Preface
I always dread two parts of everything. I dread “The Beginning”, and I dread “The End.” No matter what, no matter why and no matter how much you wish it didn’t, those two parts belong to absolutely everything. And I’ll tell you right now that wishing you had never met someone or praying you could go back in time just for one day, just to change one thing, is all but wishful thinking. And to be quite honest, it’s a terrible waste. Those two parts belong to every piece of life, every single, tiny entity. It always has to start somewhere, and eventually, whether you’re prepared or not, somehow, it has to stop.
When I pick apart life, I don’t do the best job differentiating the front and the back from all of the sides; I focus on the empty gaps in between. My mind is always caught on one thing specific, one place in time, one group of people, one look, one individual thing that blew my mind in such an immense way, it’s embedded in my head like some catchy song you just can’t seem to shake. I don’t always know every lyric. The artist is always so unidentifiable. But that tune, those bouncy, catch little notes make an imprint in cement. It never goes away. So, with something so important, of course it’s difficult to remember how it began exactly and what made it end.
With that said, how do I even begin to describe what I believe to have started my life with that whole “This is the first day of the rest of your life” nonsense, and how can I even fathom the way it will end? I can’t predict myself, let alone life as a whole. But my memory sticks on specific events in time so tightly, so dangerously, and though this road has its bumpy patches, the facts never fall out of place. They always remain; Life as a whole always remains.
I can remember February 13th, 2001 vividly, yet unavoidably. I imagine the air of that morning was anything but precious and it most likely reminded me of any other morning that same year, or that same decade even. I had awoken in somewhat of a fear and glared at the clock on the night stand that read “4:45am”. And what fifteen year old wouldn’t? I was rising with these unfortunate business men who dedicated their lives to their jobs, and kids who had a morning paper route. I hit snooze every morning, but I never went back to sleep. I knew once I got back into that state, I’d never get out of it.
After the alarm went off once more, my eyes staring at the ceiling, I’d turn the TV on. I would put the channel to something like MTV or VH1 and I put the volume up as much as I could without disturbing the rest of the house. It was just enough to keep me in that state where I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again, even it if I gave it my all. At 4:45am, VH1 was playing hours upon hours of music videos in which they gave a title close to “insomnia.” Or something of that source at least. It depressed me to awake to such a title. It was true. Insomniacs were just readying for bed, and here I was, about to embark in some mission toward my prison of a high school. I felt like I was at doom.
My hot, hypnotizing morning shower would last for probably thirty minutes. I would mainly just stand there with the hot water running down my body, sleeping as I stood, swaying ever so gently back and forth. After shower time, I was in a rush to dry and flat iron my shoulder length, bright blonde hair, do my makeup and find something suitable to wear, which always ended up being a pair of tight hip-hugger jeans and a t-shirt or some quick pull over. Who was I there to impress anyway? I gave myself too little time every morning, but refused to change anything in my “routine”.
Breakfast always consisted of something easy, something I could run with: Toast, or maybe a PopTart. Anything that was a bit warm, but easy enough that I could wrap it in a napkin and run for the door when Alexa would show up, which was always somewhere close to 6am, give or take a dozen minutes or so. I’d slam the front door behind me, nearly dragging my Periwinkle JanSport backpack behind me, ignoring my mother’s shouts of a safe departure, counting my steps to the drive way.
Alexa would sit in her white late 80’s/early 90’s Thunderbird, listening to Rick Dee’s in the Morning on KIIS FM, tapping her hands against the steering wheel, impatiently awaiting me, but never impatient enough to bark at my tardiness. She would kindly greet me as I threw my bag into the back and sunk into the passenger seat, head pressed hard against the headrest, mind empty, but so damn full.
We lived in the Canyons of this tiny Valley that people outside believed hope came from. But to us, this Valley was a prison. I grew up in the heart of reality. My suburban-like neighborhood was surrounded by gang violence, notorious bank robberies, drug dealers and little things children should not experience so young, or really, should not experience at all. While parents elsewhere read nursery rhymes to their children about the little old woman who lived in a show, our parents locked the doors and the windows and taught us that life was not all good. There was an evil in life, an evil that took some people over and sometimes, it just couldn’t be stopped.
Other children feared the bogeyman or the monster in the closet, but I remember being seven years old, fearing the face I had glanced at on the six o’clock news, running rapid only so many miles from our tiny little sainthood. That’s what it was. I describe it like a hell on earth, but it was this sanction, this place away from that harsh levelheaded practicality. Sure, the gates of this heaven might have been made of scrap metal and covered in spray paint, but our roads were still paved in gold.
My parents and my neighbors’ parents had grown up on this street. Back in the 50s I’m sure that Valley was a safe-haven, but had slowly become this rundown town that large families of immigrants living on welfare, preparing a new world for their unwed, unappreciative children’s children had destroyed over decades of time.
Imagining what the outskirts of this sanctuary were like, my parents feared the worst when it came time for me to go to High School. To protect me, they moved the family about thirty miles or so east, to tiny, protected, upscale “Verona”. Verona was known as a rich area. It consisted of huge, beautiful houses that all looked exactly the same: White stone walls, Spanish style roofs, bright green grass. To the naked eye, kids played in their yards, teens spent their nights at the mall or at the high school football game. At the time, I could never understand why my parents would steal me from a rational world I had grown so in love and so accustomed to. They did it for me, to better my family. But all I could think at the time was that they were punishing me for something I was so completely unaware of.
