What you never knew

Part I

There are plenty of things that you don’t know about me. Even as you sit wherever it is in this world that you are sitting, there are things going on in front of the monitor in the past tense that you’ll never know.

There are things going on outside of the window to my right that you’ll never know about, and there are things going on only a few feet away from that window that not even I will ever know about.

As humans, we are always fascinated in what it is that we don’t know. Well, we are either fascinated, or afraid of it, and sometimes it’s both of those things. However, since I have a belief that both fear and ignorance never make for good bedfellows, I’ll stick to the former.

Maybe you are fascinated and thirsting for knowledge about me, the person who writes the things that you read. Maybe you simply don’t care. Or maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t change your day in the least whether you knew anything else or not.

For the sake of this post, this blog, and those people out there who maybe want to know just a little bit more about me than I’ve cared to divulge in the about me section, we are going to start off with who I am.

My name is Matthew Shane Trevino. I was born on the afternoon of May 17th, 1984. And like every other Thursday preceding that one, time continued on. I had a mother and father, and as the year progressed, I had a new mother and the same father. For reasons only best explained by him, he fought tooth and nail to keep me as his son.

Years and years later, I would meet my mother in a town called Pocahontas, would learn that she knew where I was the entire time she had been separated from me, and I would find out that maybe some stones of my past are better off left unturned.

In-between my chance meeting with my biological mother and the years that would follow as I spent my life growing and learning, I would spend my childhood and early teenage years moving between 3 solid locations.

I refer to them as solid locations because I actually have memories of them.

From an apartment complex to a one story house one street over to a two story house in the year of 1998.

While most of my teenage years were spent in treatment facilities for mental and legal problems, I would spend this time writing and creating artwork. Writing and artwork were my windows to other places. They were the foundation upon which my mind could rest, and they were instances and items that I could control completely and would not have to rely on any real outside influences to make or break them.

Around the year of 1998, I attempted suicide for the first time by taking 3600 miligrams of Dextromethorphan. And while the DXM alone probably wasn’t enough to kill me, the inactive and other active ingredients in the medication were more than enough to allow me to lapse into a semi-vegetative state. I was revived a few hours later at a hospital, went through a short period where I thought I had died and was in whatever idea I had of Hell, and that all of time ceased to continue to happen.

Years later I would attempt suicide a 2nd time by either over dosing on sleeping pills or muscle relaxers (to this day I still have no clue what was in those bottles). I would have been successful had a friend of mine not come by to have a conversation with me. A few hours later, I was in the hospital.

Shortly after that, I was comatose.

In the two days that I lay in that hospital bed, for all intents and purposes dead to the world, darkness washed over me and I called silence my home. Nothing around me existed – it was like I had reached up and found the switch to the entire Universe. And flipped it to the off position.

Part II

In the year before the first attempt, if you had asked me how I thought my life would turn out, I would have probably given you a completely different answer than I would now.

If you had asked me then if I thought that my life would end at my own hands, I would have probably called you crazy.

Growing up, for me, was difficult. It wasn’t because our family didn’t have enough money, or because I was abused. I grew up in a nice middle class neighborhood at the heart of suburbia. We went to the fireworks every Fourth of July, opened presents at Christmas and during the summer, my father would bring home slushies for all of the kids on the block. (In fact, he went to Sonic so much that they eventually knew him as one of their regulars.)

It all changed when I became a teenager.

The night before my first day of 7th grade, I spent nearly 3 hours riding my bike around the bottom of our street. Circle after circle. It was almost as if I had changed a long time ago, but was only then able to comprehend it.

My high-school years brought into my life the times that I can neither remember nor forget. They were the trials and tribulations that would define me for the years to come. They were the heartbreaks and the overpowering ideals of my youth.

In short, they were what broke me and pieced me back together.

If I were to guess at how to paraphrase some of my teachers according to what they had told me and how they had treated me, I would say that they looked at me as somewhat brilliant, however, lacking the will and drive to see whatever it was that was inside of me through to completion.

I was well versed and articulate in writing, quiet when it came to the spoken word. Shy and always trying to stay out of the spotlight, yet always being dragged to the center of everything at large. Dispite all of my best efforts, I was somebody that was always trying to escape who he was.

Over the course of highschool, I failed twice before finally being expelled for the destruction of school property.

It was these years that have slipped from my memory, whether by choice or by another means. It was these years that I can no longer recall. And it is these years that will always haunt me with images that no longer carry any meanings, and empty phrases and ghosts of things long past.

The break-ins, the vandalizing, the destruction of property, the death threats, the arson, the running away, and yes, even the drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll.

