My Story. Part One.

My life is an unbelievable story, one with twists and turns through valleys and dark caverns. It has seen pain and sorrow, fear and stress. I suppose I have seen some happy times, when I was on top of the world, gloating in the sunshine.  Often times though, when I look back, on all that has happened to me I see dark clouds swirling and pacing, waiting to unleash the storm of lightning, thunder, and blood-red rain.  I have been weathered down by the always constant storm.  My face has deep gouges etched out where the rain water runs down.

Small and fleeting moments of hope scurry through the story here and there.  But they are always hunted, stalked and devoured in the tall grasses by the predators; sadness and despair, until nothing is left except the decaying carcasses of what once was life.

Every time that happiness entered the story I was forced to return to the dark gray building where my life began with such fear and uncertainty. It is the place where souls haunt the hallways and the beds are filled with scared and clammy patients.  The smells in there burn my nose and nobody walks at a normal pace.  Some people there walk painfully slow, attached to machines, shuffling each foot forward always hunched over and looking down, they are as close to the wall as possible as if they are trying to hide in the shadows because they are not important enough for the middle of the hall. The people who use the middle of the hall run hurriedly from room to room making long loud echoes bounce off the wall.  So many people talk in hushed voices with dark shadow eyes because of the horrible fluorescent lighting.  It doesn't really matter because people do there best to avoid eye contact there because eyes are so rarely filled with bright hope for the future.

My hair is brown now and my eyes are blue. I am about 6'3" and I have learned the art of escaping reality.  All my life I have been running away from the scene.  Whether I run away to a distant country or I evade the truth of things by hiding in music, my best tactic to deal with something is to distract myself from it and hope that it will disappear.  It never does. I run from the gray buildings and I hide in a brightly lit room where the clouds cannot cover me in their iron cloak. I outrun the clouds for as long as possible and find a bright beach somewhere the problems cannot reach me.



And so it begins with me, a little kid playing in a park, digging in the sand with my Tonka truck.  My mom is there like every mother should be, sitting on a bench, watching with a smile on her face.  She walks up to me in the sandbox and tells me that it is time to go, I have to visit my friend down the street because she has to leave. We walk down the tree-lined street with my one hand raised up to reach into her palm and my other grasping tightly onto the top of the Tonka truck. Until she lets go of my hand and I run with a smile on my face until I reach the next street corner and then I look back to see how far ahead I had gotten.  The sun pushes through the spring green leaves and everything is still good because my mom only has to go to the hospital for work and my friend who lives down the street is still alive.   

But we are only slow dancing in a burning room