WalktheLine

It was too soon ago for you to remember after it happened. That would take almost a year but then it was like it happened yesterday. Your whole life goes like this due to your PTSD and the delayed reaction disorder it has caused. You're not even sure if it's a documented problem but you are sure you have it, self diagnosed or not, it is real. One of the few problems you suffer from since losing your whole family. A tragic story to be sure but not one that is mine to tell but I will try to anyway. Not to spread gossip, mind you, but to hopefully shine light where even light fears to go. The underbelly of society where the children eaters lurk.

You know they're there, you can smell them, hear them, sense them. They are never very far constantly reminding you that you can never sleep. Not in the real sense of the word, anyway. One eye open is easier when you have two, exhausting when you only have one. If only that middle one was of more use. Just kidding. We won't even talk about the brown one. LOL! Now I'm really cracking myself up. hahahaha Stop! Back to my point, while I can still remember I had one.

Shit! What the hell was it? It was kind of important. Oh yeah, we were talking about your unfortunate delayed reaction issue. It wouldn't be so bad if by the time you react it wasn't too late. Too late to make a difference, everyone else has already moved on, not knowing you are handicapped and in need of help. Not you. You have it together, you have all the answers. You can even fake moving forward, growing, progressing when really you're stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck, okay, okay, I'm okay and absolutely hilarious! Not so funny. Fucking Funny. You find yourself looking at a future of empty, lonely existence the same future many have faced but few actually travel. It's not like looking into the abyss but rather living in the abyss. Not only does it look back at you it licks you on the inside.

There was a time you were on top of the world or at as high, on cocaine. Snorting, smoking, shooting, as long as it was coke. Coke and sex. Coke made the sex easier, it made a lot of things easier. Especially the rape. Okay that takes a lot more than just coke and still doesn't work. There wasn't much else you had to look forward to, except maybe a slow painful death.

When you live on the streets it becomes painfully obvious that you should not live long. Society will not let you not for a second, think you have any value that warrants you staying alive? So you start marking down the days, a single line in your little black book to mark days gone by. The book wasn't very big, about the size of a paper back and just as thick. One line for everyday your spend on the streets. You do print your name in the space above the lines but below where the paper ends. After that just lines, lines, lines, days, days, after, days, how many? Do you even know?

Until one day they found you, under a bridge, dead. Dead, not too soon ago to feel or react to that, are you? Dead waits for no one no matter how busy or fucked up you are from what ever fucked up situation that brought you to the point of too soon ago. It's like the student loan people, they expect you to keep paying on a loan that never goes down no matter how much money you have given them. You believe that is the definition of crazy so you stopped giving them money but now your credit sucks. No one can explain this to you. All they can do is make you feel as though it's some how your fault for having had to barrow money for school. Everyone else does yet when they make a payment it actually makes their bottom line go down. That's right, when they make a payment the amount they owe gets to be less. Yours, on the other hand, goes up.

All your life you have been a slave to this debt, never having good credit because of it. On the flip side you have never been able to barrow money you couldn't pay back. Nor have you ever been able to get a loan to start your own company so you can help the world and all that live here. You will still do the latter because that is the kind of person you are.

After discovering your dead body at the bottom of the stairs in the old folks home you were forced to live in, they found boxes and boxes of little black books all containing $20,000 each. Enough to give each of the residents a trip home to visit their loved ones for the holidays, giving thanks they have a family. Their little black books have numbers in them, other numbers besides just one.

You haven't always lived on the streets and hopefully you won't continue to for much longer. It's just one of those things. There you were, ten years ago, flying high, nothing in your way. Then out of no where it all came crumbling down, your empire. Okay, maybe not an empire but a legacy. One you can be proud of and hand down to your...what? Your decedents? Shit, shit, shit, shit!!!! Your knew you forgot something! You never bothered to get married and/or have kids. You were too busy trying to survive dying, alone, on the streets.