It was the group of gun-toting Mexicans out for blood with semi-automatic weapons, or it was the wannabe Gangster with a small pistol aimed inches away from the back of my neck. It was the days spent staring at the sharpened gleaming edge of a blade, and it was the nights spent sleeping in an unlocked car in the middle of Gang infested territory.

It was the numerous run-ins with the police, the months and months spent in jail, and the party that almost got me stabbed. It was the fights that were always seconds away from erupting, and the girls that always seemed to find me attractive enough to sleep with.

It was the back window of the Jeep exploding out onto the street, the speakers that I landed on as the vehicle rolled, and my possessions as they seemed to jettison from the inside of it. It was the people who used me, and the people that I used.

It was Florida, it was California, it was Texas, and it was coast-to-coast every week.

It was the van as it lurched through the median, became airborne over bumper-to-bumper traffic and landed on two city trucks only a feet away. It was the loss of vision, the loss of reality, the loss of being.

It was nothingness. And in those two days, I confronted it head on for the second time. Only this time, I woke up to a tube shoved down my throat and the steady beeping of machines. I had come back to the world, and nothing had changed.

Part III

Most people wait until their life is almost over to write some sort of autobiography. What’s the point to that? We spend our entire lives trying to make some lasting impression on this world, when in reality, everything that we do will be gone in a century or so anyway.

I know that I’ll never do anything that will touch society and civilization in such a way that it becomes a lasting impression for centuries and centuries to come. And in all honesty, neither will most of you.

I look back at everything that I’ve witnessed, everything that I’ve learned, and everything that has happened, and I want to be able to think that it was all worth something. That it was all meaningful in such a way that was significant in some aspect.

I want to be able to think that the people that I’ve met and the things that I’ve imparted to them in some way changed their life. Whether it was good or bad. Whether it was unique or old-hat. I want to be able to think that I had some sort of impact on their lives, no matter how minuscule.

I need to believe that. 1

My entire life has been spent thinking that on some deep level, nothing that I did really mattered. I need to believe on some even deeper level that this thinking is wrong. That I’m wrong. I need to be proven wrong.

I’ve heard people say that I was lucky, that I was given a second chance, and a third chance, and a fourth chance, and so-on and so-forth, for a reason. I’m waiting – I’m waiting for that reason. I’m waiting for something to present itself in the wake of things that come that will clarify to me, personally, just what that reasoning is.

In a world ruled by Chaos, a time-line that is seemingly infinite yet so finite – in an existence that is defined by what you do in that existence – I want to think that not everything is left up to chance. Not everything is merely the flip of the Cosmic Penny.

It’s been 4 years since I’ve re-awakened. What information did I bring back with me that has gotten me past those 4 years?

Absolutely nothing.

I want to believe in the above, I need to believe in the above. But in all honesty, I know that I can’t believe in the above. Because unfortunately, life really is just the flip of a coin. It’s a card in the hat, a drop in the bucket, a match to the puddle of gasoline. It’s chance and circumstance and happenstance and anything else you can think of that will define it as mere random behavior associated to free movement and perceived free will.

And here I am, like you, in the middle of it all, wondering just what it’s all about. The conflict, the resolution, the heartache, the pain. All of it. And the answer, of course, is now what it’s always been. The answer is…

Part IV

Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “…an individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” Or, in other words, life does not start until you stop focusing on what’s right in front of you and start focusing on the picture at large.

Is that the answer? Humanitarianism? One selfless act, whether paid forward or not?

I look back on my life, and I can’t help but wonder if I’ve been living for everyone around me, or if I’ve been living for myself.

Individual acts, taken completely out of consequence, could likely point a logical step towards the latter. But individual acts applied to the theory as a whole – where does that leave me?

Each act, whether the consequences were known or subliminal, doesn’t change the end affect. It only defines reason. A reason to take action, a reason to have taken action, and a reason to have avoided consequence. But reason, in and of itself, is neither good nor evil.

Because for reason to make any sense at all, there has to be will. A will to do good, or a will to do evil. That will will define action, and that action, when inspected, will define reason. But reason is incapable of doing harm. It is incapable of feeling joy, pity, or sorrow.

As a human being, I think, therefore I am. I take actions which may or may not cause ill conceived consequences, but the mere fact that I took any action in the first place – does that classify me as a good or a bad person?

Every action that we take is for some reason – there is no truly selfless act. So how do we begin to live?

We do it just like any other day. With one step at a time. You may want to think there is an answer to the question of this so-called life – that there is an answer to every question – but sometimes, you just have to take it for what it is.

One sentient being amongst millions and millions and millions of other sentient beings, stumbling blindly through the abyss. A crowd of beings that are just as lost you are, but trying so desperately to hide it.

My name is Matthew Trevino. I am 24 years old, and today is the 8,778th day of the rest of my life.