"Welcome to the real world", she said to me,
condescendingly.
Take a seat, take your life,
plot it out in black and white.

Well, I never lived the dreams of the prom kings
and the drama queens.
I'd liked to think the best of me,
is still hiding up my sleeve.

They love to tell you,
stay inside the lines.
But something's better,
on the other side.

They read all the books but they can't find the answers.
And all of our parents, they're getting older,
I wonder if they've wish for anything better,
while in their memories, tiny tragedies.

There's so such thing as the real world, just a lie you've got to rise above.

my head is in a thousand places, and my heart is in a million pieces. i don't believe in love anymore. everything from now is going to be a meaningless crush, nothing more than mere physical infatuation. i should have just stopped trying a long time ago, and save our innocent hearts. i can't feel anything anymore. i feel no happiness, no sadness, no heartbreak and no love. my dreams are long gone and my ambitions are crushed. i have no hope, no emotion, no dreams. i'm just an empty shell of a person that once believed. i'm cold and dead on the inside. no amount of words can describe the carcass of life that used to be. i'm just rotting away slowly.

i just can't feel. i can't bring myself to love anyone again. i thought i knew the meaning of love. the closest i ever came to love was a twisted relationship that never should have happened. but it happened nonetheless, and i was happy enough simply to feel. now, it's like i'm just going through the motions. waiting for each day to pass, only for another day to come and go while i wait. i'm just filling my days with meaningless activities. i don't even know why i'm doing what i'm doing anymore. i'm just lost, stuck. i can't even smile to my friends anymore because i just can't bring myself to do it. the jokes aren't even as funny anymore. i know the person i used to be is still somewhere in there, it's just going to take something or someone very special to bring it out now because i don't see that person coming back to life anytime soon. i lost the better part of me to all the hopes and dreams that never came true. all the times when fate fell short, when "love" fell short.

i know i stopped trying. i know i stopped feeling. i know i stopped living. maybe one day someone special will walk into my life and wake me from my slumber, teach me how to fall in love again. maybe that someone will give me new dreams to chase, and hopefully that someone will teach me how to live. until then, this life about love is not as much about life, as it is about love. for how does life proceed, without the presence of love?

i've got that hunger again. i want to put on that green jersey and step onto the courts one final time. i want to feel the ball in my hands. i want to burn the opponent, pull it back and burn them again. i want to put the ball through the hoop. i want to hear the swish of the net. i want to hear the crowd cheer. i want to believe there's no one to stop us. it's lonely at the top but that's where i want to be. i want to do it with my team like we did four years ago. i want to be better than i've ever been, because there's no better time. i want to stop the fantasies of buzzer beaters in the finals, because fantasies are only for dreamers.

i want to make it happen. i want the glory. i want that winning feeling. i want to call ourselves champions. i want to hold my breath and fall when everything ends because i never want it to end. i want it for the guys who want it more than me, but have never tasted it because it wasn't their time. i want the clock to run in reverse, to relive the better days, but i want the clock to run down so we know we made it. i want to know how the sun rises on the day when all seems impossible, but seemingly possible. sometimes we fly so high we forget, that at the bottom of it all, there's everything to fall. i want the giants to be reacquainted with the ground, because it where we all put our feet on. i want to live that day over and over again in my head, because we only get one chance at making history.

i want it all. i want it bad. but i want nothing more than to stand up at the very end, next to the people who were there with me every step of the way. who bled with me, cried with me, fought with me, won with me and lost with me. i want them to know this is how champions are made. i want them to remember why we did what we did, and how we got to where we are. because when the dust settles, when all the medals have rusted and the distant sound of glory rings deaf, only the memories remain.

it's not a want, but a need.

we begin.