Reasons to Believe (c) 2017 by d.h. charles
I am compelled by someone higher than myself to write this story. I, myself, do not want to write the story. I suppose part of my reluctance is that someone might think I do it to extol myself. The story is totally true, except for all name changes but mine. It bothers me to think anyone may even slightly doubt just how true this story is. It is only half of my experiences and many, many details have not been included. I had to let go of these details or they would completely control my life. It is like going to town; you don’t have to remember every shop you passed, only the ones you shopped in and stayed in the longest. There are no victims. We are only scheduled on that road by decisions we make, or think we have to make, in order to fill our time on Earth. We discover that life takes on a whole new and better meaning once it is lived in the shadow of God’s grace. This story is dedicated to those who never had a chance to tell their own stories. A story of resilience and hope of a non-mirrored life. A life no longer held captive by memories of the past. It’s a story about finding reasons to believe in God and yourself.
I am only eight-years-old when my father runs out the front door next to our pink brick home on Chestnut. He holds his mistress’s hand as they run. As my dad’s blue pick-up speeds down the road in front of our house my mother runs out holding up a clenched fist. Gone were the days of sitting in a lap of a parent, days of familiar and friendly visitors that we welcome. Once I find a dollar and a dime in a couch where my father’s brother sat.
Soon we move to a new but cheaper home and my world would never be the same again. Suddenly, it is like living in a large bubble of thought that could never have the same feelings of peace. I cannot remember the move at all, even to this very day. All I remember is that afterward there are no longer any boundaries and running wild. No one there to say that it is good or bad, my son. Picture a locomotive running wild going from depot to depot, the conductor not caring when and where the consequences begin or end. I am that conductor. The train leaves its original depot with a familiar-sounding trauma and stench of a near-death birth experience that I am told about how I almost died. That same imagined trauma and smell of near-death experience follows my life’s long journey of an eternal idea. In looking ahead, it is the idea of someday being at peace with myself. My malrotated life would seem more than equal to my malrotated stomach at birth.
My first experiences at the house on Walnut Street are actually quite nice. After getting up in the morning I go next door and spend most afternoons with my maternal grandmother’s second husband, Bill. We would watch his favorite show Wagon Train. I love the smell of his pipe and Prince Albert tobacco. I would be as comfortable as I could make myself on the couch next to his yellow recliner. I never find a dollar and a dime in the couch but it starts to feel like it did on Chestnut. Bill is not there one day while watching Wagon Train. Suddenly, my mother’s brother Jac’s new wife turns off the TV. She then walks in front of me naked. While I am confused as to why she does this she sits with me there on the soft yellow couch. I feel a heavy mist come over me, a feeling of depression. What she forces on me that day would take many decades to recover from. I remember it in a sort of overly-polite dissociative way of not being there at all. I look up after the incident and Jac is in the kitchen doorway with his leg on the adjacent door jamb. He is laughing at me. I do not remember what follows.
I am compelled by someone higher than myself to write this story. I, myself, do not want to write the story. I suppose part of my reluctance is that someone might think I do it to extol myself. The story is totally true, except for all name changes but mine. It bothers me to think anyone may even slightly doubt just how true this story is. It is only half of my experiences and many, many details have not been included. I had to let go of these details or they would completely control my life. It is like going to town; you don’t have to remember every shop you passed, only the ones you shopped in and stayed in the longest. There are no victims. We are only scheduled on that road by decisions we make, or think we have to make, in order to fill our time on Earth. We discover that life takes on a whole new and better meaning once it is lived in the shadow of God’s grace. This story is dedicated to those who never had a chance to tell their own stories. A story of resilience and hope of a non-mirrored life. A life no longer held captive by memories of the past. It’s a story about finding reasons to believe in God and yourself.
I am only eight-years-old when my father runs out the front door next to our pink brick home on Chestnut. He holds his mistress’s hand as they run. As my dad’s blue pick-up speeds down the road in front of our house my mother runs out holding up a clenched fist. Gone were the days of sitting in a lap of a parent, days of familiar and friendly visitors that we welcome. Once I find a dollar and a dime in a couch where my father’s brother sat.
Soon we move to a new but cheaper home and my world would never be the same again. Suddenly, it is like living in a large bubble of thought that could never have the same feelings of peace. I cannot remember the move at all, even to this very day. All I remember is that afterward there are no longer any boundaries and running wild. No one there to say that it is good or bad, my son. Picture a locomotive running wild going from depot to depot, the conductor not caring when and where the consequences begin or end. I am that conductor. The train leaves its original depot with a familiar-sounding trauma and stench of a near-death birth experience that I am told about how I almost died. That same imagined trauma and smell of near-death experience follows my life’s long journey of an eternal idea. In looking ahead, it is the idea of someday being at peace with myself. My malrotated life would seem more than equal to my malrotated stomach at birth.
My first experiences at the house on Walnut Street are actually quite nice. After getting up in the morning I go next door and spend most afternoons with my maternal grandmother’s second husband, Bill. We would watch his favorite show Wagon Train. I love the smell of his pipe and Prince Albert tobacco. I would be as comfortable as I could make myself on the couch next to his yellow recliner. I never find a dollar and a dime in the couch but it starts to feel like it did on Chestnut. Bill is not there one day while watching Wagon Train. Suddenly, my mother’s brother Jac’s new wife turns off the TV. She then walks in front of me naked. While I am confused as to why she does this she sits with me there on the soft yellow couch. I feel a heavy mist come over me, a feeling of depression. What she forces on me that day would take many decades to recover from. I remember it in a sort of overly-polite dissociative way of not being there at all. I look up after the incident and Jac is in the kitchen doorway with his leg on the adjacent door jamb. He is laughing at me. I do not remember what follows.
