Adam -
In True Notebooks, Mark supports the boys and encourages them, but I think the boys also support each other. At one point, one of the boys writes about how he helped a kid who had just entered juvenile hall by giving him supply's he needed. He did this because someone had helped him when he first got locked up, and it was his way to return the favor. Through most of my life when I hit a rough patch my friends where always there and had my back. I consider them family at this point, their support means everything to me. When I had problems at home, I would bike over to my freind micheles and we'd hang out in the back yard all night blasting the radio and laughing like beavis and butthead. She was always there and she could make me smile even when I wanted to punch my fist through a wall, and to me laughing means everything.
Teri -
The characters in True Notebooks are definately struggling with abandonment because their whole lives they have been tossed to the side or left behind by the people they where suppose to be able to trust the most. Now that they are locked up, there really isn't any connection to the outside world, and that must be a lonely feeling for them. I think everyone has times they can remember feeling lonely or abandoned whether it was over something little or big. I used to get in these huge fights with my family when I was younger, and I always ended up leaving the house upset and lonely, its a sucky feeling. But I got over it by talking with them again, or pushing it aside and out of my head.