...eventually I'll get around to typing more.
When I pick apart life, I don’t do the best job differentiating the front and the back from all of the sides; I focus on the empty gaps in between. My mind is always caught on one thing specific, one place in time, one group of people, one look, one individual thing that blew my mind in such an immense way, it’s embedded in my head like some catchy song you just can’t seem to shake. I don’t always know every lyric. The artist is always so unidentifiable. But that tune, those bouncy, catch little notes make an imprint in cement. It never goes away. So, with something so important, of course it’s difficult to remember how it began exactly and what made it end.
With that said, how do I even begin to describe what I believe to have started my life with that whole “This is the first day of the rest of your life” nonsense, and how can I even fathom the way it will end? I can’t predict myself, let alone life as a whole. But my memory sticks on specific events in time so tightly, so dangerously, and though this road has its bumpy patches, the facts never fall out of place. They always remain; Life as a whole always remains.
I can remember February 13th, 2001 vividly, yet unavoidably. I imagine the air of that morning was anything but precious and it most likely reminded me of any other morning that same year, or that same decade even. I had awoken in somewhat of a fear and glared at the clock on the night stand that read “4:45am”. And what fifteen year old wouldn’t? I was rising with these unfortunate business men who dedicated their lives to their jobs, and kids who had a morning paper route. I hit snooze every morning, but I never went back to sleep. I knew once I got back into that state, I’d never get out of it.
After the alarm went off once more, my eyes staring at the ceiling, I’d turn the TV on. I would put the channel to something like MTV or VH1 and I put the volume up as much as I could without disturbing the rest of the house. It was just enough to keep me in that state where I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again, even it if I gave it my all. At 4:45am, VH1 was playing hours upon hours of music videos in which they gave a title close to “insomnia.” Or something of that source at least. It depressed me to awake to such a title. It was true. Insomniacs were just readying for bed, and here I was, about to embark in some mission toward my prison of a high school. I felt like I was at doom.
My hot, hypnotizing morning shower would last for probably thirty minutes. I would mainly just stand there with the hot water running down my body, sleeping as I stood, swaying ever so gently back and forth. After shower time, I was in a rush to dry and flat iron my shoulder length, bright blonde hair, do my makeup and find something suitable to wear, which always ended up being a pair of tight hip-hugger jeans and a t-shirt or some quick pull over. Who was I there to impress anyway? I gave myself too little time every morning, but refused to change anything in my “routine”.
Breakfast always consisted of something easy, something I could run with: Toast, or maybe a PopTart. Anything that was a bit warm, but easy enough that I could wrap it in a napkin and run for the door when Alexa would show up, which was always somewhere close to 6am, give or take a dozen minutes or so. I’d slam the front door behind me, nearly dragging my Periwinkle JanSport backpack behind me, ignoring my mother’s shouts of a safe departure, counting my steps to the drive way.
Alexa would sit in her white late 80’s/early 90’s Thunderbird, listening to Rick Dee’s in the Morning on KIIS FM, tapping her hands against the steering wheel, impatiently awaiting me, but never impatient enough to bark at my tardiness. She would kindly greet me as I threw my bag into the back and sunk into the passenger seat, head pressed hard against the headrest, mind empty, but so damn full.
We lived in the Canyons of this tiny Valley that people outside believed hope came from. But to us, this Valley was a prison. I grew up in the heart of reality. My suburban-like neighborhood was surrounded by gang violence, notorious bank robberies, drug dealers and little things children should not experience so young, or really, should not experience at all. While parents elsewhere read nursery rhymes to their children about the little old woman who lived in a show, our parents locked the doors and the windows and taught us that life was not all good. There was an evil in life, an evil that took some people over and sometimes, it just couldn’t be stopped.
Other children feared the bogeyman or the monster in the closet, but I remember being seven years old, fearing the face I had glanced at on the six o’clock news, running rapid only so many miles from our tiny little sainthood. That’s what it was. I describe it like a hell on earth, but it was this sanction, this place away from that harsh levelheaded practicality. Sure, the gates of this heaven might have been made of scrap metal and covered in spray paint, but our roads were still paved in gold.
My parents and my neighbors’ parents had grown up on this street. Back in the 50s I’m sure that Valley was a safe-haven, but had slowly become this rundown town that large families of immigrants living on welfare, preparing a new world for their unwed, unappreciative children’s children had destroyed over decades of time.
Imagining what the outskirts of this sanctuary were like, my parents feared the worst when it came time for me to go to High School. To protect me, they moved the family about thirty miles or so east, to tiny, protected, upscale “Verona”. Verona was known as a rich area. It consisted of huge, beautiful houses that all looked exactly the same: White stone walls, Spanish style roofs, bright green grass. To the naked eye, kids played in their yards, teens spent their nights at the mall or at the high school football game. At the time, I could never understand why my parents would steal me from a rational world I had grown so in love and so accustomed to. They did it for me, to better my family. But all I could think at the time was that they were punishing me for something I was so completely unaware of.
...eventually I'll get around to typing more.
1 comment:
ohhh verona ;)
anne this is beautiful. you're so talented at capturing every single detail. i can't wait to read more.
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