Sleeping Soundly the Night Before Break

Friday night I’m going nowhere, all the lights are changing red to green.”

-David Grey



I slept soundly the night before the break. It was to be a warm day, near 80 degrees and sunny, I went to the coffee shop to retrieve the coffee my wife paid for, and left for me, and went out off my house with a suboxone under my tongue.

I arrived and it was business as usual, the manager, Kerry and I recapitulated my indecision when it comes to lattes and we briefly discussed the nuisance raccoons can cause when they enter people’s home at night and drag Tupperware containers of cat food across the floor. She told me that she and her family had a family of them in their backyard nested in an old tree.

“They never bothered any of us”, she said. “But they would terrorize the neighborhood.”

I left with my latte and remembered the conversation I had with my father the night of the murder, and he told me he once had a pet raccoon named Rocky. He told me he used to have it on a leash and used to walk it into the town of Middletown, Ohio. My Grandmother says it was bullshit, and he was “telling me a tall tale.” I’m not sure, the idiosyncrasies instinct in my father became instilled in me, except there is apart missing. I’m still searching for that part, and I’m beginning to wonder if half my life is fiction and is left to be written.

Beth and I saw a movie tonight, we laughed, we flirted, and she looked at me on the ride home with bedroom eyes of love that I fell in love with five years ago. Yes I’m married now and living in Florida. The weather begins to cool down this time of year and after work today when the pastor’s sermon ended his message with “Who are you? You’re a Christian.” I left wondering whether that’s true. Who am I really? So here on these pages, I will attempt to expostulate who I am, and the reasons I was brought into this world to the lives I have touch and the lives that have touched me. There are scars that run deep, both emotional and physical. All are reminders of things I don’t take much pride in, nor am I ashamed of them either. They say everyone has a story, but like others my story changes, and I believe that it changes because of the mood I’m in and the chemicals that rush through my bloodstream.