Eon's Close Enough

I.

It was all a blur. These colliding temptations welcomed such beautiful and tragic opportunities, and my timing was eternal. There was so much to discover. These are only convoluted the desolate recollections I would come to experience during my rotten departure into a world I thought I had always wanted. I never lived, not in the sense of self, not when these conditions mended for themselves. I was not aware of endings, or what I thought was considered real. I had no concept, and I was not prepared for the abuse and the loneliness. I was a great mystery, not knowing that everything would come crashing into me. Watch me calibrate and exist. I never stood a chance.

II.

I was born on March 8th, 1996. I had two brothers, and I was the middle child. I grew up in the comforts of blissful gardens and glittering snow of Freehold, New Jersey. Things were simple, just like how they were supposed to be. Clouds had seemed so much larger and void of absence. My grandmother had several greenhouses, but we were never allowed inside. Then moved to Fajardo, Puerto Rico. I was about seven or eight. My parents built a house on top of my grandparents’ house, to better care for them. My dad was a merchant marine, and he would be shipped out for weeks or months at a time. We lived in a “castle in the ghetto,” as my parents would always say. We had a lot of fun during those affable days on the warm island. It was a constant summer of carefree, melancholic warmth; swinging on hammocks and drinking cold glasses of iced tea. During the days, my brothers and I made homemade movies; and during the nights, we told one another mythical stories. Imagination spun; dazzling colors! We made up galaxies. Outside our castle, I would know nothing of the decadent, bitter world. Nothing existed beyond my floating era of dreams and unblemished truth. Art was my escape into that magic. I drew a lot.

III.

From kindergarten to 10th grade, I was enrolled in Light Bay Baptist Academy, a private, English-speaking school located in the center of the sleepy town of Fajardo. An old and weathered town, full of mesmerizing beauty and Conquistador architecture, with a touch of steel bars, cemented into windows and doors (all for our safety). Stray dogs were the dominant kings of el barrio. A flood of crime, sex, violence, and drugs brewed deep in the mountains right behind our house. Gunshots were as common as the coquis at night. I think our mother secretly worried about the dangers of the mountains and told us to never venture past our neighborhood. I think she thought that public schools were just as bad. I that if you were placed in any environment long enough, you would learn to adapt to it, speak its language, fall in love, and endure. But none of that happened.

IV.

Light Bay Baptist Academy ranged from 1st to 12th grade and had a student body consisting of no more than forty or fifty virtuous souls. I listened languidly to the rambling sermons, perpetually coursing through me. My uncertainties only grew as I was forevermore involved in the steeple of redemption and wild misery. I was conditioned into the fixed somersault of secluded learning and mythical architypes. I was introduced to the Holy Spirit, a difficult simulacrum, I did not believe. My parents weren’t very religious either, so I thought that I had inherited the same agnostic gene that blocked out the imaginary wheeling of the shambling mind. At worst, hell was always in me like a vulture. I was in the gloat of the pedagogue as they stripped away the antiquated words of dark centuries and made up hellion sermons, trying to wash away my obsolete heart. Yet, I did not feel a thing and snickered at their narrow-minded foolishness. I had one or two best friends, and from time to time, our mothers would gather us up, and we would all meet down at the playa under the bright tropical sun. The water always felt like the warm hand of paradise. Throughout my time at Light Bay Baptist Academy, many kids would get transferred, relocated, or moved to the States. Nothing, I knew, was permanent. I lived each day in glorious obedience and observation, taking in the world with all my heart! By this, I meant that I did very well academically.

V.

By the end of my older brother’s senior year, my parents decided to move us to Florida so that my brother can pursue college. We had a few relatives scattered throughout the humid peninsula, for whatever company that meant. We packed and left the sleepy island of Puerto Rico. My brother had been accepted into Full Sail University. I was enrolled in Winter Park High School. I was finally about to taste that chimerical jewel of a moment. Everything I had ever seen in the movies was about to manifest into reality. My reality: high school, lascivious love triangles, scene kids, concerts. Glamour and fame. It would play me into such violent grace. Focusing in. I had all the time in the world. I never loved these conditions, only mastering the adaptation of an abused life. Fiery, I ultimately collapsed into everything that my body did not respond to. How can you say that this was really where I belonged?