Derek Cook > Recent Status Updates

These memories of happiness are fleeting things, reflections in a stream, glimpsed all broken for a second and then swept away in the current of grief that is our life now. I can’t say that I ever feel what it felt like then, when I was happy. But sometimes something will touch the place where that feeling was, a touch as slight and swift as the brush of a moths wing in the dark.

I came to understand that whatever was in me that demanded appeasement with drugs and alcohol was not of my own creation. There was no logical reason why I was destroying myself. Some secret combination code existed inside me-and when those tumblers fell into place, the craving took over. Science couldn’t define it, Love couldn’t conquer it, and even the promise of a certain death didn’t deter it.

Ugh…beaches. They make me feel bad too. And exposed. Forced to show off all that skin - all that untanned flesh. My meat is no treat, not for myself or for others. It’s private meat. Pale and confidential. And the idea of putting my clean, well-tended feet on hot, grainy, coarse sand makes me queasy.

Well, you know what, teen me? Fuck you. You’re the fucking worst. I’m glad I’m not you anymore. I’ve got a beard now and thick man skin. FEAR ME.

This new approach to hardcore…involves having big bad muscles, working out, and fighting each other on the regular…. It felt both quasi-athletic and pain-ridden, two of my biggest turn offs. And so, informed by its negativity and need for weight lifting, Pete and I began to shy away from hardcore to form a more positive, non-muscled based group with melodic leadings-which would eventually become Fall Out Boy.

Nobody wants to [“start with their childhood“ in therapy], but to understand your trauma, your potential mood disorders, and/or your mental illness, you have to get at the root of the problem. And all surface problems lead back to your parents, or lack thereof.