The Shadows Of My Heart

The shadows, I can feel their darkness enthral me. They constantly feed my anger, blinding me to fury, until I realise the damage I caused. It is the anger, the dominant trait that shames me, that has a grasp on me and keeps me from growing in wisdom and maturity. The shadows, they are my thoughts, they flood my core… I just can’t fight them; they are just too strong. All I want is to escape this nightmare.

It all started many years ago when Pop left a week before Father’s Day. I was 10 years old, and it crushed me. I could not bear hanging out with my friends while they discussed their plans for the annual holiday in an effort to show their dads how much they were loved. There was many a night afterwards that I cried myself to sleep, and many a night when I was too angry at the world to even close my eyes.

The anger is what led to my being the social outcast. When approaching the waiting line to buy snacks at the school cafeteria, the students would part like water in the Red Sea, for everyone was afraid of my anger. It wasn’t the social isolation or the abandonment that caused my anger at the world; it was the fact that I had no one to confess my hardships to. Mum was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer and had only six months left to live. Those precious words that she last told me were, “My beautiful boy. Stay strong, don’t… give… in…”

The next few years passed by as minutes, I had nothing to look forward to anyway. At my Year 12 graduation, my parent’s seats were empty, as I had expected. I could imagine my mother’s ghost sitting there, clapping whilst crying with pride. When it was time to congratulate the graduates, I was given sloppy handshakes and weak hugs, so that the givers could get away from me in a hurry.

For the next 30 years, I was convicted to and escaped from prison, numerously, for different crimes; arson, theft, burglary, manslaughter on one occasion. The shadows, they taint my mind, whispering to me,
“Release all your frustrations.”
“Show the world you will not back down.”

After living in mum’s old house for about a year, executives from the local bank gave me the news that I had lost claim on the property. I became homeless since I couldn’t afford the remaining mortgage on mum’s house.

After three months, I found a way to vent all of my frustration and anger without being judged; I joined a gang. Over the next ten years, I worked up the leadership and eventually came out on top. My boys and I robbed together, drank booze together and shared life stories. Not many of them had a different story to mine. It sounds a bit cliché, but out here, I finally have somewhere I belong.

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