The War Within

Prologue - Chapter 1

 Prologue

            My story doesn’t start off as one of your typical upbeat nothing-could-possibly-go-wrong beginnings. No, of course it doesn’t originate that way, because if it did then there would be no story to tell. My story opens on a bitterly cold rainy day with violent clouds hanging threateningly above. A storm has been brewing and is now waiting to be unleashed at the right moment. Things were not meant to stay happy and sunny, that is not how life works. The sun shines one day and hides behind the rain clouds the next day. Do not be surprised by the fact that my story begins just as the storm clouds are about to break forth and everything is about to come crashing down all around. However, do not fear, the ending is nothing like the beginning.

My life started out like any typical life; there was nothing unusual about it. My parents loved and cared for me and I had a place to call home, but that did not last long. When I was still young I lost first my mother and then my father. They were the only family I had. Well, that is not entirely true. I did have other family; however, I never met them. For reasons that I have yet to discover, they chose to have no part in my life. Due to this, when my parents died I had nowhere to go. No place to call my home. I truly felt alone for the first time in my life.

I was sent to an orphanage where I remained until I was ten years old. I never felt at home in that place since, for me, it was far from a home - let alone my home. I shared a room with ten other boys about my age and ate, slept, and played with them and the other twenty or so boys in the orphanage. I made friends but every single time I found a good friend he was taken away from me before I could begin to feel the warm feelings I had when I had my parents. I grew lonelier and lonelier as the years passed but then one day the sun finally decided to shine on my life.

 It was three months after my tenth birthday and four days after Christmas that they arrived. It was a couple and their son who were looking to adopt another boy. Another son. They spent time with every boy my age in the orphanage and at long last came upon me. Their son and I became instant friends after talking for only a few minutes. All my shyness and fears melted away at the sight of them. Instead, these things were replaced with a deep longing. It was a desire to fit in, to be a part of their family. They came back every day for a week and by the end they made a decision on who they would like to adopt.

Their choice shocked me beyond belief and filled me with hope and warmth that I had not known in what felt like an eternity.

They chose me.

Out of all the boys in the orphanage, they chose me to be their son. I had never felt more loved in my entire life. I was chosen, something very different from anything I had ever experienced. It seemed as if the sun would never set on this wonderful day. But it did. The sun rises and sets just like the sun will shine one day and hide behind the clouds the next. I went home with my new family and lived the next seven and a half years in great joy.

Not long after, everything began to change. The clouds that held the storm in check began to finally lose their control of it. Raindrops began to fall like blood drops on the ground while thunder rumbled its distant cry of dismay. It was a shout- no; it was a demand- to be released. It was a sharp and piercing scream to be allowed to destroy and rip apart what had finally been made whole. This was the tempest to begin a new and dreaded day.

 This was the day that not only my life but the world as I knew it began to take a drastic and unpredictable turn for the worse.

            It was my eighteenth birthday, September 29, the day that just about every teen looks forward to. The day that I would finally be deemed a legal adult and gain my own freedoms. Nevertheless, this was not the case in my scenario. Instead of feeling any sense of freedom whatsoever I was enraptured by no more than a prison around my mind and chains about my heart and soul. For, you see, my adoptive mother died in a car accident that very same day. She was killed instantaneously leaving behind me, my adoptive father, and brother.