i can't go on, part 1

by nick nelson

part one of two

i can’t go on. i can’t take it any more. it’s too much for me. i can’t go on living a lie - pretending to be something i am not. maybe if i tell you my story you will understand. i am not who you think i am. i never was. sometimes i wonder, is anybody really who you think they are? you see somebody walking down the street, they look like they don’t have a care in the world, nobody is biting them on the leg or hitting them on the head with with a baseball bat or a two by four, and they are not biting anybody on the leg or hitting anybody on the head with a baseball bat themselves. but deep down inside they might be wrestling with a thousand demons, like jonah in the whale. anyway, if i tell you my story, maybe you will have a better idea of where i am coming from. from day one, when i was born, i was not who people thought i was. my dad was somebody you never heard of, but he was the most famous and powerful person in the world. i wouldn’t say he exactly ruled the world because he had a couple of buddies that ruled it with him, they were a trio or what they call a triumvirate, if you are familiar with that word. you could look it up in the dictionary, it’s in there. you have never heard of my mom either, even though she was the most beautiful woman in the world and a big movie star. the trouble all started when i was born. my mom wanted frank, my father, to make a will leaving me his share of the business. but al and dave, they were the other two guys in the triumvirate, they were not too happy with the idea, and frank, my dad, who was an easy guy to get along with except when he got really mad, told them, guys, don’t worry about it, we will just take it one day at a time, which is what he always said. but shortly after i was born it became quickly apparent that i was some kind of natural born genius that was born to rule the world singlehanded if nothing got in my way. seeing this, al and dave got scared. especially al. al had a kid, teddy, that he had high hopes for. teddy was just kind of a lump, with not much energy , and he played video games all day. not the kind of person to grow up to rule the world, like me. so al and dave put their heads together and started scheming up ways to head me off at the pass as it were even though i was still just a little kid. peggy, my mom, tried to warn frank when she heard from al’s and dave’s wives what they were up to, but he just laughed it off and said we will just take it one day at a time, which is what he always said. peggy decided to take the bull by the horns and take matters into her own hands, so one night she drove her and me down to the train station in her silver and black rolls royce. we got on the train and rode through the night to a little town where she figured al and dave would never find me and left me with an old couple, roger and millie, who owned a candy store on main street in million miles from nowhere u s a. when peggy was leaving she told me to behave myself, and then , just as she was almost out the door, she peeled a couple of 10,000 bills off the roll she always carried and gave them to roger, and said, just make sure he doesn’t grow up to be a sissy. frank was not too happy when he found out what peggy had done and he started neglecting her and took up with a gold digging floozy named lily and even being seen around town with her. peggy fell into a deep depression and her career suffered and she could only get parts in biker movies and she ended up shooting heroin under a bridge with the bums. as for al and dave, they were not satisfied that i was gone, not by a long shot, and they still had a few bullets up their sleeve. they went to see the gypsy, and they paid the gypsy a hefty sum to put a curse on me. i started living the life of an all-american boy with roger and millie and playing baseball and going fishing in the old creek, little suspecting what destiny had in store for me. i just knew that i was special, the child of fate. then the gypsy’s curse kicked in. i started having nightmares. part 2