San Antonio

Chapter one

In life I believe we all get the chance to make or break our own lives. I also believe that we never really know when our time is to make this decision that could have the chance to impact our whole existence. Everything we are is a connection of one circumstance to another, but what if we only had the one time to make our circumstances a line to make our lives great? Would most chances be wasted on dreams we don't want to achieve, false hope, and bad humor?

Everyone says they try to live life like everyday is your last, but what if all life was just a scheme of fearing death without accomplishing pointless things so people can say you died having lived a good fucking life. That you had no regrets or lost chances. The day you become a has-been to all the other people in your age group is the day you become the person that "always had a good sense of humor" or "they always had the best laugh". The cycle continues, it never stops, it never will stop. We are stuck.

Stuck in the constant round of a carnival ride that just never seems to stop despite the protests. You can scream and kick all you want, but the rounds never stop, people never change, and you certainly never get that perfect moment to say you did everything you wanted to in live. The glory never comes, the fat-lady never fucking sings, and they never come back.

I stand up from my desk, the bright morning sun shines through the dusty gray curtains onto the hardwood. I shutter at the sudden change of atmosphere in the room. The air shifts and I breathe in the smell of breakfast coming from the kitchen. Mom cooked again. She tries so hard.

I go down the still dark hallway to the kitchen where I find my mother over the stove gently humming a pop song Lily, my feisty 11 year old sister, probably showed her a day before. It's so strange how parents seem to lose a connection with the outside world with age. New trends seem blank, the music seems appalling, and god forbid the way these young women dress now.
My dad sits at one end of the table reading what is probably something work related in some way. He never stops the job. His face is cold and serious, the way a politician would be in a press meeting that's not going their way would be. Across from him is my twin brother, his apprentice. "See, Jared is a good boy. Going into the office supply store just like I am." he would always say at business parties. I scoff at the thought of Jared in a tucked in red blue shirt that said the family logo on the corner. It was the last job any of us wanted to do with our lives.

A plate of bacon and eggs is sit down in front of me. I pick at it causing no questions. "The Breakfast of a Businessman" I think to myself, mindless drones. Never leaving the comfort of a routine. On Mondays we sit in these exact seats and eat cereal together before us kids go to school. Tuesdays is a sandwich, usually PB&J. Wednesdays is yet again the enjoyably boring frosted flakes. Thursdays is french toast or bagel with cream cheese. Fridays is sausage links with toast. Saturdays is our bacon and eggs, and on Sunday it is a free for all. The regular breakfast routine of the Jameson's household has been the same ever since it began. No room for change. No room for difference. A boring cycle.

After breakfast we all go our separate ways. Lily goes to the front yard to her swing set carrying a brown hair blue eyed American Girl Doll in her hand. The doll is identical to her. Pale skin with the unique combination of hair and eyes all wasted with the dullness of a high middle class family in a suburb. Jared leaves the house when a friend comes to pick him up and take him to "study group", a code we use to cover up his band rehearsals. The only draw back is that Jared has to make practically perfect grades and bribes me with concert tickets to get away with it. "The arts are just a scam and a waste of life" my father always says. For the longest time we wondered why we were secretly art talented until on Jared and my 15th birthday our mother shared with us that she was too an artist. A cellist and painter back before she was married. She said she stopped playing after she married our father and every since we never show interest in the hobby to him. We hide away.

I began drawing when I was young, doodling on all my school work as a kid until I started to actually get better. Good enough that people would comment on my art in the art room on the concept of color comparison and tones, things I never heard of until then. My sketch book comes with me everywhere I go just incase I find a new muse to draw next cause when you start look for beauty in a dark place it becomes for apparent that you can find light in every darkness.