The First Chapter

I dont write as much as I used too. Some of the medicines are really bad for that. This is something I started several months ago. It seems now Im constantly starting things and never continuing on with them.

I takes constant effort for things to go well. Perhaps that is what praying is about. Even then you can still get into trouble. They prey on you. A lost soul is more precious to them than diamonds. There’s all sorts of traps just waiting to be sprung. A movie, a book, the television, or even the constant barrage of punch drunk love songs on the radio.. Maybe they won’t get you now, but one day you are going to make a mistake. The door will open. The opportunity will be theirs.

I suffer from one of possibly several different diseases labeled “schizophrenia”. Possibly more articulate than most. Certainly more dangerous. That’s why they keep you all doped up you know, so you don’t start talking to a burning bush, so you don’t cause any “trouble”.

This isn’t a novel. It’s not a scientific paper. Of course you wouldn’t expect an advice book from somebody like me. It’s just a testament. To get it all down. To get it all out. The perspective of it all. The twisted, horrid, pathetic totality of it.

I don’t remember when it started. For a while I had convinced myself it had always been there. The thunder was a secret. Something I would share with someone I truly cared about. A lot of things happened from then to there, and I don’t want to skip anything.

There were two times I remember being very sick as a child. Once was with chickenpox. The other was with some sort of severe allergy complex. The two get sort of twisted in my mind, and I can’t remember exact details. I do remember, while at home for being sick, standing in the corner of my room. It seems like it started then. For all intents and purposes though, I’ve always had it. I was born with it.

At some point during that period, on a dare, I threw a rock through a church window. What happened next is still within the deep recesses of my mind. The children, when I broke the window, proceeded to enter the church. They stole I don’t know what, and I remember it being a big scandal. I remember being very upset. Some say trauma starts these things. Ritual abuse. Chronic separation. Others say you dig this stuff up. It really didn’t happen. Or it wasn’t as bad as you perceive it to be. I had really buried this stuff. I remember running. I remember being very upset. And perhaps even shouting. Shouting in my head.

Had God forsaken me in elementary school? I don’t think so. At least I didn’t then. I remember being very concerned about salvation. The salvation of the world. I knew as early as first grade that the world sat on the brink of armageddon. I was the kind of kid that worried about stuff like that. I think back now. I think why couldn’t I just be a kid. Why did I have to carry the world on my shoulders. I think I knew