If there was one thing you could do, what would it be? If you could achieve one dream, what would you achieve? If there was one thing about your past that you could change, what would you change? I know there’s plenty I still want to do and achieve and I would change my entire childhood if I could, but unfortunately traveling into the past has not made it onto the list of the world’s most innovative inventions. One dream that I have achieved is this book. This book is my life and has taken me eight and a half years to write. Yes, eight and a half years is certainly a long time to write a book, but I know the next one won’t take as long as this one. I think it’s due to the fact this book really hits close to home and to my heart, which has made it extremely difficult to write.
I do have to say that writing this book presented one of the largest challenges of my life. There are events that are based on my own life and there are events that are based on the lives of others, but although it lies in a fictional category, all of it is true. Don’t let the fact the book is fiction fool you into thinking that none of the emotion or situations are real because they are very real, and yes, most of what you are going to read in this book is based on my own life…largely. I found it was better to take all of these happenings and combine them into one life. So many in our world experience the unimaginable and although the events in Jane's life may not be completely unimaginable, they are still very tough things to have to live through. The events are more realistic and more common than the freak happenings that are not so common in this world. These uncommon happenings are hard for the average person to relate to, but I believe that many will be able to relate to Jane and her heartache. Through relating to Jane, you are relating to thousands of people.
She stood silently in front of the mirror staring at the wrinkles around her eyes. She saw what the years had left behind, but where had the years gone that left these remnants of age? What madness had placed these crevices of time upon her once youthful face and why did she look so sad? Deep down, she knew the answers to these grueling questions because she possessed a tired heart although it still beat cruelly within her sunken chest. She slowly began the task of unbuttoning her blouse with her shaky hands, which revealed the ugly scar the doctors had inflicted upon her chest years before. Doctors were able to fix her heart and although it now looked healthy, her spiritual broken heart still beat within her. She touched the top of her scar with her knotty index finger, which caused her to stopped three buttons into her task to hold out one hand and examine the arthritic fingers that she could hardly recognize as her own. It was harder now to do simple tasks such as unbuttoning a blouse, brushing her hair, or making herself a sandwich. Despite the difficulty of such a simple feat, she continued the slow adventure of unbuttoning her blouse, further revealing her scar and the age spots upon her skin that she so carefully hid under her clothing everyday. Not until this day did she slow down and take the time to look at the years that had piled upon her unexpectedly. The world had moved so fast and she was still trying to catch up.
I'm tired of my eyes being open, I'm tired of breathing and all I ever want to do is sleep. Each night when I fall asleep I imagine I'm dying, that I will never wake up again only to be disappointed when the sun comes up and I awake from an already restless slumber. It is the DREAMS that keep me up at night and Lord knows I have a lifetime of experience to create an interesting dream. I would prefer that when I sleep my mind would sleep with me rather than race through the file cabinets of my memory and find something to blow the dust off of. It is disappointing enough that I dream because dreams remind me that I am alive and dreams remind me of the past. It is so painful remembering a past that is in no way the present, but still brings so much pain that I constantly feel the discomfort in my sleep. Remembering my dreams are as if I never fell asleep to begin with, that I am living through my sleep a life that I am tired of living and need a break from.
Granted there have been good times, but even the good times can be exhausting because so much effort is involved. No, I'm not lazy. I have always been quite ambitious. Without ambition, it seemed at times that I had nothing. It was my ambition that continued to exist through the hard times and kept me going even through the severe episodes of depression, and my ambition is what keeps me going now. What destroys my motivation is when people act victimized when they've not been victimized at all or if they have been they leech off of that fact. I'm sure we're all guilty of it at some point, but let's face it...there's normal and there's the abnormal who act victimized and want to get all up in your face about it. Those people just aren't right. Let me tell you that I am definitely not one of those people. I want good things in my life. I want to be happy. I don't wish to be a victim because of attention. I ache to be normal and to know what normal is. I call myself a survivor although some may choose to still call me a victim, but I do not play the part of victim.
I work on my survivorship each day, but the victim deep inside of me tries to pop out its ugly little head and make me depressed. These terrible thoughts come to mind and terrible words come to my mouth. Depression can be such a mean thing and make you feel like a victim even when you don't want to be. You can have the ambition to do something, but the motivation is not there. Yes, it may not seem like it, but the two are completely different things and their differences are defined when it comes to depression. It is even more depressing to be lying there and thinking, "Wow, I'd like to get up and do this, but I don't have the strength. I just want to lie here and sleep so I don't have to think about all of the terrible things." That in itself makes you want to die because there's so much you want to do, but you can't get up and do it. The internal conflict is just too much to deal with and suppresses that motivation. You know things have to be done, but to get up and do them is such a task. Knowing that life is so short and that you don't have eternity to do something increases that anxiety to get things done, but you still can't move.
That summer that marked the beginning of my interest in baton twirling was also the summer that I remember my world being changed into something that should never be meant for any child. How could any child's world be meant to have so many ghosts dwelling inside of it? I never could really answer that question and I still can’t. I suppose that's just another one of those questions I'm going to have to ask when I reach those pearly gates. That's what I always say, "Be good and ask Jesus when it's your time, just don't be in a hurry to get your answer." Maybe that is what saved me all of these years was the hope that there’s a reason behind all of the hurt and turmoil. That God will look at me and tell me it was all for something that my feeble little mind could never understand. Then maybe he’ll show me and give me the power to understand what it was all for. That way, I can feel better about this life and why things came to pass the way they did.
It all started with a game.
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