The Martial Law Diaries (Part One)

(Week Four - Desire Lanes)

This struck me last night as I lied staring up at the ceiling. What is behind our desires? Our longings?  These things that keep us up at night?

I have always found it immensely intriguing that one of the common things that drives culture's literature, cinema, and art is the basic human expression of longing. This concept is what ties all these things together. Throughout our own lives, we are driven by longing. It could be said that longing is what keeps humanity dreaming, moving, believing, and changing. But what are we longing for?  Is it happiness? A romantic relationship? Wealth? Starbucks? Phat stacks of toilet paper?

These things are all good but become quickly corrupted when these objects of longing become the objectives of longing. Look at what these stories in art show us when that happens; the great downfall of the Corleone family in ''The Godfather'', the obsession of Jay Gatsby in ''The Great Gatsby'', and the murderous fear in ''Saturn Devouring His Son''. The Bible puts it like this:


''Furthermore, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent new forms of evil; they disobey their parents.They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless.'' - Romans 1:28-31

What does acknowledging God have to do with all this? God IS the objective of longing, to quote the Westminster Catechism, ''The chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever''.

Humanity has not done this. We get this as a result of making God's creation, as God has created anything we could desire, the objective in life or in other words:  

''Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity for the dishonoring of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator''. - Romans 1:22-25

This is why our longing becomes horribly corrupted. Our happiness turns into depression, our romantic relationships turn into selfish and unrequited love, our wealth becomes vain, Starbucks becomes a crippling addiction and the hoarding of day to day supplies entirely cuts off the poor and elderly. 

What God has created was never intended to satisfy us entirely. Our longing is to turn us towards Him and recognize that all of what He has created points back towards Himself.

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." - Revelation 22:13

ps - you should read the whole book of Romans

Saint Patrick and The Goddess of Death

^^I do not own the above artwork.

''Cue the scenes of empty streets, stores, and intersections. Long overhead shots of a deserted downtown. Pan over to the trash blowing into the wind, over the Iowa river, and the empty university campus. Cut to a wide angle zoom shot of a decayed corpse alongside a dirty sewer drain...''

''That's it!'' I say aloud to my own genius. The few people in the coffee shop look up at me in disgust. The woman in her mid forties, caked on makeup, beret, and cigarette in hand, sits with mouth open as she couldn't even fathom someone breaking the silence of her own personal space.

Finally, after exactly 120 days, I have finished the first paragraph of my screenplay. The customers soon surround me, as I'm yelling and whooping it up for my achievement, and proceed to douse me in hand sanitizer and light me on fire. ''Fire is the final purifier'' says, former MSNBC war correspondent,  Brian Williams; flames licking up in the reflection of his gyeballs, as the laughter of the corporate toiletry demi gods, could be heard far off somewhere distant...but oh, so loud. 

What was that you ask? Would you really want to know? You've ever hyperventilated into a brown paper bag in the back of a Fairway? Apparently so, because our leaders suggest it, the CDC commands it, and the death squads enforce it. Selah.

28 Javes Later

Well, this is already getting old. Everything's closed and everyone split. St Paddies day, like everything else, has been traded in for fear. How'd it get like this?

You can blame a lot of things: the shadowy figures, the Illuminati, and Elizabeth Warren but I could personally hear the satanic laughing of the Zucc himself this last weekend. Who needs the media when your cousin is telling you that Uncle Jim John Jones is buying out Wal-Mart on Facebook Messenger? 

A garage full of hand sanitizer and enough toilet paper for his men, horses, the cockroaches in the basement, and the two thieves who'll have his entire family held hostage by gunpoint by the end of the month. What's next? Who knows? Dean Koontz and Facebook does.

Barely a week passes and we're already talking about martial law, 5 month quarantines, and drinking the Kool Aid.

I looked out at my parking lot tonight and saw only the empty lots...depressing, depressing, depressing. What else?

