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Just write what you know, advised Ms Raeside, my beloved sixth grade English teacher who was amazed with my 11th grade reading level. TV was my first drug of choice and a gateway to my second drug, Saint Joseph’s Orange Favored Aspirin For Children. I popped them like M&Ms in the mistaken belief I could achieve invulnerability like The Man of Steel.
Later, in an angry effort to escape unfairness, I picked up a Blue Gem razor blade. By chance, I caught my eyes looking at me from the bathroom mirror. Curiosity got the better angel of me. After all, if I killed myself I’ll never know how the story ends. Will Good win over Evil?
Chapter One: It was a dark and stormy night.
“You know they have mental problems. But can you see what it’s doing to you?” so went a PSA on mental health in America as seen on TV in my childhood. In the kingdom of the mentally blind, I was wide-eyed and scared for my life when my mother’s husband tried to drown me in my bathwater where I pretended to be The Prince of Atlantis, a character from a Marvel comic book called Namor The Submariner. I could hold my breath pass a normal time limit but of course not indefinitely. After thrashing about, I played dead. He ran off with a scream like the spitting image of his son who would, years later, try to kill me out of envy like Cain did Abel. I got up from the waters and hid under my bed where I had read The Diary of Anne Frank.
Later on, I took a deep breath and jumped off a bridge with a view of The East River. I experienced the power of freedom on a freight train as it picked up speed and elevated above the trees. I saw a red sun in the background of an unblemished sky and the silhouette of skyscrapers. I saw the diamond fields of Randall’s Island and Queens. I saw an eagle tangled in string over the iron bars of the bridge the train was crossing over. As the winds made it flap its wings furiously like fighting to escape, I stared at the sun aligning with train tracks as if it were opening an entrance into a new universe. I took one last look before turning to the woods to bring the broken eagle home over my shoulders.
I fixed its wings and took it for a test run down the hills of Saint Mary’s Park, the former estate of a Founding Father who came up with the words We, The People. It caught the wind with a snap and took off over the trees. I let go of the string to see it fly free for a moment in time forever. That day, a child learned the meaning of self-sacrifice. By writing this, I’ve become the willing prisoner of a wish made at P.S 161.
So this is how this story ends.
And the end is a new beginning at the public library, my childhood Fortress of Solitude.
It’s where I’m working on homework to come up with a tour book for my hometown. This should be like turning coal into diamonds. 
Know the past. Find your future.
