{by Shannon from Mr. Lady}

I was born in the place where you only went if you had to. I lived in the life most people can only imagine in nightmares, have only seen in movies. I struggle to say those words, because for me, that life is the norm, simply because it was mine.

There was no ship waiting to carry us away from that life. There was no secret to open that would grant us exit. There was no ladder for us to climb or ticket to find in the gutter that would deliver us from the soul-crushing hopelessness of societal abandonment. There were only the armed guards standing at the gates of the hole the world tossed us in to forget about us, and that is not a theological statement.

What we did have were our dreams. In a life that was shrouded in monochromatic shades of redundancy, our dreams were our escape. We imagined ourselves spies, or kings, or poets. We fancied ourselves grand and capable of great things. In the depths of night, when blackness masked the differences between our world and yours, we dreamed ourselves extraordinary.

I scribbled on tattered paper in the middle of the night, twisting words I’d learned until they made sense, creating tapestries of language to hang inside the walls of my heart. I hid those scraps of my soul carefully, under mattresses and in the backs of school lockers, because I knew that the day they were found, they’d be taken away from me.

And one day, they were found.

And that day, my heart was laid out on the floor in front of me and torn into pieces, one poem and story at a time.

And that was the day that I knew I had to leave. I knew I had to do something, that I had to effect some change in some way I couldn’t yet comprehend. I listened to the words thrown across the room at me that night, saying that it was wrong to dream of a better life, that it was selfish to want something better, that is was sinful to aspire to be something more than was destined for me to be, and I saw the bars that held us all in that place coming down around me. I knew that I would suffocate inside them if I didn’t run.

I ran. I left everything I knew one night in January and I ran as far away as I could get. I left behind the piano I’d hammer my rage into, I left the pen that I poured my soul out of, I left my mother and my family and every single person I’d ever known and I never looked back.

{Originally posted on Whiskey in My Sippy Cup}

I’ve talked before about the craving we as parents have to mold our children into little mini-mes, to see some glimmer of ourselves behind those big, beautiful eyes. I’ve talked about how hard we both have striven to avoid doing just that thing, for the sake of our kids’ sanity. We were both pushed and pushed perhaps a bit too hard as children. We both spent most of our lives trying to live up to some unattainable ideal of perfection that our parents had laid out for us. We both had an absent parent who we alternately tried to garner the love of and spite with our over-achievement.

We both have parent issues. We try to not share them with our kids.

For me, not pushing them to be me is simply a matter of not letting them slit their wrists and not pushing them to get straight A’s all the time and reading them something other than Douglas Adams. For The Donor, it’s a bit more complicated. He was that kid. I have scrapbooks on scrapbooks full to the brim with newspaper clippings and accolades. I have cases of ribbons and pins and trophies in my basement. I have a wall full of plaques and a closet full of uniforms waiting for a child who needs them. For a child who will follow his father’s footsteps. And I have a very tired father here, too, one who never got his childhood because he was too busy being pushed to be the fastest, the hardest, the leanest, the best.

And so I’ve read them other stories (thank you, Dan Brown) and he’s let them dip their foot in a pool with an instructor rather than with him, and he’s put them in soccer lessons with any other coach, and he’s sat back and waited. I’ve seen him dream. I’ve seen the hope well up inside of him like a fire and I’ve seen that flame extinguish time and time again, mostly because he’s an athlete and I’m a nerd and nerds don’t push their kids to hit balls for a living and athletes don’t buy their kids Mensa Mind Challenge books for fun. Our kids will be neither of us, it seems. At least not by our doing.

He’s actually been trying his hand at their sports of choice a little lately, and let me tell you that a 37 year old man on a Ripstick is damn near the funniest thing you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Especially when he does a double-backwards-aerial-somersault and lands flat on his ass. That man was never a cat, in any life.