Sunday, October 23, 2022

Thanksgiving Nov. 22, 2012

  


Dickens said it best when he said it was the best of times and the worst of times.

This being the 40th anniversary of the worst and most painful year of my life, until now.

Although comparing this year to that year doesn’t quite work either, I was young and foolish then, just back from three years on the run from the police, a confused boy with almost no notion of where I was going only where I had been.

I saw my wife take off with my daughter who I’d not see again (except for one night) for another decade.

Forty years later, I should have been wiser, but I’m not.

I never felt so lost as I did then, the chill of Thanksgiving coming upon me with the threat of winter, dead leaves still clinging to the trees. I always loved autumn, yet always felt its sting when the last of the leaves fell, before the snow, bare limbs exposed.

I thought I would never feel so lost again as I did then. This year came close, and I’m grateful finally to see the year end.

I ache inside the way I did back then, knowing as the end of the year approaches, as the empty holidays come and go, nothing has been resolved.

I’m full of secrets I dare not tell anybody about, while at the same time, for all I know I really know nothing, what actually transpired over the last year, whether it was intentional or accidental, whether or not I’ve been run over by somebody else’s agenda, or I have run over myself.

Even the people I thought I could trust, I’m doubtful about, such as the Small Man and his crew, and even people in my own office.

I’m not sure about her either, whether she is a shark swimming with sharks, or a guppy pretending to be a shark. I have less doubts around the gang of thieves around her, the twisted greedy little people who have carved a place on their own in the Virgin Mayor’s camp, but willing to betray him the moment he ceases to provide them with cover for their greed.

This is the time of year when we’re supposed to express what we’re thankful for, and the best I can come up with is that I survived.

Maybe that’ll have to be good enough.


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