Love Letters to Anne

So let’s take an aside…

My missing pieces drove me. The emptiness pushed me further. Nothing anyone had to offer me in this place mattered. I was born and then broken and then expected to be normal. Whatever that was supposed to be. I constantly sought reassurance and love because the love I needed was stripped from me. But I didn’t know how to love. Love was associated with loss and pain.

I should have been grateful I wasn’t in an orphanage, that I had a place to sleep safely, that I had toys… but I wasn’t. No amount of window dressing on my new life could make up for the loss. It was neither fair nor reasonable to expect me to be in some state of gratitude. Especially when I was so empty and grieving. I would grieve for decades. Let that sink in for a minute…decades of my life in pain and suffering emotionally. I still deal with issues resulting from the crime committed upon me. The pain was so great at times I was suicidal at the worst, and living recklessly at best. Because fuck it. I sank quickly into a despair you will never have known without this experience.

It was suggested at one point that had I been adopted by a family of means and not one struggling within itself both financially and emotionally I would have been content and had a better attitude about the situation. But this isn’t true.

I was a blind man given sight just long enough to witness the death of my world, then blinded again. Cast into this world without the tools to survive. Fighting was all I had to survive. And in this dark world, there was no gratitude for things you all take for granted. I figured it was the least that could have been done to provide me with the ability to grow. And once I did, I moved forward in my mission, focused on getting it all back.

Of course, I couldn’t replace all that had been stolen. Like the joy of seeing my mom after a day of school for example. All the firsts that had been taken away. The experiences I would have shared as I learned this place slowly. My first girlfriend, my first kiss, comfort after disappointments, all the little things you take for granted. Where was my mom? Where was my family? What was happening in their lives? Did they think about me, was I forgotten? Why was I left behind? What did I do wrong? Why did I suffer this fate?

It would have been another thing entirely had I not felt these things, but I did. And no amount of talking would change that. There was no peace in me. All turmoil and darkness, and as I grew, so did the resentment and anger. And as a child, you don’t know how to deal with these hard facts and circumstances. I would be made whole again. I would not be denied. And God help you if you got in my way. They say the world doesn’t owe us anything, but I don’t believe that. I didn’t ask to be born. I certainly didn’t choose any of this for myself. As I grew, so did the Void in me. And as I felt the gravity of the black hole in my soul, I had to navigate without a compass. In my teenage years, this manifested in all sorts of destructive behavior. I lost hope for awhile, but still I persevered but at a great price.

I kept going anyway. And eventually, I would leave it all behind thanks to a miracle of chances that unfolded, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves…