In The Beginning- 1

 Walking the dingy, uneven streets of New Orleans I pass places that I once fondly frequented. Joey K's, Felipe's, Igor's, the sno-ball stand on Magazine, Funrockin', Green Tea... Hell. The list goes on and on. I don't enter these establishments anymore for the simple reason that I have not a penny to spend in them. No General Tsao's chicken, no gigantic burrito, no fried oysters. I haven't been inside a theatre in over a year. I can't even step into a grocery and buy a Diet Coke. And whose fault is it? I'll give you a hint. It's not the cashier's.

 As I stroll past these places to an uncertain destination. After maybe an hour of determined wandering I think to myself, "It feels like that was a different life." A dread sets in that maybe I wont see that not-so-long lost life again. But I do my best to persevere. To madly scramble back to that now alien world of the familiar.

 How did I get here? I know exactly how I got here, and why. It's a story that started a long time ago...

The country can be a magical place. Countless worlds to explore that often go overlooked by an older, more cynical mind. For a child, however, a lake, a forest, or even an old dirt road can present endless possibilities.

There was once a boy who spent his earlier years in just such a place. He had a huge family, and there were always cousins, aunts, and uncles around who doted on him. He was the baby of the baby. He liked drawing, catching bugs with his grandma, fishing, and even preaching the gospel from the front porch. There was never a lack of things to do that would capture his innocent, creative little mind.

He had a loving father, his grandparents were always there for him, he had friends that he would sometimes play with. He had a mother who didn't want him. She could be loving and protective, but she could also be ignorant and harmful. There was many a time when she would choose her wild lifestyle over the well-being of her only son. Doing drugs and being intimate with people he didn't even really know right in front of him despite the crying and the fear. She would eventually leave him and it was perhaps the best thing she ever did in her life. And his.

Things got better from there. The boy and his father moved in with his grandparents. Things became much better. Dad would work, he would spend the day outside being free and running wild, grandma would sit on the porch shelling peas. Everything seemed to have it's place. Church every Sunday, using his tiny hands to help grandpa carry firewood, walking the backwoods with his uncle to catch crawfish. It was a wonderfully simple life he spent with people he truly loved.

His mother never turned back up. He would see her from time to time at the lake with some of her more upstanding friends, and sometimes she would even act happy to see him. He couldn't understand why she would say "Hi" and then go back to her party. His grandmother was his mother now. His grandparents helped raise him and taught him many valuable things that he would forget over the years.

Part One- In The End...

Bang Bang Bang.

"Are you drunk?"

I was lying on her doorstep. Light started creeping back into my field of vision.

"Huh?"

This was the first time I was to meet her. What an impression I had made. I wasn't drunk. It was heatstroke. I had passed out before I could even knock on her door. She helped me in and gave me Gatorade. This was the first (and certainly not the last) time I'd consumed G2 Grape.

For all my efforts and utter failures over the next year, this relationship would not end well.