We’re not those people any more. Those promises we made no longer hold; for how can we keep pacts made by other people in a different sort of life. The rumours and clothes no longer matter; overshadowed by the genuine life-altering threats we are now facing, and the struggle of keeping a float when the world is conspiring to drown you. The grades, the cliques, the work, the parties, the drugs, the families – all trying to push us under, see exactly how much we can take, and how badly we’ll break.

So we fight, discover our own ways to break through just enough to keep breathing. Yet in this fight, this desperate plea for survival, we loose each other. We break the bonds formed for many years and drift from those who loved us.

In winning our struggle to survive, we lose our fight to live.