On the weekends, I got to see my son, and I was going to keep that meeting. That was my peace, my son, would make it right. The one thing that I could trust was that he would be there, waiting.
This time I paid for my ticket and rode the trolley like a real human being, not a scared rat. Today I had pride, I had confidence, I had gusto. Today all my worries would fade, all my shortcomings would disappear, because I was going to see the one person who would accept me for who I was, no how broken I was.
I arrived early and hid my ruck under my bench, I couldn't risk it being spotted. And I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
My heart raced, was I there on the wrong day? Was I too early? Was I too late? I still had my cell phone at the time and turned it on. I sent a text. I called. I left a voicemail. I text. I cried. A beaten down man left that McDonald's that day. A defeated heap of flesh slothed out of those golden arches.
Through the tears the world began to spin again, rage boiled, frustration rose and fell with my breathe like the waves off the coast in a tsunami. Ragged, and short, and quick. Panic rose, tears and sweat ran freely, salt filled my mouth. The bitter taste of defeat was all consuming.
I walked.
I don't remember much after that, my world was once again confirming to me that it could not be trusted. It had built me up, let me feel like a real human again. And then instead of dashing my hopes upon the rocks of tragedy like all good stories do, it tore my foundation out from under me and hung my broken soul by my heart strings.
A shell of a man walked through the city of his birth unnoticed and unaware. If bystanders did notice it was to laugh and point. If that man noticed it was not apparent he had checked out.
I walked, and I walked. I walked until the pain in my feet stopped me, and I stopped only because I was physically unable to take another step. I found myself standing at a trolley station in a high-class mall. I remembered my friend would be eating pizza at the restaurant I was standing in front of, that every night. I checked FB, yep she had just checked-in.
"YAY Sammy's woodfire pizza with..." I stopped reading, I was not welcomed. Why would I be? I wasn't welcomed anywhere. Before the tears sprung forth again I gritted my teeth and moved on, I didn't get more than ten feet at a time before I would have to stop and rest. The trolley ran every 15 mins. It had gone by so many times I was seeing the same people coming and going. I felt blisters pop and crunch. I felt the way the skin slid around rubbing the raw painful skin below it. I felt the blister juices leaking and gave up. I sat down and decided that that was where I would stay til the pain left.
A daze took over my senses, I remember being kicked, spit on, I even had fries and shake thrown at me. I sat there disconnected from a world. Not my world, my world was not like this. This place was all wrong. I sat there as the world passed me by, only stopping long enough to spat on me as if it were my fault I was there. Was it my fault? Had I been to blame this entire time? It had to be my fault.
Shame overgrew the pain I was in, and I stood. My legs were covered in dirt and bruises. My feet screamed as the dried fluid, and blood tore at my skin as my socks ripped free from the dried blisters. I held on to a small wall as I limped farther down the path I had found myself on. The wall ended, I continued, bushes were all that supported me. I fell behind them and crawled to the green power box that was hidden in the bushes. There was a shirt, I remember it being an Alice Cooper shirt, tied off at the sleeves and the bottom. Stuffed full of grocery bags.
A pillow.
After everything I had been through, there was a pillow waiting for me at the end of the day. I slept, for a bit, and I remember think, that this wasn't such a bad place to be. I mean it did hand out pillows every so often. Even if it was under a bridge, behind a power box, and stuffed full of noisy plastic bags. This world had given me a place to lay my head, for the night. And I slept under that bridge, thirty feet from my High School friend. Miles from family. And light years from sanity.
To this day, I am still partial to my pillows.
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