Just so you know...just because I was wearing their shirt, and I was listening to their music when it happened, doesn't mean I did it because of them. Hanson was one of the few things that made me truly happy. Sure, there were a few other things that made me smile. Other bands, and reading, simple things. Because I was never one for extravagance. But even talking to my friends was bittersweet, because, well, because I was never really sure if they were my friends. Most of them (all one of 'em) were my friends through the computer. Then there was that girl that I would talk to occasionally, at work. She was about to get married. And there was the other girl, 4 years younger than me, who always wanted to go clubbing. I hated dancing, though. You would too, if you had been forced to dance wearing a red, skin tight, catsuit in front of hundreds of people, and you were as fat as I was. All my other "friends" left me after we graduated from high school. Or, at least, they did. I failed too many Englishes, so I wasn't allowed to. My friends either stopped talking to me, or they started making fun of me for still liking Hanson, even though they used to be obsessed with them. When I reminded them of that, and said they were better than Ricky Martin or the Backstreet Boys, they said that Hanson was "defiantly gay and girls". (I didn't know a guy could defiantly be a girl. Silly me) Then they would stop talking to me for almost 6 months, and when they started talking to me again, one of the first things they would ask me was "Are you still in love with Taylor Hanson?". And when it was a week before my birthday, they would say they would let me know if they could do something, but my birthday came and went without me hearing from them, so I sent them an email saying "thanks for letting me know" and they flipped out on me. So I flipped out back. I said they were never my friend, a friend wouldn't do what they did. That was when they wrote back saying they knew "imitation was the best form of flattery" (they couldn't even get that right) and all, but I took it too far. That I only liked Hanson because they did, nevermind the fact that I didn't find out they liked them until the beginning of sophomore year, and I had liked them since the end of freshman year. They said that I was right, I was never a real friend, they only let me tag along, and don't bother responding, they didn't associate with "losers". So you can understand why I never really trusted my friends.
Then there were the things that never made me happy. School, family, work, family. Family was one of the worst. I can't say it was bad though, because so many more people have it so much more worse. I had two brothers I constantly fought with. They always called me fat, slut. They made fun of everything I did. How bad I did in school, how stupid I was. Even though I scored a 1220 on my SAT's and proved I wasn't, they still called me stupid. How I liked music that was for little kids. How I dressed in tight clothes, even though I was fat. But I didn't. I was fat, though. Even I know that's true.
They hit me too.
In 6th grade, I went to school with a big bruise on my hand, because my older brother decided to hit me repeatedly with a ruler there. I have a scar on my left foot from the time we went to the beach, and my younger brother thought I was following him. He threw a piece of glass at me. One time, I gave my older brother the phone, when his work called, asking him to come in. He came into my room, where I had been watching TV, pushed me off my bed, started hitting and kicking me, and banged my head against the wall. My younger brother even tried to get him to stop, it was so bad. On my 17th birthday, 3 days after my junior prom, I left a dirty plate on the table downstairs. My older brother got so angry when I wasn't able to go right down and get it, that he ended up breaking my souvenir mug from the prom, pulling my hair (clumps came out for days after), and banging my head against the wall. He always apologized after, but he said it was our fault. That he would come home from work, and we would do something to make him upset. I can see what he meant.
I was in a lot of pain. Hanson was the only thing that made me happy.
One night, while I was trying to sleep, I got this thought. It wasn't a very nice thought. In fact, it was kinda scary. It even made me cry. But it was so obvious. So simple, so true. "It could be so easy to take away all this pain."
And it was.
So it had nothing to do with Hanson. I never cared if they had girlfriends, or if they were gay. I didn't care about how they dressed, or what they said. I didn't care if they co-wrote or not. All I cared about was how their music made me feel inside. And it made me feel good. It made me happy. That was all that mattered. And that was why I was wearing their shirt, and listening to their music. I wanted to be happy. And I was. Just so you know.