An Open Letter to Alex

Alex, Colton here

I am addressing this to you not because I want you to follow all I have written then pick up where I was at your age. Im not at all writing to advise you, Ive written this so that incase a detach similar to what happened when my parents went back to court. You ask alot about Penny, you spend alot of time with Maddie. I cannot speak for them here. This page is a landfill I will use to (over) detail what followed for me after the 7th grade until now. By the time I link this letter -- you might have already spent enough time with me to have heard most of its contents verbally, this is why its hosted openly. I want Rikki, Granny, Emily, Kayla, and anyone to read it just as I do you.
Forgive me however because the goal of this has been to write and not look back -- meaning the 4/24 Colton and the 2/24 Colton are just as likely to be cringe to the 5/24 Colton. Im fine with embarassing myself because ultimately Ive always defaulted to feeling shame in place of laughter when recalling silly things. -- April 24th 2024.

Internet I (II-x)

In late summer of 2022 I was reimbursed with my Samsung Note 9 (I have an iPhone 13 now and wouldve been better off aligning with iPhone.), I had a hard time making friends at school, I was the only white kid in the school and prior I was in Rankin County -- I was foreign. Using my phone I vacantly scrolled as everyone has, I had discord and would join servers and accumulate 30k+ messages in them just as vacantly. (luckily im a good boy and discord/sex offender jail time didnt motivate me to write you this 'sad' letter ) This wasnt any different than what I was doing when I had lived with my dad yet I was much more confident when using it, Id join servers and quite literally get as close to doxxing myself as possible aswell as stated edgy 14 year old rhetoric. None of this ever *caught up with me* caught up with me but what did become of it is I found out that it was hard to get along with myself then. I was sure of myself, I was pretensious, and often worked myself up for fun. I was rude to people I deemed my friends. These conclusions, as they were made on my own and after making the same mistakes many times - made me embarrased. My asshattery lasted an entire year and 100% translated into real life. I bickered with people and then focused on aspects that were vulnerable to them so i could 'win'. In the month I started high school I had been using discord exclusively for direct messages with people that got along with me. There were 2. a girl from Greece who seemed to act the same as I did, and a rapper friend from mass I had met in the Pyrocynical discord server. My rapper friend seemed to be in need of my attention and would tell me anything he had on his mind, we talked all the time and tried multiple times to produce music together. The greek girl was into clothing, not sure if you give a damn but we both enjoyed cataloging and ranting about brands together and only once did we ever acknowledge eachother as people living in a world (it started with her mentioning that greece had cats everywhere and ended with us talking about greek textiles and what our schools had when it came to 'unique fits'). I quit talking to her in december and in late january I had deleted my social media. this was due to me wanting to truly wait until I was out of my moms and not so worked up before I began talking to others. because I am still a kid I developed a much heavier attachment to what was left; fantasy, music, and memories I had akin to when me and you would laugh at 10 second videos and repeat that for 12 hours. my 'fantasy' attachment was executed by daydreaming about what webcomic characters were doing. since im still guilty of this I should clarify that its not ever going to Chris Chan levels. Since I already had a drawpad and aspirations to get better at digital art, I drew whatever came to mind, got quite good at drawing (I'd say better than Kayla, not really though. I cant color nor can I do complex scenes with multiple people looking in more than like 3 directions) and since it wasnt particularly 'fan art' I had developed my own world using these characters and placing them in the universe of EVE Online. This, while great - affirmed my ancient conclusion that I dont have any romantic feelings or wishes to sleep with anyone. This is also fine, the motivation for it however stems from my anxiousness at home having to witness my mom being *fucking nuts all the time* even after Mike left (aswell as going through worse living with my dad). It is also due to my embarassment for every unnecessary delay I had in social cues and even works produced when I had started drawing.