The Dual Natures 

“Our Generation has had no Great war, no Great Depression. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.” - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

This is exactly what I'm talking about. This fear, this insanity, this isolation. This is the invisible war, my doodes. Not the virus but actually Satan. Spray yourself down with Lysol all you want. I've spent so much trying to understand that I'm driving myself into the hysteria. Who cares about what the crazies are saying. What the kids are smoking. The true battle is spiritual. Our culture worships itself ,and more importantly, it's own death. This ''2012'' crap is what keeps the snakes fed...don't worry, Karen will be the provider and protector now.   

What we are facing is our own humanity. Our sin. Look what happens when the guy down the block starts coughing...for those struggling with the exegesis of my nonsense, our culture, the crowd mentality that says ''BUY THE TOILET PAPER, SWAMP THE STORES, BATHE IN THE HAND SOAP, BRING IN THE ARMY, QUARANTINE THE QUESTIONABLE, SEAL OFF THE CITIES, BURN DOWN THE HIGHWAYS, BINGE WATCH THE ENTIRE GUNSMOKE SERIES, PRODUCE LOCAL METH, etc...'', is the goddess that is worshiped. It's called that because it's not necessarily an ugly beast, the notions of basic survival seem like a human right when you look back at your kids and grandparents, but it quickly becomes this unquenchable blood lust that is never satisfied. That's sin.

As the ambiguous cop out, the missionary bishop, St Patrick, once banished all snakes from Ireland. Not much is known how or why. He just did. Modern scholars understand this folk tale as an analogy of  the spread of Christianity in Ireland; picturing Patrick as the figurehead that progressed the gospel in the little island. I truly hope that this crisis reveals the ''snakes'' in our time in a way that couldn't be denied. That the fear mongers of our time will be driven back into the deepest corners of the Sub-Reddits where they belong.  Either way:

   ''Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.'' 

- Matthew 10:28(NASB)

Saint Patrick himself said this:

The Lord is greater than all: I have said enough. 

   

Elijah

The following is a transcription of a story I was told back in the winter of 2017:

My name is Elijah Parker, my full name is Elijah Mareno Mazetti. I was born in Italy, in a van, on the way to the hospital. My dad kept the umbilical cord as the doctors delivered because he was the only one there. I was the sixth and last child of my mother. I was thrown in foster care because my dad was an addict. He was a hard meth addict and an alcoholic. I was born under the influence of meth because my mother had used an hour and a half before I was born.

I lived in Italy for only about a week of my life, moved to the U.S. I am native american and Italian; half of me comes from native U.S. and the other comes from Italy. My family is a mafia and our family was relocated under the government relocation protection agency act, what they do is they take people who don't wanna do what they were doing before and relocated them under safety and change their names. When my grandmother died, my grandfather married a woman and he took her last name - Parker. So I'm now Elijah Pierce Parker.

When my dad was taking care of me for about two years (my grandparents have been taking care of me since then). He lived in Tulare, California (which is in northern California) and in a apartment. My first memory, at all, is some guy dragging me around, you know, in the apartment. I don't know what ever happened but I can't remember past that. My dad and I, eventually moved from there to southern California. To Sun City, which is by Menifee, and my dad got arrested.

On the way there, we had a U-Haul, my dad pulled over and fell asleep in the U-Haul. I remember the cops knocking on the window, and I was a little kid, shining lights in the window and next thing you know; my dad's getting arrested and the captain called my Uncle Dave (who is my dad's brother and now lives in New Zealand).

After my dad got arrested, I lived with my grandparents, and I was a crazy kid because I found out later in life (I was about seventeen); that I had PTSD. I'm on medicine for multiple personalities. When I was still inside of my mother, she was freaking out and there'd be about a couple different people inside of her head; so I had that from birth.

PTSD is really something that inhibits me from doing a lot things. My whole life, I've been kinda angry and I didn't know why and I found that out.

My grandparents put me in foster care when I was about six, and kept running away from foster homes when I was about nine; I was on the streets and I started smoking cigarettes, smoking weed. My dad got out of jail then he adopted me; he had a place near Sliver (Bodfish).Being with my father was off and on because he was in and out of jail. He was abusive, so I just kinda ran away a lot.

My dad was definitely using meth and definitely selling it. At the age of eleven, I was doing meth. Age fifth teen, my dad had strapped about an ounce of meth and an ounce of heroin on my back and said 'son, you ain't gonna go home till you sell this, okay?'. So I went to school and sold it to my friends (a couple of them have died since then; I blame myself everyday).

