I was born on the bad side of life, already knowing what was in store but never believing it for a moment. Home was a word I was never taught. I went though school feeling as if my mouth was constantly sucking, sucking on a fruit pit that had long since lost its juice. My mom, my dad, my brothers and sisters - none of them could tell me anything that would make a difference. It was as if an occult hand had dipped its sharp quill into ink of the most impenetrable blackness, and marked out a strange fate for me in cryptic sigils. I left home every day, never to return. In the evening, I was back again. Everyone I asked had an explanation for me that made absolutely no sense.
Finally, I turned to drug addiction, sexual perversion, mental illness, criminal negligence and personality disorder. None of these seemed to help. The end of my rope was fraying. I was endlessly worrying away at it with my toes. It was like a compulsion of some kind, but as much as the friction of the process soothed my misfiring neurons, I couldn't stand the result. That rope was coming apart into separate strands. I'd never be able to hang in there properly if all I was grasping was a bundle of strings and not a stout rope! I've always taken a metaphor too far. Anyway, I thought maybe if I slid down a little further I could hang on by my hands while I moistened the ends with my saliva, and maybe that would get it to stick together better.
Fool move. You guessed it.
My hands slipped.
It was then that I remembered the rope was only a metaphor in the first place. Still, a realization like that in the situation I was in gave utterly no material aid.
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