A Boy With Blue Eyes

I guess it started when I was born. I had blue eyes. My mother didn't have blue eyes. Nor did my father. My father wasn't an intelligent man. And my blue eyes confused him. He didn't know about dominant and recessive alleles. Or that it was perfectly possible that he and mother could have a blue eyed son because they could both be heterozygous with both a blue and brown allele each. But my father, not seeing that, made my mother prove her loyalty to him.

For the first few years of my life it seemed that my parents never stopped arguing. Though people said they never argued before I was born. It died down though with the birth of my sister whose dark brown eyes were identicle to my fathers. I guess that's when he stopped really paying attention to me completely. It was fine. As I grew older still I found myself hating him. But that I thought was normal. I was a teenager and our relationship was always strained.

But hatred on my part was little compared to what he felt for me. At least it must have been because he couldn't accept me. Not when I turned out to be so different...

I always liked to be different when I was younger. Whether that meant being top in the class or peircing odd parts of my body it didn't matter. I just wanted to stand out. I think it was a subconcious desire to be noticed.

I never felt affection. I never had many friends, never any close ones. I never knew what it felt like to be cared for because in that respect my parents had more than denied me. I craved attention and affection and love because it seemed so beautiful and intangible and what little I had I accepted without question and drank it in. It was a drug that I longed for desperately.

And then I fell in love.

Well at least I thought it was love. I'm never quite sure anymore.

His name was Cael and he came from an Irish family that lived a couple blocks from us. It was incredible. He had this way of looking at you as if he had never looked at anyone as beautiful and special as you. His eyes were green and his hair was a light brown. His body was perfect. Not a single piercing or tatoo or scar. He no insecurities. He used to look at me and smile and hold me close as we kissed.

The first time I saw him I think I fell for him. His hair was blowing in the breeze caused by his friend pushing him on the swing. I remember laughing and he smiled at me without hesitation or pretence. His friend then pushed a little too hard and he came off it with a yelp and a small thud. Lying there laughing he saw all of us laughing too and came to join us, holding out his hand and introducing himself. Both he and the guy he was hanging out with joined in. I was the outsider of the group. Only there because it was my birthday and one of the girls had decided to take pity on my normal loner self and invite me.

It was the best time of my life.

His hands were the most beautiful thing. When he found out I loved music and that I sang somewhat and that I was learning guitar... He came over to the music rooms where I hid in my free time and played the piano for me. Fingers dancing in that special way that only a true musician's can. It was beautiful. That was the first time we kissed, sitting together on the piano stool, eyes meeting on an invisible thread and making it impossible to break. This was the beginning of a two year relationship. His lips were soft and his touch never less than sure of what he as doing to me. He knew what I needed and he gave it to me.

I tried to hold myself together when I told my parents that I was in love with someone and that someone was a guy.

My father blew a fuse.

My mother turned away and retired to her room.

My sister overheard and smiled for me.

I was told to leave. I had a meager amount in my bank account and no where to stay. I slept rough a couple nights. I finally swallowed my pride and asked Cael for somewhere to stay. He smiled and said I could stay for the weekend whilst his parents were away. When I nearly broke down on him he turned away. I began to wonder what was going on between us.

"It's nothing, Dyl," He'd say softly between kissed that lacked what they had before, "It's just I can't really see this working seriosuly."

I think my heart broke when he said that. What had I given my home up for? If it deserved to be called a home at all...

I had thought he loved me the same way I loved him.

After a week of falling asleep on random aquaintance's floors or sofas Rory saved me. My wacky cousin with a medical history that wowed even experianced doctors. She helped me find my first flat. She helped me stand up again after feeling that I'd lost everything. I don't know how she did it. It wasn't like she had a clear history of optimism but I moved into a neighbourhood that hated me though I learnt to deal with it quickly. I finsihed school... I went to college. I gave up music for the most part, except for the odd moments of guitar or the singing along to old songs. I let my book of lyrics sleep in a draw by my bed and left half written songs lie unfinished.

Music was just too painful to keep up, especially when so much of it had been influenced with the green eyed irish man I couldn't fall out of love with. THe peices started coming back after a while... But my craving for love had started again...

I don't know what comes next... I don't know what happens after your heart breaks and your family leaves you. I don't know where life takes you once those in control start abusing you. Everything's just a mess. And it all happened to me... Because I was a blue eyed boy.

- Dylan