I ran out my front door, the wind screaming around me, the rain pounding at my skin like a thousand little knifes. I ran from my front door and just ran. I didn't know where I was going, but I sure as hell knew what I was running a way from. But I was kidding my self thinking that I could run away from it, away from it all. Once you are in there is never getting out, from the moment that I was born I was never going to be able to get out, I was stuck, stuck in a life that I didn't choose, in a situation that I didn't want to be in.
I had lived next to him since I was seven. He was the first friend that I had ever had. He was the first person to ever really care. The first person who was willing to die for me, but no matter how much he was willing to do for me, he was never willing to change for me.
The year that I moved into "the neighborhood" was the year that would change my life. Nothing changed right then but looking back you can see that it was that defining moment, the walking through the front door of the house on Wolfe Street, which would change the path my life should have taken and the path that my life did take. At seven years old I was considered by most of my teachers a genius, truth be told I wasn't really that smart but because I had grown up in shitty neighborhoods with horrible students and teachers, I always blew them away with the amount of knowledge I had at such a young age.
I had grown up on my own. Technically not on my own but it always felt like it was on my own. My mother and my step-father were technically around but I don't know how much they count. My father had left my mother and I when I was three or at least that is what she tells me. After my dad left us I just remember moving around a lot, never staying in any one place to long. We would stay in motels or rent a room in a house sometimes, but most of the time we would just sleep in our car in some deserted parking lot. As much as these would have seemed like my least favorite years of my life, they really are some of the best. It was always an adventure, something new and different. That was always the one thing I liked about mom she could make even the worst situations seem like some big adventure.
Growing up with only your mother in the back of a car or in some horribly retched motel room made my life a lot different then most children my age. I never had a television and mom never bought me any toys, and mom would be out most of the time doing her thing, so I was left on my own, to entertain my self. So I would make up imaginary worlds where I was the princess and I lived in a huge castle with all the food and toys that I could ever ask for. As I got older it was harder and harder to imagine and play make believe so I started to entertain my self by reading, mostly old newspapers, magazines, instruction manual's, things that other people would throw out in there garbage and then I would come along and pick up, it always amazed me at the stuff that people would throw away. I would show mom what I had found and how I couldn't believe that other people thought it was trash and she would always tell me that "what is one man's trash was another man's treasure" I would always tell her that she was crazy because I thought that it was treasure and I sure wasn't any man.
I never went to school when I was young; mom never cared enough to go take the time to enroll me into one. So I learned on my own. I would read the old newspaper and magazines that I found, learning about world events that I just thought was some really scary story. I would count cars as they drove by on the street and I leaned to ask questions. I would ask all kinds of question to anyone, mostly complete strangers because the only person who wasn't a stranger was my mother and I found out early in life that she wasn't exactly a book smart person. I was that "but why" child. But why does the earth go around the sun and not the sun around the earth. But why does the Nile run south to north and not north to south. But why is 2 added to three, five and not six. It was the way that I educated my self I learned that the world and the people of the world were just full of information and all that you had to do to gain their knowledge was just ask.
That was my life. Not a perfect life and defiantly not a normal life but it was mine, and when you grow up moving around not really having a home you learn to love and hold on to those things that you can call your own.
When I was seven, the two men that would change my future came into my life. The first of the two men was Caleb. One day my mother just came home with him. Nothing was really talked about and no one explained what he was doing just walking into my life but he did and he stayed. He and my mother started dating and just two months later they got married. At first I didn't like Caleb very much, mainly because he took my mother away from me. Not in the literal term, but when he showed up, she ended up spending less and less time with me and all her time with him. But I got use to it, I liked being on my own I learned more and I had learned from a very young age to never rely on anyone else that the only person who was going to care about me was me. Then Caleb started to grow on me, I started to find things I liked about him and ignore the things that I didn't. I liked Caleb, like I would a toy. He introduced me to things that I never knew existed, like piggy-back rides, being twilled around in a circle, the zoo, movie theatres, actual kid's books, and ice cream. Caleb wasn't a rich man but he had more money then mom and I did, so he was the first one to introduce me to the finer things in life, at least in the eyes of a seven year old. Caleb also introduced me to the not so fine things in life, he was the first person to yell at me, hit me, he brought the world of drugs and violence into my life, which before I didn't even know existed. Caleb introduced me to that world, but it was Keegen that kept me in it.