One

A Truth and The Truth

It takes exactly two minutes and thirty-two seconds to get from the teacher's room to my car. By the time I come home, I spend, on average, between fifteen and twenty minutes, depending on the traffic. Well, more often than not there was barely any traffic. Jasper, Nevada was probably one of the most boring and desolate places in all of the States and while at times that irked me to no end, more often than not I found the lack of anything to be liberating. It meant that I didn't have to worry about too many things distracting me while going on with my day to day life.

Jasper, Nevada was simple to keep track of. It was something that I did with almost everything that landed in my sights. And, so far, Jasper fell under the label of safe. No. Not safe. Safe. With a capital S. There are very few things in my life that had ever been in that category. For myself, the definition of Safe, begins and ends with the sole fact that it will not hurt me. Right away or in the long run. At least, that used to be the definition up until a year and a half ago when I had to patch my own head cannon of things. The maintenance of my servers took about 9 months and when they went live again Safe had become anything that would not and could not hurt my son.

Jasper is a small town in the middle of nowhere. Well, small by American standards. I've seen settlements as little as barely a single road with a few houses on both sides in the wild depths of northern Scottland. Cosy villas with forests and pastures surrounding them on all sides as far as the eyes could see. I considered moving to Scottland to raise my son there but the weather wasn't exactly ideal for a newborn, not to mention schooling and medical facilities were difficult to accquire. Also it would be too close for comfort. I wanted my personal demons to be out of sight and out of mind. As far away as possible.

To be honest, Jasper wasn't ideal either. Nevada was the driest state in the United States. It is made up of mostly deserts and semiarid regions. In summer the temperatures rise up to fifty-two degrees Celsius and, I kid you not, it was just such a blistering heat that my son was born in. It was a twelve-hour long, complicated birth that I'd rather not go into detail about. Suffice to say, it was both the most terrifying and wonderful day in my life and the doctors managed to patch me up enough to hold my son for a little while before I simply slumped into blissful tired oblivion and came to some three days later to a cheerful pale MILF that oddly reminded me of my best friend MJ, all pale skin, blue eyes and black hair. She was one of the nurses in the hospital.

I remember freaking out at the sight of her, obviously having mistook her for MJ. Oh, God. MJ. She was probably sick with worry about me, but I just couldn't face her right now. Logically, I knew she'd offer me the support I needed. Hell. She'd probably take the first flight from London to Vegas. Well, London-New York-Vegas. She'd help me raise my kid, nice and Safe, and away from the bad things that still haunt me before I go to sleep. It was a tempting idea. Also a dangerous one. Just one phone call away from making this easier. So far, nothing had been easy. Nobody wants a single mother with a newborn baby to work for them. I'd had enough time to think about my options once I got to a sufficiently far away in the middle of nowhere kind of place. I was faced with a little, tight-knit community where new things didn't happen very often and everybody was a tenacious gossiper with the eyes of an eagle and the ears of a fox. Well. Maybe not short, with unruly red beard, an axe and on a probably doomed quest with eight other fools to throw a piece of jewelry into a volcano. I laugh out loud at the mental image. I'd bet it'd be hilarious to have a whole bunch of Tolkien Dwarves as neighbours. They'd probably make far better and loyal neighbours and friends than the ones I currently have (MJ and a few others not withstanding).

But back at the topic at hand. I saw the MILF nurse lady, I freaked out to the point where I couldn't breathe to scream bloody murder. I turned over my breakfast, something had been pulling on my arm so I ripped off the I.V. I thrashed about in terror as the poor MILF nurse lady was trying to calm me down.

Yeah. I think it's pretty easy to tell I don't do well with hospitals. It's an old psychological trauma that has me freak out when I wake up in new, unfamiliar places with people I don't know milling about me. Add to that the nightmares my over-emotional and very hormonal psyche would produce and I had been bound to have some sort of mental break down at some point. See, this is what happens when you ditch your small, four year old child, ONLY child, in a hospital full of people said child doesn't even know (including that new and expensive premium nany). To this day I am terrified of needles and white rooms. Surgical masks send the hairs on the back of my neck on end and I have the urge to punch, bite and kick anything and anyone in proximity. I have a very mean right hook and I have used it in any such occasion. More often than not I over-react but I prefer to be Safe than sorry and it is always exhilirating when your very own knuckle sandwich becomes a weapon of divine retribution for the sake of all those single working mothers out there that may or may not have been harassed. I literally take no chances and assume that the guilty party is ALWAYS the guilty party. Makes for a great way to meet new people, not to mention the stories you'd have to tell your friends over a beer or five. Ah, those were the days.

