Seeketh what thy taketh

I quite remember being young. There are times I really don't but I really do. Sometimes I think about good times. Those are easier to remember. I suppose that makes sense, with what I know now. The only question I have is why would you try to change that?

I remember not giving a flying crap about anything. I mean that seriously. I didn't want toys or even friends. There were two things in the world I cared about. Beyond those two things, nothing bothered me. I wouldn't have eaten had my mom not fed me. I wanted a father, and I wanted my questions answered.

Not too long and yet not too soon after that, I had tossed aside the need for a father. I still had plenty of questions.

I remember being the prodigy son. Someone who, while he felt he had nothing and proud of it, was prophesied to be an amazing person. Not just a doctor or some rich guy, but like Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.

I remember the first time I let them down, and how much fun I had doing so. I kept wonderful grades in school and never got into any trouble, besides being the class clown. I dressed up every halloween for candy like a ninja three years straight. I attended those "special student" classes, thinking they were dull and snobby like rich people are to people like me. I had no idea then how it must have felt not being in those classes. When I finally did find out, it seems that I intended to fail. I remember my first bad grade, and it had nothing to do with me being slow or lazy. It had to do with my friend not being in the same class of me because he wasn't deemed smart enough.

I remember how sad he looked, and yet he didn't cry and just smiled and waved. For a kid who is only 10 that is impressive. I remember playing soccer after school with the older kids and kicking more butt than they expected. I remember how they would always forget my name the next day. Oh how that bugged me so.

I remember how I never talked of how my home life was going. It was easy keeping that up, lying every now and then, so that we sounded like a nice little suburban family, because my mom would do the same thing every time she met a teacher or even went out in public. At the time, I thought that was respectable. I guess I still do.

I remember my first kiss. Like it was yesterday. Like that was the only kiss I had kissed. I was awful. Embarressingly awful. I missed the first go. I was so dry in the mouth the next time that it must have been like kissing sand paper. The third time was where the magic is. It happened brilliantly, and my only regret I have in life is that I wish that could have been the first one, not the third.

I remember seeing my first girlfriend for the last time, as her mother angrily grabbed her away from me. I recall now how I only loved her out of puppy love, or maybe even guilt. I don't think I knew what guilt even was at that age. I remember her face as she cried that last time. She was telling me sorry and I don't understand why. I was happy. I really really was. Some part of me felt that was wrong but I was happy the whole mess was over.

I remember how from those happy, outgoing moments I became secluded. Lost inside myself, refusing to speak unless it was a question. None of my questions were getting answered correctly. It had taken me this long to understand what my penis was for and I would be damned to wait that long again. I grew a marvelous and enormous imagination. Sometimes it would seep out of me unwillingly, and create things in the dark. Other times it would create worlds in which entertained me for hours on end.

It was possible I didn't have a conversation with a girl for at least two years. At the time, I was okay with that. I really didn't care. Being a virgin didn't matter to me. I laughed it off when boys at school bragged about being not, because I knew they were lying. I found the internet that year, I think. I remember my first porn experience. I got caught.

I figured out chat rooms and forums, and I was lost into vast amount of people just waiting to talk to you, expecting things from you, and laughing with you. It was so simple to be clever with typed words. That may be in oxymoron of sorts. I began to talk to people all around the world, further enclosing me into myself.

One person I found particularly fascinating. Simply because she talked with such surety and acceptance. A type of speaking that would attract me to women further into my teenage years. That year I started writing creatively.

She lived nearby. Well sort of, maybe about 45 minutes away. She once asked me to see her, for her parents were coming into town. I was nervous, and simply innocent in the dangers of the internet. I lucked out however, she turned out to be a very pretty girl only one year older than me.

We didn't have much to talk about, that quiet day at the park. We had talked about anything we could come up with. She knew my past, and I knew hers. I remember the warning signs I chose to ignore. That she was 15 and not a virgin, that she thought it was cute I was a virgin and okay with it, and had expressed I should change that. All those sorts of things. I was too much amazed that this older and very pretty girl was so into me, like I was into her. I was just a chubby kid with too many thoughts and way too much imagination to connect properly with anyone.

She set out to prove me wrong, and she did. I connected, and I was vulnerable. I guess as much as I could have been. I hardly cared about anything, except for my questions and my budding desire to prove people wrong. The world seemed too sure of themselves, to locked into the things their parents teach them, that I needed to prove that the world is greater than what the can only see. Everybody thought I was weird. And they are right. They still think that now.

I grew a new passion, and that passion had a name and curly hair. My thoughts were filled with her and I was immortaly consumed. It was a nice feeling. I did things for her I would never do again. I hitchhiked to see her. I ran miles. I lost weight and took risks.

One night, she took me by the hand in her most pretty dress and opened up a world to me. Something more I could drive into, so to speak. I was consumed, and she was entertained into teaching me the things she knew. I was the student, and I learned well.

From then on, it seemed I left my world in childhood.

The past became the present.

I circled the same events over and over again, wishing for a safe return to innocence. Hoping that someday, someday, my questions can get answered. Maybe that day I'll find my passion again. I'll begin to care enough. I can not think of it as sinking, but rather emptying out. Losing what I did not want or did not need, and indeed the vacuum of space it left was painful but water has its way of returning. The only white butterfly of hope left from my child was that I never, in my life, intended any harm. I was just, perhaps rather selfishly, monsooning my way into life.

I feel like a train. Many stops, many stretches of rail. On one hand, I am painfully sorrowful for the blood on my front, for those who took a risk in getting my attention. On the other, I know I never made it a point to say I was safe to do so. I can not return the lives I have taken, but I can reach beyond them, knowing what they meant, like a funeral service for the already living. I won't know it all, and my questions may never be answered, but if faith is to believe in that you can not prove, then I am perhaps the most faithful there ever was.

Or I am the greatest sinner imaginable.

Parlez-vous