From there, I went to Riverside, California; which is more of a slum. I started shooting up and I got a girl pregnant and I had my daughter, Sofia, at the age of fourteen.

I just, to save myself by selling drugs on the street, and so I did and I got around by doing that. Eventually, I got to the point where I'm going to have my daughter, I really didn't care at all, then I got sober at seventeen; off of heroin. I was shooting up for about four years and I was speedballin' (which is both heroin and meth). I have been sober off heroin for nearly three years and sober off meth since September, 4, 2016. My next step is to stop smokin' weed and stop drinkin' (drinking has actually not been a problem for me).

I got arrested, and taken to prision, when I was seventeen years old. Sixteen, I was actually in the junior penitentiary (Tehachapi). I was in there because me and my dad were running a fight club, honest to God, underground in (Newberry Park, California?). They busted us on a father-son fight week, my dad and I were fighting each other when they came in; they had guns and everything but they also had tasers. My dad started swinging at the cops and, next thing you know, I'm getting tazed two times, the third time, with my dad, went over the shoulder and into my back and I have a scar from it. Right on my spine. 

My dad then, took down two of the cops and I took down one of the cops and we got arrested; I got assault charges on a officer and they were eventually dropped, after choosing to fight the case, because the officer's hadn't had started something with announcing themselves or given us our Miranda rights.


My dad just got out of prison, November of last year (2016), and my life has been crazy. I had my own house, sellin' drugs, I also had a couple cars.

My daughter was born with Spina Bifida, which means your disks are growing all funky, and she eventually passed away from it. She was given less than ten years and she passed away, four years and nine months, because she had an brain aneurysm (which is bleeding in the walls of your brain) and it was sudden, and swift, but she survived. She survived for three months and I sold my house, my two cars, and everything I had and ended up on the streets; just to make sure I had my daughter's hospital payments paid and I never paid a hospital payment before that. 

In the past couple years (last year) I lost seventeen people. A couple were to overdoses, and a few people, I've watched die from overdoses and held them and didn't know what to do.

One, I walked on, he had hung himself in the bathroom because he had just broken up with his girlfriend; he was drunk. My friend, Thomas, overdosed at a friend's house on heroin and another one passed away in the ditch by my house; he had overdosed on heroin. I had another one pass away, we were at my friend's party, and his name was Alaska. There were two people fighting, native Americans, they were drunk and someone pulled out a knife; he stepped in between them and he took the blade. He passed away on the curb.

Me and my friends were party hoppin' and one of them had taken a whole bunch of uppers and downers then, the fourth party, we go to sleep and we woke up in the morning (about 9:30) and the night before I told him 'don't go hard. Your gonna hurt yourself. Your gonna die.' and I touched him and he was ice cold. His girl was under his arm and I had to pry his arm up, stiff arm, and she didn't know. She was damaged up in her head. 

My step mom passed away months ago and my grandfather had a stroke.

So my life's been, everything it should be, because I lost faith in God. God's guided me ever since then. God has lifted me up, has been there for me to cry on his shoulder when I needed it. God is there, in the sense, that God is there when I breathe. God is there when I sleep. God is there when I mess up. God is there when I do right things, everything, God has been there and I didn't realize it till recently. 

On the way here (to Iowa); when I walked here from California. I walked from California to Albuquerque, New Mexico. There was a point where I had gotten off of the bus and (I was actually smoking meth on the bus) they caught me. I ran, I had my bag under the bus and it came all the way over here without me.

The next time I ordered a ticket, got back on the bus, it was kinda odd when I got on the bus. There was only one seat I could sit in and that was kinda odd in itself. The bus was packed to the back. I get in there, and I have my meth and I threw it in the toilet before I got on the bus. I had weed in my bag, I had walked around Flagstaff, Arizona and found that on the ground. On the bus, they do searches and stuff, and they searched me but I was paranoid because I knew it was in my bag ( I had stuffed it in my mouth at one point and was chewing it). 

