In The Eye of a Hurricane

“In the eye of a Hurricane there is quiet…”

I think if I were ever asked to describe my life in a series of small moments, or decisions, I would be incredibly puzzled. After all, that is a rather bizarre and specific question. No normal person asks that sort of silly question, it just doesn’t normally happen. Such a question is absurd; it’s the sort of shit you’d see in the essay section of some sort of standardized test. A type of question that some smug asshole at the education conference your state holds comes up with and every circle jerks over it. They’d claim such a asinine prompt would be answered with honest, life changing answers.

Pompous fuckers, take this picture of a dinosaur instead.

However, in this new world I seem to have found myself, the standards of normal are far removed from my previous standards of normal. Back in Texas, all you had to worry were people who drove like assholes, assholes with guns, and assholes who’d voted for Ted Cruz.

You know, Republicans.

In this world you had a lot more to worry about. There were evil soul sucking witches, brainless mobs of undead being stewarded by some sketchy motherfuckers who may or not already be dead themselves, and elves.

You know, Democrats.

All joking aside, I found myself being asked this once by some old man sitting across from me at the dinner table once. We were eating the best tacos I had ever made, and he was struggling to build one with his big, meaty fingers. It seemed that after all of these meals, he was unable to grasp the concept that tortillas. He always seemed to overstuff the poor fucking things with meat, impatient to scarf as much food down as possible. After he was done loading the vegetables, the juices of the meat had already soaked the damn thing through and boom, the whole thing would bust and there would be meat everywhere.

I’d offer him a fork, but I’m afraid of where he’ll stick it.

As he continued to flail with his food, opting to scoop the contents of the dead tortilla into another and then slapping another crudely on top, attempting to make some sort of taco bell if you will, the giant was talking. What he was saying wasn’t really important to this story, or the prompt he was about to give me. It was all like “Blah Blah I’m strong, blah blah I punch people in the citadel, Blah blah Vincent you should tell her how you feel.”

You know, useless information.

Anyways, I’m digressing from the point. As I sat and ate tacos with the only man in the world who could possibly fuck the up, I found myself being asked this chiding question. Well not necessarily this question exactly, he’d phrased it more like, “Don’t you realize that your decisions have always carried weight? Even when you don’t realize it?” Okay, so that’s nothing like the “prompt” I’d listed earlier, but fuck you. This is my story, not yours. Go read something else if you want something to make sense, because nothing in my life ever makes sense. The big dude’s words were not lost on me, despite me brushing them aside as if they meant nothing. I couldn’t let John think he’d gotten to me, that wouldn’t be any fun.

His words got me thinking, which if anyone who knows anything about me could tell you one thing about me; they’d tell you that that’s dangerous territory. I couldn’t help but think about my decisions leading up to this point. No, it’s not like the fact that every decision you make makes you the person you are is some sort of arcane secret. But, coming to terms with the fact that every tiny minute call you make leads up to weather you save the world, or fail miserably, is a tough pill to swallow.

So I’d did the best thing I could do in this situation. I broke it down like it was some shitty SAT prompt. Well, more like a college application essay? I’ve got now clue, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve had to do either. Yet despite my the years enforcing our estrangement, the countless years of well-meaning English teachers hammering the same bullshit into my brain had left such a stain across my impressionable adolescent brain that there was no way I couldn’t bullshit a paper on this.

So without further ado, I present to you my masterpiece titled “The Eye of The Hurricane: The Story of a young man who has no idea what he’s doing making important decisions in super dramatic moments that will have incredibly long lasting repercussions, and ultimately get him killed.” Given that this is actually my first paragraph, and all of that other shit was some sort of weird forward, I will now present my case. I have been strung along by an incredibly perplex string of events, be it by chance, fate, or the awful scheming of a woman named Leona. It seems like both this world, and Texas, have it out for me, forcing me in the worst situations possible. Thus, I posit that I have encountered nine major life changing moments in which the outcomes of the decision have permanently altered the course of my history for better or worse. In the following essay (Or is it a series of small short stories? I’ve got now clue, I’m a scholar of Magic, not Literature) I will describe each event in a manner equally as bizarre and inappropriate as what you’ve already seen. I will then go on to describe how this has changed me, then change scenes. No fuss no muss. Now, let’s get this fucker on the road.

I guess we have to start at the start, duh. It all begins back in the lovely state of Texas, the Lone Star state. Well...lovely might be a bit of a stretch. Sure the state had its charms, deep blue sky, open prairie, women who thought that daisy dukes were acceptable to wear out in public. But despite all of its charms, the state had a number of issues. Bad drivers for instance, the Dallas Cowboys, our outrageous amount of traffic, Republicans, and women who thin that daisy dukes are acceptable forms of clothing that SHOULD NOT BE WEARING THEM. Oh, and my mother lives there.

Here we go.

