1994.04.06

Once upon a time I wrote several manuscripts that were meant to serve as a flagship series. And while the story was decent, the narrative was amateur, and after it was done I filed it away as “maybe some day I’ll fix it”. That day may never come, but the achievement of the manuscripts retains a very important milestone in my existence regardless. It reminds me of this day.

In the story version, “my” character is suspected of committing a violent crime on his metropolitan high school campus, and he flees to a rural community in an effort to escape the pursuing law enforcement. And while I never committed this crime in real life, of course, plans were always in place to flee. There was even a date assigned for this escape.

On that morning, April 6, 1994, my real-life 15-year old self awoke to a storm. The storm was unexpected, but it wasn’t going to stop me.

I had already packed a bag - peanut butter & jelly sandwich, a change of clothes, a lead pipe for self defense, and some baseball cards to sell - and despite the pull of nausea and the terror of knowing what I was about to do, I forced myself ahead, and prepared to leave. I lived in an apartment with my mother, who had custody; however, she left earlier than I, and so I had a window - a window I normally navigated to walk to the institution that loomed not three city blocks from the apartment.

To my shock that particular day, my dad surprised me at the front door. He had driven across town, saying he was going to drive me to school because of the storm. This ushered forth enormous anguish, but I went along with it, silently hiding my riot of nerves. Once at the school, I flitted about at my locker a few minutes before emerging from the cafeteria and, just prior to the first bell of the day, plunged blindly, teeth chattering, into the rain, ordering my feet to proceed.

For the longest time I didn’t even look up. I didn’t really know where I was going, I just aimed for the interstate. I recalled segments of the maze through the inner city but it was mostly guesswork, and I had no map. Feet moving forward. Soaked within seconds.

Why take my life into my own hands like this? Well, it was like being pinned between two massive monstrous steel vehicles. One of them is going to crush you if you don’t move. Unmedicated, uncounseled, unled, unloved, raw with adolescence and confusion and pain, I was going to kill myself if I didn’t do something beyond reason. The cutting, the crying, the starvation, the imprisonment… No. I was going to kill myself. The letter I kept in my wallet was going to be my last word, after all.

So the “why” came down to simple desperate survival instinct. The tiny thing inside forcing control to save itself. Even if that meant all the horrible things to come - worst case scenario, be caught before death and face the wrath of the rigid cross-eyed monsters who ran the most prestigious school in the region. Face the nightmare of an already perpetually enraged and abusive mother-figure. Face the prospect of subsequent years in this prison.

Yeah, the more I walked, the less frightening it became. Too late now. I was missing school. Death, if it came, would be welcome; at least I had a plan.

It might have even been the trigger for my later life’s enjoyment of traveling - a sort of adrenaline at leaving behind everything familiar and comfortable, and feeling relief with each recognizable detail that pops up, no matter how small. The sensation of movement and momentum, always going forward, around obstacles, over pitfalls, through trials, all to come out on another side and be reborn, free, safe in the oasis of a new world. The pride of knowing you were stronger and more capable for it. No one could stop you.

The city became unrecognizable. And the city is, except for certain parts, always bloated with danger. Before I knew it I was in back yards with tailless pit bulls and cutting through parking lots riddled with syringes, winding an unknown path in a direction that was sort-of north, and listening for the roar of cars to hail the way to the interstate.

Eventually the dim growl of vehicles guided me there and I hit the underbelly mainline towards the future, temporarily saved from the downpour.

Thinking back at how much waste I waded through, the real mystery is how I didn’t catch an incurable disease. Imagine a major cross-continental freeway, suspended by incalculable tons of concrete and steel, and an endless river of waste raging off its rails and into giant lakes below. With every imaginable contaminant. Near the chemical refinery.

I waded through this at times. Chest-deep.

It wasn’t going to stop me.

Then I grew to be invigorated by the trek. I knew somewhere inside, somewhere deep down, that what I was doing was, at the very least and for once, my own choice. Even if it was a bad one, it was mine. I wasn’t being held captive. I wasn’t being drilled with aggression and insults. Nobody was watching me. I had never experienced this, and it was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

With a brief break in a playground where actual bullet casings lay sleeping, I devoured what little food I had, shivering against the world, yet more alive in it than ever before.

I won’t draw the story all the way to its end, as its uneventfulness is of less significance than that which has already been explored. I failed to make it to my destination that day, and my body slept in its usual bed that night, wrapped in embarrassment and shame. And while punishments followed, they were less severe than I had anticipated, the worst being that no one spoke to me of it. Ever. I was assigned a counselor and I became “his” problem, and life went on, underlined with all its usual abuse and neglect.

However, a great achievement grew from this.

That feeling? The one of self-help? The demand, of hesitant feet, to move forward into unknown territory, and hang the consequences?

It is a feeling I have reflected upon, and challenged myself to revisit, each year on April 6.

My birthday, January 21, is always cold. I’m often sick. Despite being the second day of Aquarius, a day that should be filled with celebration, the event itself is usually muted and dull.

So instead, as of about 1997 or 1998, my true day of birth became April 6. I take off from work when possible, and I proceed forth into the world armed with the determination to do something I’ve always wanted to do but have until then somehow been held back or discouraged from. I make no apologies on this day, and I strive to reach a peak of self-actualization that should, ideally, serve as a framework by which to live every day.

Of course, in these recent years the holiday has usually boiled down to something small - gorging on cookies all day or something like that - but to the present I begin this day the same way: by waking up, sitting quietly on the edge of my bed, perfecting my posture, and letting my breath take my imagination on a ride for a few minutes. I fly with it, ultimately reaching a point where there is freedom, joy, and the kind of purity unmatched in any sanctuary. As the sun rises on April 6, there is no such thing as a limit.

And then I ask myself: “Is there something we really want to experience?"

And if there’s a response that jumps up from an unknown prison inside, crying for attention, guidance, or love, I will listen. I will pay attention.

And then, rainstorm or not, nothing is going to stop us.