I had started to hear some murmurs and there was a couple of people on the bus, that I noticed when I walked in, looking at me and it was weird; they studied me in a different kind a way that I study people. It caught me off guard when I noticed my bag, that was in front of me, started moving; under my seat. The guy in front of me had apparently reached under the seat and started to pull it. I grabbed it, real quick, and put it to my chest and I thought I had been paranoid or hallucinating. I put it back down and it started happening again. 

This bigger, African American, woman was sitting next to me; she was heavy set and she was nervous. There was a couple on the other side, an older gentleman, an older woman, that were just, literally, looking over me the whole time. It bothered me.

The man had a wife sitting next to him and she, eventually, held up her camera, right? I didn't know it was her camera; I thought it was her phone with her apps because it had apps. She moved and I could see, in her camera, there was me and I could see a little red dot and I was being recorded. On everything on my baby; I was being recorded. I was freakin' out and I was praying to Jesus Christ; that no one would touch me and the guy in front of me was like, 'can I just kill him?' (and I swear on everything. This is what he said) 'can I just kill him already?' and the lady in front, with red hair, was a nurse or something, she was telling the bus driver, up in front, 'no, no, if he had ate it (she was thinking I had eaten a meth bag or something), he'd be gagging and his heart rate would be up and he'd be sweatin' and I could hear all this and I'm thinking 'this is the most crazy thing that's ever happened to me'.

We ended up goin' to this semi-truck stop and there were two different ones on each side of the road. We stopped at the one with the gas station. I bucked it out that bus. I went to the other side and they called the cops. They thought I was crazy but I wasn't. They came and they took me and put me in a metal box, on a pick up truck, and they threw me in there and said ' we're going to take you down to the station'. They took me down to the station and they tested me, had me breathalyzed, did my blood, did my urine, and they said ' this kid's clean as a whistle'. 00 is what they said; I tested negative on everything. They had a craziest look on their faces and said, 'so you were tellin' the truth' and I said, 'yes sir, I was' and they said that I had two options: stay here overnight or leave right now. I said,'I'm gonna leave right now because I don't wanna stay in a cop's station' and they asked why and I said, 'I just don't, it's my personal preference'. So I started walkin' and I walked. 

When I was walking, there was this guy, he was native american and I asked him for a ride and he's like, 'yea, man, where you going to?' and I said,' the casino'. He was a different personality. I noticed when I got in there was an army thing, it was green (a bag?), he grabbed it real quick and put it behind his seat. He looked at me nonstop. Eye to eye contact the whole time.

When we pulled up to the casino, we were in the parking lot, and he says 'honestly, I'm just trying to get laid'. I was like 'he's going to try to rape me' and then he tries to put a knife up to my neck. I grabbed the knife and threw it up against the window. I eventually got to a truck stop and called my grandfather and said, 'grandpa, I need a ride, I'm out in the middle of New Mexico' so he picked me up.

I came to Iowa for a girl. 

When my daughter passed away, no one was there for me except for her, Carmen. She has my baby now; she's pregnant by twenty weeks. She's going to be a girl. God guided me here and brought me here for a reason.

We met over Facebook. She had a fake account, it was a guy that looked a stoner, she started talkin' funny and she said that she wanted to fight me. I got angry and said, 'oh yea, I'll fight you'. I gave her my address and everything then she said  'I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm actually a girl.' then she gave me her real name; Carmen Arson. She's my angel, she's my  everything, she was there for me when my grandfather passed away. 

Our relationship is definitely based off of God; we really haven't realized that until recently. It started out as desire, then our child, now for God. She's a really quiet girl. We definitely have plans for marriage (she had forgotten to wear her engagement ring when he told me this). 

I'm here for my baby. I'm here for me; to get better for the baby. 

Come Spring

''I can't stand to see your picture
On the dresser where I left it
Another sunny day
And you're eighty miles away...I could stand to be a fixture
In your faded family picture....Who cares if there's a party somewhere
We're gonna stay in...'' 

- The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart Come Saturday (2009)

The Obit Section

The following is a throwaway from a collection of short stories I've been working on:

I don't remember how I first met her or where; she was almost like a strange memory that I can only fuzzily recall. She even dated one of my best friends, Joey...kind of. 

