The world is a rough place. In the individualistic, free, society in which we live today, nobody is out there to assist you and to care whether you are well or not, excepting perhaps your parents, if you are lucky enough to be one of the lucky ones and to have them around as well as to get along with them.

These being said, here comes the situation that my friend Daryl is in. He is 17 years old, turning 18 (to my shame I do not remember when his birthday is) and he is as of 3 days ago, homeless.His situation is indeed fascinating, especially due to its evolution during the past year. Until not more than 7 months ago, Daryl was a shy kid who did not have more than a handful of friends.He was a good buddy, always there for a good time. He would do just about anything to be liked by his friends. About 7 months ago, when he joine the school that I had been going to, he was faced withwhat I would call, a "doubt-worthy" crowd of people. His new antourage seemed promising. They seemed to like and accept him, if however, he were to adapt and be more like them. More specifically,to adopt a "goth" lifestyle. My personal opinion was that such thing would not be the best course of action for him, mainly because of the almost constant state of depression that seems to be characteristicto that lifestyle. Now, just for the record, my opinion is based on the people I have met and it might be an error to generalize to the rest of the "goth" sub-culture.

He progressed toward this goal by first, getting a number of piercings on his face as well as his earlobes. Slowly his appearence changed and he became, well, quite a dark presence. His explanation to itwas something along the lines that this is just his passion for the colour black that is comming out in his fashion attire and his liking towrd death metal music which he just never fully allowed to show itself.

Sadly, along with these, he also suffered an increase in substance abuse. Now, substance abuse, as far as I knew, was never too much of a foreign term for him, however his new appearence in combination with it definitely caused some unpleasant conversations at home.

The reason I consider that many of his changes happened in order to please his new crowd is because before he met them, when he used to spend a lot of time with me, he also showed an attitude that would please mea lot, although I knew it was not necesarily in his nature to do so. An example is him joining me to my church youth group meetings. He is an atheist, in spite of the heavy Catholic influence that came from hismother. He was never too wild about visiting churches, yet he came anyway in order to please me. Now I see his attitude changing, and he became downright against the notion of Christianity and hwen I see him dressedand behaving like an "undead" person, I find it hard not to relate the two facts and to conclude that his social transition to "goth" had no influence on that opinion.

For three days now he is, so to say, homeless. After being caught by his parents "surfing" on the top of a mini-van while the van was driving, his parents decided that "enough is enough" and he got "kicked out of the house".Now, here are some details regarding this, in an interview that I had conducted while on the phone with him:

Questions:

How come your parents kicked you out of the house?
"Uhhh, surfing on the roof of a van while it was driving"

Is that it?
"Pretty much, oh and constant defiance of rules, uh and sitting on the computer till 6 in the morning and sleeping all day heh"

How do you feel about living on your own, without the certainty of "home"?
"It kicks ass! My friend Lindsay, she got kicked out of the house and she kinda didn't like not knwing where she will end up tomorrow, but I like it."

Do you think you could have done things in such a way that it would not have harmed your self-expression, yet would have pleased your parents, at least as much as to not kick you out of the house ?
"Oh my parents are begging for me to come back ..."

Do you consider going back, perhaps apologizing ?
"Oh, I'm actually probably about to go back in about a week or so, still not sure tho"

I thought they kicked you out?
"Well my mom doesn't like not being able to stay in touch with me and stuff ...well ... shes paranoid about knowing where I am, she kinda said 'ok you get out of the house but let me know where you are at all times'"

Well I thought she was the one who kicked you out; were you the one who wanted to leave ?
"Well, it's kinda a mixture of both..."

"In living away from my mom, it's given me so much more respect for her. Because when I was living with her, we were always at each other's throat, so it wasn't really that peaceful. And sicne I've been out of the house shes been really nice to me which is an interesting change."

"Oh, and, crayons taste like purple"

"And here is a random tip for all your blog readers, if you ever wanna hot-wire a car remember this, bumble bees and christimas trees; the red wire to green wire and black wire to yellow wire"

Your feedback, opinions and/or comments are welcome. Feel free to post questions for the interviewee or myself.