[1] EXPOSED

1.5 - Faith

Sometimes it’s weird to think about how small everything is. When you look at the big picture, we’re all just whirring about on a giant rock floating through space, but somehow we are content with being just that. This giant rock we call Earth revolves around this star called the Sun. Sometimes, I like to wear a necklace around my neck that has a sun on it because it symbolizes me. The sun on my neck and the sun in the sky are nothing alike, but one day some artist decided that the sun needed to be represented by a circle with these fiery spires coming out of it almost like a floating radial spider. Because of that drawing, our perception of the sun is much different that what it actually is. Our perception of reality is skewed by our beliefs, our backgrounds, and our memories. It’s almost like who I am as a reality and what I’m trying to be are two totally different things, just like the sun we see drawn out and the sun we see in the sky are totally different too.

However, in a weird creative messed up way, things are all the same.

 “Jewel?” Jake called my name as we neared the little parking lot by the lake where we met yesterday.

“Yeah?” I turned to face the voice.

“Are… you okay?”

“Yeah… I’m fine,” I stopped zoning off and gave Jake my full attention. The sun was shining over half of his face and it reflected off his dark colored hair.

“No you aren’t, what are you thinking about?” Jake saw right through me and was curious to know where my mind wandered off to. To tell him that I was zoning off to the cosmos and back would be a bigger challenge than I was willing to deal with right now, so I went with a simpler answer.

“You…. Just everything you’ve had to go through already…” I blinked a few times and found a seat on a concrete slab near the edge of the water.

“Like my childhood?”

“Sure,” I said, “Have you talked to your dad at all since… he left?”

“Nope…” Jake replied, “I haven’t heard from him in like four years…”

“Did Nathan know him?” It was interesting to know more about these people I recently met. In some ways I wondered if I already knew them; they were similar to my old friends. Both were just friends from school, going about their lives just as I am. They are my friends and I am theirs. We’re all the same.

Jake nodded to answer my question. “My dad and him were actually pretty close. Nathan’s dad seemed to favor Sammy more than Nathan… I didn’t really see that part of their relationship but that’s what he told me.” he picked some grass next to the concrete and threw it over an anthill, “Sammy was always the respectful and obedient one, but he had as much guts as a dried up skeleton… Nathan wasn’t bad but he wasn’t afraid to get in trouble every once in a while.”

I continued to listen to Jake’s story. He was a really good storyteller and speaker. Anything he had to say was easy to listen to and he had a calming voice that made everything better. Part of what he was saying didn’t make much sense, though. It must have taken a lot of guts to come to my doorstep and scare me away from talking to Jake. Maybe Nathan bribed Sammy or gave him an ultimatum.

“I guess I couldn’t really understand what Nathan meant because I don’t have a little brother or sister. It was just James and I. He’s two years older than me, so he would be about eighteen. I guess I was kind of like Sammy… my Mom spoiled me. James was close to my dad though, we would go fishing together and I would be the one playing on the rocks causing trouble while dad and James were reeling in these giant catfish.” Jake held his arms out to estimate how big the fish were.