Millionaire Man (Part One)

This is the first chapter of my new story "Millionaire Man"

Millionaire Man-Part One

I can’t remember the last time I felt my hands. They numb from time to time, but the feeling is really what I miss. I miss the touch of someone holding it. I miss the human energy that keeps our hearts beating. The last time that I wrote something about my life it was years ago, as a young fourteen year old boy.

The last time I left a smile on my mothers face was around that time. At that time my mother loved me the same way I loved her. Her warm embrace was like a spring morning, wishing the cold away. When she would walk into the other room I knew that her love wasn’t far. When we laughed, we laughed like it was the last time we would be able to. I still to this day look at her like she would never change how she felt about me.

But I can’t lie to you journal, for you are my window of honestly. I can talk to you about anything, including what helped me become a man. I am broke in my mind, and unhealthy in the way I’m running my life. I have spent most of it, looking at only myself and promising that the decisions I made in my life were right. But tonight, it’s going to be different for me. I want to tell you journal the real story of how I became rich. Maybe my conscience will clear the last guilty breath’s I have…

I didn’t know who I was at 11 years old. Most people don’t know who they are, but I especially had no idea what I wanted to do. My mind was full of words I struck on paper, expressing my emotion through writing. Without it, I didn’t know how to express who I was.

I loved my mother, who spent every last dime on me to survive. My Father left shortly after my twelfth birthday, so I never really knew a lot about him. All I know was that he was scared to have a child in fear of destroying his music career, so he left my mother and me and went on to pursue his dream. My mother always said that it was better off he go anyway if he wasn’t going to put everything into me. So money was always a problem for our home.

When I was fourteen years old my mother had issues with the IRS and lost the home my father left for her. She was always bitter about it, but never bitter to me. I can still remember her words when she walked into the apartment we were forced to live in.

“This one bedroom is our blessing,” she said in hopeful sadness, her word only coming out in a rusty calm tone. The old worn down apartment smelled of mold and mildew, and the light shined into the dusty living room. The home was furnished with relic furniture from the 1950’s and the refrigerator made an old humming noise. It seemed it was on its last leg. The creaky door opened to the only bathroom in the house. The toilet hadn’t been flushed for weeks and the shower curtain was brown and overused. I stared into the broken dirty mirror and frowned with resentment.

“How is THIS blessing me,” I lamented. My mother walked into the bedroom in slight surprise then at me and smiled weakly. “I guess you are going to have to figure that one out.” As the words came out of her mouth, her resolve became stronger with her words.

“Sometimes having nothing is more important than losing your dignity.”

My mother kissed me, and then walked out of the room. Her calm demeanor wasn’t the only thing that stunk about the apartment. I wanted to see my mother angry at my father for what he was doing to make me suffer, not look dignified at the smell of moist liner of the shower curtain.

Little did I know that my mother’s words would ring later into my life. For it was a silent surrender to my life to come.

At Fifteen years old, I was far too old for my age. I felt I would take the leader position in the family since my father unjustly gave it up. My mother still stayed as focused on making me feel like I was still her baby boy through her words.

My mother’s compassion was still prevalent, but her color had faded, like an old lighthouse in the black of night. I worried about her a lot of the time, but so much was going on in my head I really didn’t know how to help. Although I my teenage life was just beginning, I left a lot of my childhood behind too soon.