. Maybe I was wrong. The band was something I believed in strictly for what it was. Whether it was the loud, obnoxious, anarchaic punk attitudes of Pyromaniac, the drug-induced, Nirvana sound-alike that I wasn't even really in command of that was Puget Sound, or the beauty that was purely and simply Rotting Apples, I believed in what I was doing, and no one can take that away from me. Some of the most joyous and celebrated/ mournful and sad moments of my life occured while I was in those bands. The thing is, all those bands were one in the same, there was never a breaking up of one to create another, as we as people changed, the band changed as well. And in some weird unexplainable way, I'm greatful for all the shit you assholes have put me through.
Before I leave now for the final time, I'm going to tell you right here and now that THIS ISN'T THE FINAL TIME. I cry inside for those who have tried to kill me and my dreams, to take everything that is mine away from me, because MY GOD- you're going to need all the tears you can get in the end. The End is the Beginning is the End, so you see, this isn't really the end of anything. It is only a new beginning. Will the existence of this band change? Of course it will, it has a life of it's own. And I can stand here after 5 years of working my ass off non-stop and say to all of you, those shit-eating adults that were jealous of what I stood for (well, Satan will be fucking you all in the ass when you die so I don't really give a shit about any of you), those ignorant-as-fuck kids who knew nothing about me and only punished me because I was the scapegoat in the gossip column, and to every other cunt rag that disagrees with me and my philosophies, I may step down for the time being, at least in public, but I can swear to all of you that when I come back, it's going to kick you all in the ass. There will be no mercy, and in your eyes there will be no justice, but I can guarantee you all that when I come back things WILL change, and those who doubted or opposed me WILL get what's theirs.
