The Storms Of August

Chapter One: I'll Take you Back

A great number of people believe in a purpose for each and every person's existence. Even the bad seeds can be used as a bad example so the next generation will be at a small risk of going sour. There are approximately 6,700,000,000 people on earth at any given time. As the living take each breath, someone, somewhere on Earth is taking there first or last. Every one of those breathes have a feeling. Pain, shock, surprise, or my personal favorite, oh shit. Even though we don't think about those emotions in every intake of breath, they are important because they can tell a story. Like hers. Either way everyone born, living, or dead has or had a purpose. Maybe it was to change the world as a whole, or just to call attention to the fact that this world needs a change that isn't happening. It could also be just to change one persons world. And although I cannot guarantee this was her only purpose, it's all she had time for. She flipped my world upside down and inside out without so much as putting in the time to think about it.

The first time I asked about the meaning of life was when I was ten. We were talking about the evolution of humans in social studies and I realized that the point of our existence is missing from the conversation. So, I shot my hand straight up into the air like a rocket launching into space, practically vibrating in my seat until I was called on. "why are we here?". My teacher blinked twice and stared at me blankly for a moment before saying the three words that break a curious elementary school child's heart. "I don't know". The dreaded limit of knowledge in a teacher who I previously had all the answers to the questions my young self could ask. I never got an answer. It was all a matter of opinion and opinions are not facts so I was never satisfied.

I know what the current question is: what does all of this have to do with her and why does this matter in the tale you're going to tell? The answer is it has nothing and everything to do with her, it is her. I lived my entire life following the invisible path in the sand that all the other marching ants like myself were following. Without purpose, without reason, I just went through the motions with my mouth closed and my sight focused on how fast my feet were going. Then there was her: the first beautiful thing I ever got stuck on. She was gorgeous from every angel, inside and out was the light of dusk on soft waters. She was a reason. She was a purpose. If I had known then what I know now I would have done things differently. Maybe I would have kept the caution I always had neatly folded in my pocket before she came along. But at the end of the day I still would choose her. I know in my heart it's always been her. And just like with her everything surrounding this story will be about that. I will tell you now, before we even begin; everything I am about to tell you is about two things and two things only, even when I say they are about something else. If you connect the dots of every fact it will lead you to the purpose/the feelings in each breath, and her: Demetria.

To understand the mystery of her, you'd have to rewind. Not just to the end, or even the beginning, but all the way to before I met her. Prior to the god-like figure that swallowed who I used to be whole. And in all senses she was just that, god-like. Everything about her was beautiful and bright. Her soul alone was enough to squint at. It burned with the power of a thousand suns. As you may have already known, things that burn boldly tend to burn quickly. In a way, that may be exactly what she wanted.

Now is the time to go to when I first arrived in Peterborough, where my last breath of calm weather occurred the night before I met her. Before the storms of August I guess you could say.

My head leaned against the window in the back of the old station wagon. I sat behind my father, the designated driver for this four and a half hour trip. The cracked, tanned leather seats and artificial wood paneling had become my personal prison and asylum in the course of this round in the "swagin' wagon" as my dad likes to call it. By the time we reach the new house, we had stopped once for food, twice for gas, and six times for my mothers incapability to contain a drop of urine in her bladder. I was ready to beat my skull into the bird shit covered window until one of us broke and I could escape my confinement. I felt like I was dying, smoldering in the heat of the vehicle's cabin while my mother sang her Dolly Parton. The only between Dolly and the car is she has a unique purpose and gets updated periodically.
This stunt in the swagin' wagon is due to two things. My grandmother' death, and my fathers inability to let go of the past. We had to move from our bungalow in Minnesota because my Nana passed away and the bank was going to sell off her house. However, this was where my paps grew up and he wasn't about to release his childhood home and his mother's final resting place for others to enjoy. Being the average, middle class Americans that we are, my parents could not afford two homes and decided to put ours on the market in order to return to my dad's cheese head roots. I had met my Nana maybe three times, and that's a stretch in itself. Living in a home where I am confident somebody died is not my idea of exciting, but what dad says goes, and goes we went.
Even though it sucks I had to pick up everything for what I saw was an unreasonable reason, it's not like the roots I had planted were very deep. The school I went to was small and smelled like black mold, seeing the mold in some areas didn't help much either. I had alright teachers, they were good people, they taught what was needed to be taught, and sent us on our way. The student body wasn't terribly awful, the average bunch of idiots, jocks, pot heads, nerds, and what have you milled around the hallways like herded cattle. That's all it was though. I didn't have anyone to miss me or beg me to stay. No one seemed worth knowing. All I had were the two kids I normally sat in silence with during the half hour lunch period. I only knew one of their names. One kid always had his rock music on his cheap headphones and the other one, Kyle, was a scrawny kid that was fresh to the school district and was too shy to sit anywhere else. On my last day of school there, which was three weeks into the year, he saw me retrieving the money left on my school lunch card.
"What's up with that?"