He wanted something he didn’t have. Had not received anything close to a sustainable amount of. And being a child, should not have had to work for. The feeling he’d assumed a reward for stupidity and indolence was bestowed instead. Innocent, he believed it. That warped and wrapped gift with the bright blue bow appeared one day. As memory recalls, as if out of thin air. An empty damaged once beautiful box and under his name a note, “You will not have this”. Surely there must have been a time when things were different, when things were not this way. Maybe it’s yet to come he thinks and so he hopes and dreams of that possible future. When the foul stench of smoke, makeup and perfume clear and brutality ceases. A place where the scaffolding of the world is more stable. The voices not so incredibly loud and impossibly close. The glares not so far away and kinder even. This dream is the life of another boy he tells himself as he shivers to sleep once again. A doppelganger who lived where he’d always been enough. Desperation to be seen wells up. Fear and inadequacy alchemize the form into a mosquito or a leech depending on present people and circumstance. A craving surges to be swatted or stomped or filled with poison. Rage or recoil were each sufficient, both providing proof of existence. He learns many forms of violence. All are preferred to the uncertain emptiness of quiet. In dream worlds he is at ease. Tight fists unclench and he lays down his weapons. He is loved for the greatness of simply being. Or accepted, or maybe just acknowledged as okay for being. Or at the very least, left alone, unharmed, free to love vicariously on pages and screens and daydreams. Wearing thin rubber soles of dime store sneakers, he roams a predictable grid of streets and hideouts. On two wheels, he is free. Free to be squirrel and butterfly, bird and fish, tree and bush, here and there and safe. The insecurity of boyhood has a mostly invisible form but it seeps through cracks. Many hideous monsters are known to prey on such a boy. Many opportunistic beings feed it, make it fat only to later feed on it. Many harms come of this. I learn to be careful who I tell all this to lest I get walked on and over like rotten berries and leaves. A deadfall becomes me. Not enough, not okay. Incredible fear prevents effort. A well learned fear of failure eventually comes to deeply overshadow that fear of nothingness. Better to be nothing than to be in harm's way. Unseen is less painful than eaten alive. A dog eats its own shit rather than suffer the consequences of soiling his cage. Of existing where there’s nowhere else to be. No matter the abandonment. No matter the absence of their master. Incredible terror lurked for decades, to my right and just out of sight. He came around to face them and they disappeared. Poof… The past rewound, remade and replayed over and over and again, literally lacked present day credibility. From elements of the past he alchemizes new matter. A gift of love, given and received anew to and from himself daily. It is enough and in time, he becomes okay just being.
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