It was weird, Joey always had another girl in his life. Every time we'd hang out, there was always a girl that fit into the narrative. This time it was a fiery little Hispanic girl. I don't even remember where HE had met her but I do remember him talking about this pretty girl who worked at Dunkin' Doughnuts and we were all going to hang out. I nodded and followed his lead. 

The Dunkin' Doughnuts was out by Interstate 380; in front of the Wal-Mart. It was closing time when we drove up to the little store. We walked in and the girl behind the counter shouted ''Joey!''. She walked over and hugged him and he introduced me to her. She was beautiful, short and curvy, her face radiated youth but with a deep exhaustion set into her eyes. The way she stood made her look a lot older than she was; we were all still in high school. 

I was the 3rd wheel who stood there as they talked; looking into each others eyes. Absorbed and laughing. She went back behind the counter and boxed up day old doughnuts she would take home every weekend night.

She finished and we all walked outside. We stood out and talked while she had a cigarette. She was always laughing around him, she'd get into this sarcastic pose where she would cock her head and look straight serious before smiling; almost as if she was getting what she wanted every time. 

We followed her back to her house. It was a typical cookie cutter just beyond a hillside ridge of some of the more richer and fancier homes. We followed her in; she always had a tired expression on her face that would change into a big smile as soon as she was going to see someone close to her. I remember her house being quiet for a family of four. There was a little hallway when you walked in, living room to the left, and a kitchen straight ahead. There was an additional hallway that was connected to the kitchen towards the right and it had four rooms; her's, parents, sister, and bathroom. 
We were standing in the kitchen while she hugged her mother and showed her the box of doughnuts she had brought home. Her mother was unmemorable, typical, and her father, or whoever he was, seemed like a plastic stand in for someone else. 

It seemed all awkward and tense. It was almost like her parents were teenagers that hid in their rooms while she was like the parental figure coming home from work. 

Her sister was a younger, and just as beautiful, version of herself. I was awe struck but I knew there wasn't a chance. She was glued to her phone like every other girl at school.

She walked into the hallway and went into her room which was the last one on the end. We didn't follow her, Joey talked up her mother, but I looked and tried to see what her room was like. I saw the assorted make up on a small dresser, shoes on the floor; typical girl room. She had just started to undo her hair as she turned and shut the door to change. When she came out, we waited in the kitchen, then we watched a movie and left. 

A few weeks of this exact routine passed, It was the summer and the nights were long, and I was talking with Joey in his basement one night until he got really quiet. I had asked him if they were dating or not. He told me that it was complicated. I laughed and asked what that meant. He got serious and quiet before telling me that she had told him that she was a drug runner for the Mexican Cartel. I laughed hard until I realized that he was serious; then I laughed in bewilderment. 

She smuggled drugs through the local airport and the money she had been receiving was paying for her mother's mortgage, her grandmother's mortgage, her car, food; everything. Her whole family was blatantly aware, the ties were in the family, but I never asked her herself about this nor even believed it until one day we all hung out at the mall together. 

We were in Hot Topic, I was eyeing a Nirvana shirt that had the logo and text filled in with pink flowers, she stood next to me, noticing me eyeing it, and said ''you like that shirt?''. I said ''yea, but it's thirty bucks and I'm broke''. She didn't blink; ''I can get that shirt for you if you want''. I looked at her, this beautiful girl wanted to buy me a shirt, and I shrugged and said ''yea''. 

When she took it up to the counter, the cashier told her that the total was 30 something, she pulled out a wad of money in a little clip. I leaned over her shoulder and saw that they were all hundred dollar bills. She actually apologized to the cashier for only having hundreds. I didn't need to ask any questions after that. 

He had also told me that she couldn't date him because a part of the deal was that she could pay her family's entire bills but she couldn't get married to anyone because of the fear of information getting back to the cops. This was all crazy but it got less crazier as we hung out more and I saw how crazy she could get. 