Before things went ape shit, I had a tolerable life. I had great friends and, despite the fact I was barely in speaking terms with my own parents, I was a cheerful, happy little genius that always looked for the next exciting adventure. To this day, that spark within me had yet to die out, even though just a mere year and a half ago it nearly extinguished. I had- have good friends. People that I'd die for and do anything for them. Right now, however, I had to prove to myself that I was capable to handle this on my own. I had to do this to clear all those nasty little whispers from the umbra of my mind. Sometimes these whispers would take the form of my own inner voice, sometimes it would be a particularly bitter memory triggered by something as stupid as the school bell rigning or a commercial on the TV about this super duper amazing new and whatever else thing that you don't need but YOU HAVE TO HAVE RIGHT NOW.

Well, RIGHT NOW, things are a lot better than they used to be back when I first even concocted this crazy plan that landed me in the middle of nowhere, a place so unlikely to contain the likes of me that not even my ex – Spec Ops grandfather won't be able to find me here. Yet, I was still being as careful as I could be. As far as my neighbours could tell, I had a particularly traumatic break up with my boyfriend the result of which was my little Light of Lights, my baby darling little boy. I am still a little skittish and awkward even when in the best of moods and even casual flirting sets me off into varying depths of depression, self-loathing and the occasional vicious rage fits.

Perhaps some people could describe me as broken. Am I broken? I don't know. What I do know, however, was that Leo brought out the best of me, and then he carelessly ripped out all that leaving me with nothing but all my darkest thoughts and emotions. I've no idea how people figure out their state of brokenness. I know that it still hurts so much that my throat clogs up and I cant breathe and all I want to do is just crawl under my bed or into my closet, hide and wail through a pillow, muffling my voice. I've done that on occasion and while it makes me feel better it does not abate the fear that I will be found one day and then my baby boy will be out of my grasp.

All my life I've felt alone. Not so much lonely as alone. Even MJ, who I consider as close to me as a person could be without being your flesh and blood, and even then some. Well, even MJ couldn't abate that feeling of being alone, surrounded by strangers. She lives in London and I live – lived in Paris and while we did spend a lot of time together, whether visiting each other or via Skype or Viber, it still wasn't enough for me to feel the safety that someone had my back at all times. That insecurity has left me plagued my whole life by an ever growing sense of paranoia. As a result, in order to find some equilibrium to help me sleep at night, I worked relentlessly to catalogue my surroundings, to help myself better understand the rules and regulations behind everything and anything, cause and consequence, action and reaction. It was a fascinating study that continues to this day. I try to make sense of everything, even when sense could hardly be applied to anything.

While I was raised Catholic, I never really found myself connecting to religion. The most horrible part of it all was that this had been entirely my parents' fault. You see, when you are terrified of everything and anything, you quickly learn to look for signs of danger or deception. I know I am repeating myself somewhat but please bear with me. I bet you are all thinking what does this have to do with the Catholic church and my parents.

One of the first lessons I had learned about life was that everybody lies. My parents, for example, had me up really early, nice and clean, well dressed and adorable and off we were to our church and all that on a Sunday. A freaking Sunday! Apparently people went to church on Sunday. Whoda'thunk? Sarcasm aside, it was all nice and pretty and inspiring up until the point I noticed my father staring at his wristwatch and one of my mother's heeled feet bouncing lightly, rapidly, impatiently. Clearly all that piousness was bullcrap but they still insisted me to trudge on, with them, with that bullcrap on my shoulders and smile brightly and proudly at the surrounding pious society.

Religion wasn't bullcrap. In fact, I'd have you know, and I'd never say this out loud, mind you, that I admire people who actually have a genuine faith in God. Any God. I, myself, am too jaded, I think, to find the strenght to believe in something so wonderful and altruistic as the idea that there is a God. I just don't know. I might believe in God. Perhaps I am more inclined to believe that there truly is this greater consciousness out there that makes heads and tails out of the entropy that is living the living life. Perhaps there is a greater meaning to life that is yet to reveal itself to me. Right now the only thing I believe is that for every deed done, there is bound to be some sort of repercussion. Cause and Consequence. Action and Reaction. Sooner or later everything comes to full circle and I am waiting for that full circle to come up and bite me in the ass any day now.

