I used to believe this city had hope, yet now the only hope I see is escape. I used to believe that there was more to this place than met the eye, but reality has set in. The Tone, what a fucking joke. As my time in this city comes to an end I’ve come to realize the truth. This place is nothing more than a failed city on a crash course towards mayhem, it always has been. The college was once a haven but the filth has crept into it’s halls as well. What this city needs is a merciless purge of the cancer that grows inside it, but that purge will never come. Some things just aren’t worth saving and this city is one of them.

I wake up every morning only to catch that Stockton stench, that smell of ghetto scum. It’s thick and exhausting. It’s negative culture, it’s negative people, hell, it’s god damn air. It’s made me a negative person once again. Even the college has fallen victim to the city, the counselors preach failure more than anything else. It’s hard to hold on to hope when the people who are supposed to help you move forward feel more like they’re trying to prevent you from moving at all. It’s all bullshit and it’s taken its toll. You can only keep the anger at bay for so long and at some point you can let it consume you or choose to embrace it. I guess you could say this city has broken me. Despite how resilient I thought I was, it’s changed me.

Many of the words spoken to me echo in my head. The negativity and the constant need to see me fail. I look around and see only people trying to hold me back in everything that I do. I’m sure I’m not the only person here that feels that way. Even chance seems to be against me in this city since I rarely catch a break. One day you’ll wake up and realize you’re alone. Nothing led up to it, but merely a realization that you’ve always been alone. Trust becomes just another word and you grow colder. Everyone will fail you and the moment you realize that you grow stronger, more resilient, and start to take on the world alone. The good news is I’ve reached a pinnacle, a point where soon nothing these degenerates say or do will matter.

I know what it is that I want to do and I know what I need to do to do it. The goal has always been to live a better life and that goal resides in a place that has always been close to home. That place is Silicon Valley. A place so full of creativity and vision, you could say it’s the world of tomorrow today. Where the people who reside there are worth something and ghetto scum is damn near forbidden to enter. It’s the only thing that keeps me going. The knowledge that not much time is left before I can transfer and leave this place forever. It keeps what little hope I’ve managed to protect from these people alive. I’ve got to thank design as well, it’s helped me find peace in the darkest of times. It’s allowed me to keep dreaming.

I look in the mirror and see someone different than who I once was. I ask myself how can someone change so much in such a short amount of time. From borderline socialist to full blown capitalist. From a zealous humanitarian to someone so cold and uncaring. Despite this, I feel as if this is how it’s supposed to be, almost like destiny. As if all the pieces of a puzzle I’ve been trying to solve for years are falling gently into place. It’s hard to fight something that feels so right. Not everyone is meant to be a hero, some of us are meant to be otherwise. In the real world the hero fails. In the real world it is the malevolent that succeeds and so intelligently masks itself as righteous, my future profession their weapon of choice. Regardless of who I once was, one thing is certain.

I was always meant to be the Villain.