One night, he dropped her off and she asked him to walk her to her door. He got out and they stood in the far end of the driveway; talking and kissing in the darkness. I could only watch from the distance of the backseat of his car but I saw them go inside for a very long time. It seemed decades, I guessed what was going on, but he soon rushed out and exhaled as he got in and clutched the stirring wheel. He drove in silence before I asked him what happened. He told me that she had begged him to have sex with her in her room. She even said that her parents would never know. He declined and left. He was sweating and told me that it was one of the most difficult things that he had ever done. After this, their relationship turned into series of passionate arguments and kissing. 

I sat there at her grandmother's house, a nice stone house in the fancy hillside, as she argued with her sister about what her sister wanted for Christmas. She'd get pissed and talk quickly in Spanish as she threw her arms around in an elaborate display of an argument. When she did talk in English, she said something along the lines of ''I pay for literally everything''. That shut her sister up. 

Her sister was beautiful but so blissfully and ignorantly immature that you felt bad for her. Either she knew about everything and the way she acted was a coping mechanism or she was so literally ignorant that she could enjoy the fallacy of having anything she could want. She had expensive make up, phone, anything that her sister would give her. She sacrificed her entire soul for them because it seemed to be the only way to make them happy. 

I realized this when I tried getting her sister to like me. I would patiently listen to all of her conversations; they were so devoid of meaning that I quickly stopped pursuing her. The beauty wasn't worth it. The supposed happiness wasn't worth it. 

The last time I saw her was when Joey was dropping her off at her grandmother's house. They got into an argument about staying over at her grandmother's for a sleepover. He kept saying no and she would just keep asking. After a few other times asking, she turned and asked me if I wanted to spend the night. I was so tired at this point that I just said yes. She leaned in to kiss me but I moved and she caught my cheek. I wasn't going to disrespect him like that regardless of if she wanted me or not. I got out and she looked at me and said ''go back into the car, Chris, goodnight''. I watched her go inside the house, the storehouse on the hillside of the fancy Midwest, and we drove away in silence. He told me that she was just trying to make him jealous. 

Years passed, I got a phone call from Joey while I was at Inch's house. He calmly told me that she had died. It shook me. He told me that she had went to jail the year before for getting into a fight with a girl in the middle of the street. When she got out, she had apparently gotten involved with human trafficking and she had walked out onto Interstate 380 to kill herself. A car hit her and killed her instantly. 

There wasn't a funeral because it was still being investigated by the cops. 

Tomorrow Morning

'''As the sun hits, she'll be waiting
With the coffins under heaven...
I watch you burn away''

- Slowdive ''When The Sun Hits''  (1993)

Boxing With God

Your arm's too short to box with God - James Weldon Johnson

I walked down the long gravel road that snaked around the entire resort. It was a hot summer day and I was already sweating profusely from walking down from the steps of the kitchen, I lived and worked at, to the bottom of the hill that began a long path to some trails I wanted to explore. 

Wanted to escape. 

I was already past the first lake when I realized that I had no bug spray. Nothing but pants and a long sleeve shirt. I figured they'd suffice.

I had taken this way a few times so I started zoned out; staring down at the ground and passing by the beginnings of forest. Every now and then, I'd look out into the clearings and see nothing but the sun making the grass and the fertile ground glow green. A red truck always passed me by around this time. I'd wave but I didn't want to talk. I didn't want to be around anyone.

After a ten minute walk, you'd come into this huge clearing that acted as a landing strip for small planes and a makeshift baseball field for mandatory employee games once every week. 

This is where the sun glowed hot. This is where you, the ant, would be cooked by the great blue magnifying glass in the sky. This is where you would begin to question if the walk was worth it.

I zoned out again; feeling the gravel drag my feet.  

I had never seen as white as clouds as I saw here. They were puffy as cotton and would glow white from the bare sunlight. I traced them and wondered where they went after passing past the horizon. 

This was my daydream. The long walk to nowhere. 

I took out the crumpled map that I got from the office, I studied which ones would take me the farthest and headed towards those. At first glance, the trails made no sense, the trail heads looked no different than the rest of the forest except for distinct tire marks that made them up. I made my way slowly; knowing that I'd have to follow it precisely to get back. 