Religion wasn't the bullcrap I was talking about. Bullcrap would be what my parents did. And what made it even more vile and ugly was that I had understood all of this at the tender age of six or so. At first I hadn't really understood what was going on. After all, we had just recently moved from Brooklyn, New York to Paris because my father got promoted. It took a while to learn French. Indeed, it wasn't a long while. After all, I excelled at sponging information and soon enough I had myself frowning distastefully at the preaching holy person up at the front. He was talking about love, peace and unity while just the other I had seen him arguing with this man... ugh. Just thinking about how people could be so stupid and idiotic at times has me all riled up and wanting to punch someone's teeth out. Long story short, people tended to ruin everything not just for themselves but for everybody else as well. And that is why my faith in humanity has always been quite the fragile thing, more often than not having myself lacking any actual faith for prolonged periods of time.

And then things happen and, boy, do they happen! It's the one thing that truly fascinates me about us, human beings. One moment we are at each other's throats, the next somebody is hit by a car and seemingly everyone rushes out help those in need. It's like an instinct, that desire to help the person next to you. Then again, it is also instinct to kill the person next to you. Well, not exactly kill. More like make sure the person next to you doesn't succeed or go above you. Laws of the Jungle and all that Jazz. Human beings are controversial and contradicting and since I am a member of that same species, it is just because of said human nature that I had found myself in this situation. How many people would just ditch everything, good and bad, to start over, to have a slate so clean that they aren't even themselves anymore? To disappear and to embrace this new You that you've concocted that's not really a new You but a better You that you strive to eventually achieve. Well, that is pretty much what I did. I may have wussed out like a little bitch, but even if anyone dared to call me a coward, well, there is only so much ache my heart could've taken.

I should probably share now that I have considered (and swiftly and consequently ruled out) suicide. I was a brilliant person, a genius, a prodigy! And I wasted my talent on meaningless, random things for most of my life because everything else seemed just so boring. It had been done before so why bother? I knew what the results would be and just thinking about how my life would tickle onward, just like everybody else's had be cringing from the boredom of it all. No. I was brilliant and my brilliance was meant for greatness! And I still stand by that statement, even though right now things on that side of my life are currently put on hiatus. I have a child to raise, an absolutely adorable little blond, hazel-eyed cherub. So far he seemed to have taken mostly after me, though he bore his father's lighter complexion and his absolutely stuning light hazel eyes. In the right light they seemed like a pair of twin suns – glowing, golden orbs of precious life and wonder. Just looking at them made my decision seem better and better by the day.

I have done a lot of things in my life. I was an absolute hellion as a child and I thrived on causing grief and mischief for any and all adult in the vicinity. In a way, I was challenging them, trying to show them that I was better or at least good enough to have their respect or at least their attention. As far as those desperate attempts to gain attention went, I've yet to see some good results come from them. Perhaps I am mad? Were it not the definition of crazy that of repeating the same thing and expecting different results? I must be at least a little mad. Or a lot. No sane person would do what I did and perhaps my it was the fact my plan was crazy enough that it worked. At least it is working for now.

Here I am, with a child to raise completely on my own, without any outside help in sight. Jasper has been both harder and easier for me that I believed it would be. For the most part. And here I am, teaching physics to a bunch of wild whelplings that the school staff tries to convice itself that they're children. Some of them show promise with the sciences, so there is that going for me. Right about now my baby boy is waiting for me at a day care center that was on my way to work. I couldn't wait to pick up my wee munchkin and shower him with kisses and cooing.

So, here I am, and not for the first time do I realize how, when you repeat the same lie over and over again, sooner or later it becomes truth. And that in itself was a truth of life.

Here I am, Felicity Dale, single mother, 25, bright young thing, just starting on her teaching career.

On the other hand, however... Here I am, Fiona Johnson, single mother, bright young thing, turning 17 in two weeks.

As these thoughts plague my mind, I take a short detour to pick up my sweetling from the day care center. It takes me about 5 more minutes before I arrive home. I am tired but having my little bundle of joy in my arms makes me genuinely happy.

So there you have it. A truth and the truth.