9-27-16
News of the Surreal (for Real): “Arrest in child death. Mercer County Sheriff Jeff Grey held a press conference Tuesday morning concerning the death of a four-year-old boy and subsequent arrest of a suspect. Cory W. Eischen of 5098 Rauh Road, Fort Recovery, has been arrested in connection with the death of four year old Jaxxen Baker on Sunday night.” Cory was an old classmate and buddy of mine when I was in the 7th grade.
I learned tonight from my older sister Lara that my old classmate and friend from the 7th grade, Cory Eischen, had been arrested for murdering a four-year-old boy. I suddenly remembered the times we had and what I had written up about him way back in 1994 that prophetically came true. I looked these up from my 1994 journals and they were pretty eerie. Re-reading them tonight made me reflect and understand that Cory’s bad decisions helped me realize that I had made good decisions in my life even though we had both gone through severe bullying.
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The Lonesome Lesson of Cory Eischen
1-5-94: I have to write that Cory Eischen, a past, good friend of mine from 7th grade, has completely (pardon my English) fucked up his life. I just learned that he’s done something extremely terrible now that he’s dropped out of school. Yet I feel that our classmates and bullies had something to do with it. You see… we were very much alike back in the 7th grade. Both of us had countless problems and were equally harassed. We found comfort in each other’s company after lunch by hanging out in a secluded corner of the hallway. Yet somehow, I strayed off on to the best path possible for myself. After getting caught forging my mother’s signature, I had to make a decision about my life. I had to make the decision to get better and make things right. I restarted focusing on school and working harder on my homework. Meanwhile, Cory kept to himself and remained getting teased on the way to Jutte’s grocery store, which only led to fights and anger management problems. I believe that all the teasing made him lose control of his life. You can either get better or worse when you get to a breaking point. You have to make a decision. We lived parallel lives until that point of intersection and no return. I choose the hard, longer path by admitting my mistakes, shaping up, working harder on my studies, and “ignoring” the teasing and people who wanted to get in fights with me. Cory chose the typical, easy, same old path that eventually snowballed into making things worse and worse. He was so wrong and so right. Cory took on the evils of life and got caught in them. He simply “absorbed” the evil and negativity that was around him, all the teasing that people did to him… and eventually it became him. It was all a product of his surroundings. He didn’t take any responsibility for himself, not like I had done. He had no real encouragement or direction. Therefore, we slowly but surely lost his way. God, some days I wish I could have helped him. But we went in different directions and simply drifted apart. We got different schedules and classes. We stopped hanging around each other by the eighth grade. We took our lonesome journeys apart. But now it’s too late. He probably will serve time in prison (maybe for life) now that he’s gone out and nearly raped a girl/ his “girlfriend”. At least that’s what I’ve heard he’s been charged with. So that’s what I meant before that he’s literally “fucked up’. Maybe one day he’ll do himself in and do something worse and find himself receiving a prison sentence or the death penalty (let alone suicide). Time will tell its secrets. It’s only a matter of time.
But I don’t think he was a bad person. He just had a lot of bad people around him that made him do bad things. He was lost and alone. I know the feeling. I’ve been there myself. I could have been him. So that’s why hearing about what he’s done had been such a gut punch to me. It’s like learning about an alternate reality version of myself. And I wonder if the bullies that teased him feel the least bit responsible. I wonder. I wonder.
My Adolescent Turning Point
3-2-94: March 2nd, 1990: the monumental date that marks the biggest turning point in my life while I was growing up… ever. It was the day I was caught forging my mother’s signature on a test I had flunked and found myself personally humiliated before my entire class. I was used to other people embarrassing and teasing me. This time, it was from me. I caused this. And so, I had a minor, little breakdown. I cried while desperately trying to hold back the tears. I realized that my hard-fought life wouldn’t be worth a cent if I didn’t start to change. Fortunately, I did make a change in my life… starting on that day. Making that decision was a crucial moment where I had to choose to be “good” or “bad”. That is why I have always considered it one of the most prominent moments in my life. I took the tougher route by having to work even harder on my homework even though it took me twice to three times longer for me to understand than my classmates. At that time in my life, I was hanging out with the outcast crowd of loser kids in seventh grade who were about a year away from going bad. I enjoyed the freedom they offered, especially during lunch when we’d leave the school and walk to the local grocery store with the other “rebel” kids and eat junk food. Then instead of playing basketball with all the other kids, we’d hide out by a corner school heater until fifth period class started. The empathetic friend I hung out with, Cory Eischen, who was sort of like my alternate reality version of myself if I didn’t shape up, would later truly go “bad” by sexually assaulting a girl three years later and soon dropping out of school from too many school suspensions. He didn’t find any point to going to a school where your peers degraded and destroyed you. He was a casualty of the teasing us “geeks” received. I understood.
And through the years, I’ve stayed away from the public crowd of irrelevance and went on my own path for personal success. I don’t know if I’ll truly be a great success. Yet I do know that at least I tried rather than simply foundered without a care for hard work. I can at least live with that degree of success well in mind.
Now, here I am, a successful student, worker, friend, and “visionary”. Whoever said patience is a key to a fine future must have been right. I am a successful person. Now that I can’t believe especially when I’ve grown up to be a young man. Unbelievable.
Why the Arts Are So Vitally Important to Retaining Our Own Sanity in An Unstable, Chaotic World
9-28-16: It goes well beyond this as well with how society can find an outlet. It’s true that some need it more than others based on what they’ve gone through throughout their life. Yet we have to address how the arts are so extremely important for certain people to be able to constructively express themselves. Otherwise, there is a very real problem with them causing harm to others, themselves, be it through alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide. Finding a way to express yourself is a way to balance yourself out. That is why removing the arts from school curriculum is so extremely foolish and profoundly dangerous.
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