  Immediately, I regretted the decision to not turn back to get bug spray. They sprung on me like the plague but I just walked faster; passing by a huge pile of bear shaz in the middle of the trail.  I was too deep and too stubborn to turn back. The sun glowed bright and the heat made the trail feel like a warm air shaft. 

I was finally completely alone. I didn't tell anyone where I was going. The freedom of it gripped me as much as the fear of being torn in half by a pissed off bear. I took my chances. 

I wandered along the trails, some of them not being signified by anything anymore, but they seemed to roughly follow the map. As my surroundings got more dense, so did the bugs. I couldn't stop. Just keep going to wherever I felt was a good distance to turn back around. I felt my emotions building up with the discomfort and the exertion of my body. I scarcely took my surroundings in. Just had to go faster. The endless rows of trees, ascending and descending on each side of me, made me feel more alone. It was mysterious. I felt watched by nothing. The sweat dripping down into my eyeballs.

 I tried to suppress my thoughts and go along it absentmindedly. All I could focus on was going deeper into this forest and into myself. I wanted to see what I could find if I went as far as I could physically make myself. It carried my feet, my hesitations, and my discomfort. 

By the time I started feeling tired, I realized how far I had made it...and how far it would take to get back. I started to panic. I stopped to figure out something but the bugs attacked me. They got into my eyes, nose, and ears. I wanted to puke but I didn't know where to go. I came upon a fork in the road that was almost completely covered in tall grass. I saw one that trailed off into the lake I found myself by.

I ran to the end of it and found a small row boat with oars and life jackets thrown all over it. I figured if I could get the boat out far enough, maybe I could think, rest, and get out of here. I wrested the huge thing until I got it in the water. It flipped around so hard that the floor was covered in the murky water of a marsh I had found myself to be in. 

I used one of the oars to push the boat off into the middle of the lake. I started off very slow but eventually it floated to the middle of the lake. I looked around me and saw that I was even more alone than before. The nearby trees stood like concrete pillars and the sky was grey. I could barely think. My mind was stuck in getting out of here. It all started to collapse. The bugs weren't going away and I needed to get out of there. I felt the wind brush against my overheated body and I started rowing towards the shore. I almost fell into the green water going out and had to pull the heavy metal boat in and flip it over. Every time I tried, it flipped over and filled more with water. I couldn't take it anymore. I had to get out. I knew that I had to get out. I left it and started walking back. 

 I fought against this entire place since I stepped foot on the ground. I walked all the way out here to enjoy the surroundings but only found myself trying to escape...and I had to escape again. 

I felt the exhaustion take its toll on me and I felt myself dragging my feet. I threw one foot into a mud and it annoyed me so much that I threw my foot up; slinging mud all over myself in the process. I felt the frustration of this place beat on me. I felt myself screaming but I couldn't hear it. There was blood on my face from swatting mosquitoes; fat with my own blood. 

I thought of my life ending here. I could give up. I felt beat down enough. I stopped for a moment and try to gather myself. I closed my eyes and all I could feel was pain. I opened my eyes and found myself just facing myself. I was so angry and frustrated that I screamed it all out until I felt even more exhausted. I walked slowly; feeling defeated. It did nothing but make it all longer and painful. 

You could go anywhere to run away from anyone but your always stuck with yourself. You can't run away from that. I didn't want to think it but it hit me as hard as the heat and as fast as the bugs. I couldn't escape it. I had to stop trying to run away and take it. 

I struggled hard and long on the way back. The gravel made me feel like my feet were bleeding and the anger made me have tunnel vision. I couldn't stop to catch my breath. It was like a rising tide behind me. I barely even looked at the map. 

When I finally got back back into the trail head clearing, the air was a lot more open, and I could see clear again. I breathed again. I drew the air in deep and exhaled slowly. I saw the burnt grass sway across the quiet plain. I yawned and started to walk back. I noticed that it was barely 4 o'clock. 

When I finally made by way back to the resort, I walked to a little employee lounge. It was empty. I grabbed some beer out of the fridge and sat on the little cheap couch that was in there. I looked around the wood paneling and laughed. I could hear the cars crush and rumble the gravel around the little cabin. Outside the window was the main lake. It was as blue as the sky and shimmered in the light of the day.