"Nonsense!" Martin's mother replied. She was worried about her son. He was sad, paranoid, and he was physically injured as well. His physical ailment was called arthritis. This was hard for Martin. He was six feet tall and gifted athletically. (Additionally, he had brown hair. This is the extent that I know of his physical appearance) Those attributes paled in comparison to his mental ability, however. He was smart and strangely wise for one so young.
"Why wouldn't they like you?" Unfortunately Martin's mother did not understand the complex nature of Martin's mind. According to my research Martin suffered from depression. Depression is an illness that many people do not understand. For the sake of time, depression can be likened to the mental parallel of cancer. There are worse mental conditions, however depression is long lasting and you can not simply "snap out of it." It can physically hurt and is all consuming. Facts such as these were not known by a name to Martin or his family.
"I can think of a lot of ways why people wouldn't like me." Martin said. "I promise I try; I do try to get people to like me. It seems like no one does though."
"Martin, these are ridiculous assumptions." Martin's father was a brilliant man. He understood things that no one could usually conceive in their minds. So it was when his father said the sentence above that Martin grew frustrated.
"Why are they ridiculous? You don't follow me around at school. You don't follow me to my meetings, how would you know?" The meetings Martin refers to here were his class officer meetings. Martin was a junior officer at Whitebark High School. Some of Martin's problems were not at all consistent with his social standings. Martin was a very popular person. However, it was evident that Martin did not understand this. In fact, Martin hated being an officer. He ran because he wanted to help people who were less fortunate than he. The system of school government was not how Martin envisioned it before he was instated as an officer. It turned out it was a system of "vanity." (Martin used the word "vanity" many times in his journals when referring to school government.)
"We just want to help you Martin." His mother's lip was trembling when she said this.
"I'm going on a walk." Said a frustrated Martin who was close to tears himself.
"No you're not!" Said Martin's father. At this point Martin did not care what anyone told him he could or could not do. He walked out the door and into the outside. It was a beautiful day in early March. It was Martin's custom to go to one of his friend's houses when he went for a walk. Therefore, Martin walked down his street noticing all along the way the birds singing and the snow melting. Martin gave a sad smile as he noticed these vivid details. As he walked along he noticed litter on the sidewalk. The litter was an empty can. Martin passed it while he continued onward, but (again this is speculation in regards to what I know of Martin) he felt guilty so he turned around picked up the can and carried it with him during his walk. He looked up into the sky and saw the few clouds that were there. He looked down at the mountain and saw a hiking spot that Martin himself was partial to hiking up to whenever possible. More and more Martin felt a desire to climb up to that spot and stay there for hours and do whatever he felt like. There was a waterfall which would reflect a rainbow when the sun hit its water just right. It truly was a beautiful hiking spot. When Martin looked back at the sidewalk he realized he had walked past his friends house and promptly backtracked to the correct street. Martin's friend Jacob was a nice person. He though, like Martin's other family and friends did not completely understand the problems Martin had. Martin was miserable. He tried so desperately to hide this from people. He did not want others to worry about him. Martin continued walking as he reached the front steps. He could smell things that reminded him of spring and this at least gave Martin some short lived happiness. He knocked on his friend's door, for he was at the front steps. The door had a knocker that several doors have. Martin (and I for that matter) did not understand why doors still had knockers. Door bells were and are wonderful inventions. Jacob's mother answered the door.
"Hello."
"Hi, is Jacob here?" Martin said while forcing a smile.
"I'm sorry, he's not. He should be back later though. I can tell him to call you or stop by." Jacob's mother said.
"That sounds fine, thank you." Martin walked away and down the street. He stopped for a moment as one of his headaches hit. Another one of his problems were his headaches. He would often be walking and all of a sudden have horrible migraines. Occasionally he would also feel dizzy. After his headache passed Martin continued walking. He loved walking and observing things around him. Looking around him was better than looking to the future. He did not look forward to his tomorrow as school was on his list of things he-had-to-do-but-really-didn't-want-to-do-thank-you-very-much. He heaved a sigh. After a little bit of walking he came to the Whitebark park. It did rhyme which is in its own way amusing. He sat down on one of the many benches different scouts had built in order to achieve there eagle scout awards. Martin was not a huge advocate of scouts. He did give it the benefit of the doubt in the way of teaching life skills. In Martin's opinion scouts was silly. He knew enough about rope tying in his opinion. All around him Mothers and their children were playing at the park enjoying their day off of school and work. A few of the children were playing under a particular tree that looked as though it had experienced more than its fair share of abuses. It had pieces of bark missing from it wherever the children could pry it off. It looked like the wind had weakened it significantly. Too many birds had nested in its branches. After all of this however, the tree had taken its abuse and yet still stood upright. (I have seen this tree and Martin's assessment was correct.) The tree had only been planted a few years ago. It was still a young tree. Martin looked at all of the tree's problems and felt bad for it. The trees around it looked healthy and well taken care of. Martin's tree looked forlorn and hurt. It looked abused. Martin's watch beeped. It was for o'clock. Martin sadly stood up and walked away. His arthritis was acting up so he had no choice but to limp. Martin was still holding on to the litter he had picked up twenty minutes ago. He had never found a trash can.
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