On the Corner of my Mind

At the end of high school I was a young man of absentminded ignorance pushed by a jet engine fueled with racing grade hormone fuel. For those ladies out there who have often sat perplexed as to the direction and motivation of the teenage male psyche, think of it this way. Take the innocent body of a young boy, blindfold him and strap him to the nose of a bullet train. Then send it on a downhill stretch of track straight into a spring valley pollinated with the sweet perfume of sexual temptation so strong it is matched only by the size of his appetite. Yet we are expected to magically undo these bonds, jump off this speeding train and magically float down like some angel and land in the meadow of contentment where we are devoted moral men who think of nothing, but our sweet women. Well that’s fine and dandy, but I would love to meet the man who jumped off that train and didn’t trample a few flowers in that meadow and break a few bones when he made the jump.

I made the jump, but have spent the last five years recovering and struggling relentlessly to find my way back. It’s a lot like hiking a trail and using foliage as a marker, then trying to find that exact spot 20 years later. You knew you were somewhere in that area when you were going the right way, but now nothing is familiar.