I was born with a debilitating heart deformation that constantly threatened to put me in cardiac arrest if my pulse ever rose above a certain rate. My mother, who apparently was a carrier for this nasty little genetic surprise, was wracked with grief. She felt responsible for bringing me into such a god awful and dangerous life, so she did the one thing she knew how to do.

She coddled me.

At first it was nice. I was always being pampered or cuddled by mother dearest. I don’t think there’s a single picture of me before I was five where I wasn’t being held by my mother.

It was nice, for a little bit.

However, I started to grow this terribly tragic flaw that every child with a hovering parent develops, I started being independent. I saw the other kids having fun playing soccer, and I wanted to join in too. Despite what my mother told me, I would always try to go run off to play, chasing the ball. My mother hated that, my dad thought it was hilarious. I was six the first time my condition hospitalized me. The doctors claimed it was a miracle I hadn’t been in sooner, my mom simply blamed my dad for not watching me.

This was the first slippery step down the godawful slope that would become my life. Mom and dad never stopped fighting, I knew that much. They never yelled in front of me, but there was no way that screaming wouldn’t wake me up every night. They pretended like everything was alright, but I knew it wasn’t. Mom wanted to put me in a bubble, dad wanted me to live. It became common for mom to pack nothing but carrot sticks, celery, and cherry tomatoes for my lunch. My dad started pulling me out of school during lunch to take me to a little diner my uncle used to own and feed me a whole slab of chicken-fried chicken. Not fried chicken, it was like chicken fried steak, but with chicken. While it wasn’t the best thing for a young boy with a fucked up heart to be eating, it was fucking delicious. Dad would make me swear up and down that I’d eaten my veggies, and then would send me back to class.

While things back home were slowly going to shit, school life wasn’t much better. Because I wasn’t allowed to go outside during recess, I found myself excelling in my academics. I would read for fun, escaping my shitty life into a world that was so far away from my own. Math, science, history, all of these things seemed to come easily to me. Soon they were labeling me as “advanced” along side “disabled.” They began pulling me out of class to their “Gifted Students” class to do stupid shit like Sudoku and research famous structures. Everything I did got me a blue ribbon or gold sticker; I coasted off of the fact that once I learned something it seemed to stick. I grew complacent.

As time went on the other kids started to make fun of me. They’d come up with all sorts of childish insults, they’d ostracize me, I was different. My condition spared me the physical violence that normally came along with the verbal bullying, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. Soon school began to feel worse than being at home, where mom and Mr. Rodgers would occasionally have “dinner” while dad was slaving away at the family bookshop.

Did I forget to mention how thin the walls were in my house?

As elementary school gave way to middle school, things began to look up for me. My academics had booked me a slot in the “advanced” versions of all the classes, which were held in their own little part of the school, isolated from the rest of the normal students. The only time I had to interact with my old foes was during gym, which I got to sit out because of my condition. They still made me get changed though, and let me tell you, you’re never safe in the lawlessness of a middle school locker room.

When I turned twelve, they found a donor hear for me. I have no idea what happened to the poor twelve year old who gave me his heart, but let me tell you I wish he could have kept it. When I went down for surgery my fathered “vanished,” and Mr. Rodgers moved in. My new heart meant I could finally participate in things like sports, but the damage was already done. My hand eye coordination was shit, I had no endurance, and I was super fucking frail. With my father gone, later presumed dead, I began to slip away from the world. I stopped talking, I stopped caring. My grades dropped from all A’s to straight C’s.

I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t make a single friend in high school, I never went to any dances, especially not prom. I just ate hot pockets, browsed dank memes, and wasted my life. After high school I took over control of running my dad’s bookstore, as his will instructed, and moved out from home. In my father’s study I found three things: a six shooter, an assload of bourbon, and his collection of playboy mags.

Real classy, Dad.

It was during this period in time I made the arguably biggest decision in my life. Or, the biggest decisions in my life really. Every night I sat at my desk, got stupid drunk, and stared at that fucking gun thinking that today would be the day I put a bullet in my fucking skull. Every night I stared at that stupid thing, thinking how easy it would be to just stop.

But I didn’t.

Every day I slogged through the same bullshit, hating myself for it. I dealt with the same tired monotony, with my selfish mother who never gave a fuck that dad died, and WITH STEVE FUCKING RODGERS WHO DEMANDED I CALL HIM DAD.

I could have killed myself and left my story at that sad fucking ending, but I didn’t. Now look at where I am. If only I could go back and let myself know that everything would turn out a lot better. I just needed to wait for it. Fate would drop my father legacy in my lap, and I’m not talking those porno mags with the sticky centerfolds.

I’m talking Althanas, the land where I would face the most unbelievable challenges, see the most gorgeous views, and meet the most amazing people. I’m talking the Tarot Hierarchy, the real family my father went off to build for me so that I could rise up and become something more under their watchful tutelage. I’m talking about my best friends, Joseph, John…Rayleigh. All it took was to have the strength to not put a bullet in my skull every day for two years, and it was worth it every second.