Chapter Six

I am everything and nothing. All that we are, all that we ever will be will one day be gone. Nothing will be left of us except for decaying bones in the ground, which will one day also become nothing. They will lose their potential; their energy. Everyone is destined to become nothing at some point in their measly existence.

A morbid thought for an eighteen year old it is, I'm sure. But I'm done in believing these sympathetic lies; the ones people tell us to make us either feel like we matter, or to spare our feelings.

My mother is the biggest fan of the sympathetic lie. She has to be to look me in the eye most days.

"Your father loves us."

"We are so lucky to have someone like your father in our lives."

"He doesn't mean to get so upset."

She'd rejected reality entirely. I suppose my brute of a father had beaten it out of her long ago before moving onto someone his own size.

Me, I've found it far easier to steer into the curve than it is to blindly ignore reality.

There are nights where I dream about it.

I have these vivid visions of going over the barricade close to home, hurtling through the air. And in those few precious seconds of upward momentum I'm flying. I'm free from everything, and I can finally see the world below me. The wind brushes through my hair as the car soars for a few feet. As much as I hate to admit it, I need that, those precious few moments of upward movement. The dreams where I'm soaring, even if it's just for a few seconds, are far better than the reality that I am living.

If I could escape in that moment I would. If I could leave this world behind and join a world where infinite possibilities were open to me, I wouldn't dare hesitate.

Any life, no matter how futile, has to be better than the one I'm living right now.

Of course I'd never admit this to anyone. Part of it has something to do with the fact that they would never understand, and a bigger part of it has everything to do with how people would see me.

I could deal with people calling me 'spaz.' I could deal with people calling me 'queer.' I could even deal with people calling me 'loser.'

The one thing that I don't think I could take them calling me was 'freak.'

Being a 'freak' boxes me in more than any of those other words would. Freak meant that those hurtful nights where my dad had one too many beers were justified. To me, being a freak meant that I was unusual, and strange, and probably somewhat incapable of ever feeling the emotions of those around me.

Even if I ever made it out of this town, the word would haunt me like a bad stink, refusing to clean up after itself.

Harry Houdini, my own personal hero, once said that 'the greatest escape I ever made was when I left Appleton, Wisconsin.' Those words have always meant a lot to me. Perhaps the biggest escape anyone could make were burdened by the chains shackling them down to their past. I know for myself that the weighted blocks tethering me down to this sad, tragic place were superficial things.

Money. Family. The fact that there seemed to be nothing greater in this earth for me.

When I was young and so full of moxie and spirit, I might have left if these demons were vanquished. Now though? I can't say for sure. I cannot say without doubt in my mind that I want to untether myself from this place.

And that's absolutely terrifying.

The years have beat down my fighting spirit. Years, upon years of abuse by people much larger than me have done their toll. I'm too tired to fight to escape this town without meaning.

Right now I'm just trying to stay afloat. If I take each day as it comes, like my mother had once taught me, then I can just about find a reason to stay here. But the longer I wait for some miraculous escape, the more I feel trapped and confined by these invisible walls.

I'm a boy, caved in by his own desire to escape.

No matter how much I try and fight it, I know that it is arbitrary and pointless. I am everything and nothing.

Nothing but the distant memory of a boy who had much more strength than I have.