To Talk With Demons

                                          To Talk With Demons





         My first vivid memory of my life is not one that is normal.  I woke in bed at night in a horrible sweat.  I don’t know why, just that I was scared.  My large bedroom window had its curtains drawn up for the entire world to look into and it worried me.  I got up and from my bed and walked around my room, searching for what it was that I thought was watching me.  The moon shone through the window in a gray haze and the blue walls seemed to look at me with a strange sense of fore warning.  I left my room, and the feeling in my gut lessened as I walked away.  I stood in the living room for a while staring at the dieing fire in the fireplace.  It was deafeningly quiet, and the room was dark but something was calling me back to my room.  As I left the large living room and stood at the end of the hallway, I looked into my room from afar and that horrible feeling in my stomach came back.
         
         What are these moments we have in life.  These strange feelings that make us uncomfortable.  We see things when we are children, unexplainable things.  Once I was sleep walking, I remember it like it was just yesterday; my mother heard me walking through the house, got up, and grabbed me by the shoulders.  At that moment I woke up, simultaneously I saw a dark figure.  It didn’t have any recognizable features just red eyes.  Some would say it is just your mind playing tricks on you as a child.  Perhaps it is just the opposite; perhaps it is our mind playing tricks on us a adults that makes us not see these things.  Maybe, it is life’s way of warning us while we are young, that life is full of horrible things.  Even from those that say they love you the most.

         I am in love with a woman, who was once in love with me.  We had a child together and life was good.  I have even done things out of character to make a life for her that she never had.  My occupation does not make me happy.  I like to draw, paint, and write, as the reader of this might guess.  I do not regret my decisions in life,  my only regret is I have not had the courage to end this pain that I have been pushed into. 

         Growing up, in my teenage years, I had parents that would not let me be me.  They pushed me into things I did not enjoy or being the wise teenager thought I would not enjoy.  I listened to the nineties alternative rock scene, prided my self in being a Wiccan, and rejected all authority.  I got into many fights, and loved every one of them.  I began drinking and smoking marijuana at the age of thirteen and that should have been a sign.  My grades were lacking in all subjects, but I did not care.  My artwork was going to be my key I said.  I was going to be famous.  All children have these dreams and most of them lead nowhere, just like they led me.  I met a girl, and I fell in love, her name was Sherry.  She made me so happy, all of a sudden, life had real meaning, and I was determined to make her happy.  We were inseparable my whole life revolved around her.

         Year one of my life started, not age one but the first year that started to define who I was at least I thought I was.  I do not remember why but my father kicked me out of the house when I was Seventeen and I went to live with Sherry’s grandmother.  I was determined to show my father I could do it without him, so I graduated from high school.  In the meantime, I worked at a small restaurant and spent a lot of time with some friends in Pearl Mississippi.  They lived in a small apartment, that reeked of pot smoke not that we cared.  It was a routine in my life, I would spend the day with Sherry, when she had to go back to the orphanage she was staying in I would go to Pearl.  The nights there were filled with pot, and other various drugs but mainly pot.  I would get up in the morning and make my way through the daze of the nights various drugs and go to my summer school class, this is how I graduated.  Determined to make a life for me and Sherry I stopped and joined the Marine Corps.

         Off to boot camp I went, I was now eighteen years old.  This wasn’t the first time I was away from her, there had been other times.  Little did I know this would lead up to the problem that made her leave me for another man.  I came back from boot camp, she had a friend who I was extremely suspicious of, and didn’t like at all.  We got into a big argument and she told me he was just a friend.  Then she said he started to get weird, and stopped hanging around him, my heart was at ease.  Only to latter find out, she had kissed him.  This was not the first time this had happened, she had kissed another guy in the first couple of months we were dating but said she loved me and it would never happen again.  What a fool I was to fall in love with her.

         Two deployments later when I came back from Iraq, she was waiting for me.  She was so sweet to me and I thought we were good, I was wrong.  A couple months later, she started to stay out until three or four in the morning.  I had a feeling she was messing around on me with Ben, and I confronted her about it.  She got really mad, to say the least, and asked me why I didn’t trust her.  I apologized and went on with my life.  She kept staying out and I started to ignore her and stayed on the internet.  Maybe I was wrong, but it is all I knew how to do.  My only defense was to hide myself away.  I knew she was being unfaithful; she would get dressed up really nice and always had an excuse for going out.  However, I loved her and wanted her to be happy.  I wasn’t that guy who was going to hold his wife down, I wanted to trust her.

         Things kept getting worse and I kept getting more and more angry.  I punched holes in the wall; I knew what she was doing.  Then she left and my life stopped.  She never came directly out and told me what she had been doing.  It took her own sister to do that.  I was furious to actually hear it, when I confronted her I asked her if it was worth it, did it feel good.  She just cocked her hip to the side and and raised her eyebrow, what a bitch.  I wanted him dead, a few weeks before she left I rode with her to take him home.  So I went to that house and knocked on the door, an old woman answered and I asked her if Ben was home.  She told me no she did not have a son by the name of Ben.  I didn’t believe her and told her what he had done.  It was the wrong house; she had dropped him off at the wrong house on purpose. 

         My life since then has been an emotional roller coaster; I do not even know who I am.  If only I had listened to those things I saw as a child, if only I had heeded there warnings.  Maybe I would not have gone through this; it is the most pain I have ever had to bear.  I still hate her for what she did, and I always will.  Throughout this time, I have met other girls, but none matches up to her and I know none ever will for a while.  Everyday I pick up the pieces of my broken soul and put them back together just so I can breathe another day.  The mask I wear is a farce and I know it, but it still helps me through the day.  My friend Curtis tells me Sherry has said she knows I will make someone happy one day.  But how can you make some one happy if you cannot make your self-happy.  If only I had listened to those strange creatures as a child.  Maybe things would have been different; maybe I really would have been happy.  Everyday I pick up the pieces of my soul, and every night I hope I don’t wake up.



DRAVEN