I wasn’t always here. I remember a time when I was younger and I lived by a river and there was lots of sun.
I was barefoot then, in the grass.
It was a golden time, where I felt satisfied. It was when I could no longer satisfy myself without hurting people that things went curvy.
How old was I when I first laid eyes on Peggy Sue? How old was she? She was closer to my age, I think. Because they would have made a fuss if she wasn’t.
The two of them together, Peggy and Brad. I was enraged. I punched a hole in Brad’s face and roared and walked away. That night they came and took me to jail and charged me with his murder.
I got a good lawyer and my sentence was cut to two months. Luckily, I barely did a week of that. Somehow I had managed to control my temper.
The real story behind that was that the county didn’t want to waste space on people like me. They said my history wasn’t violent enough to spend tax dollars on.
I guess they’d change their minds about that now.
When I was barefoot, I had my sister. We did everything together. I didn’t play football. I wasn’t good in school. All I had was her.
I barely knew where I came from and had no idea where I was going. I was certain about one thing. Teresa. She was my present. She defined me. I know now that she is probably considered quite ordinary. But for me she was a goddess.
For as early as I could remember, she was dragging me to where I had to go. We always seemed to go to the same school. I think I was five when I remember her taking me to kindergarten. She smiled and pulled me by the hand. She used to say, “Come on Taylor, we’re gonna have a fun day” and I believed her with my whole heart. The moment she was gone, however, I always became sour. I didn’t want to be there. I never did. But I did it all because of Teresa. If she had told me to jump off a bridge, I would have done it. Not only did she make me happy, I wanted to make her happy too. Sometimes I would go too far to please her, stealing and whatnot and she would get very angry. I couldn’t live with myself until I fixed my mistake and she was happy again. It worked well like this for years. But I was increasingly unable to fix my mistakes.
Teresa became unhappy and she yelled at me a lot. I always thought it was because of me. But I now know that it was mostly her own doing. In that way, she was just like me. She couldn’t help but be herself. And no matter how much I love her, it doesn’t change the fact that she did it to herself. She drank too much and overdosed on whatever she was taking along with that.
Her heart stopped right in front of me. It was only two weeks after I got back from jail that she died. I was there when she passed. I felt her last breaths on my face and the last pulsing of blood from her heart underneath my fingertips.
I lost myself after that. I knew I couldn’t stay in North Oaks anymore. What with Peggy and my record. Sticking around would have been a life sentence.
So I moved. And I moved often.