I met someone that made an impression on me a few days ago. I met him through chicken stew. Yeah, I'm serious. STEW. I'm not even going to go into that part of the story.. Just know he was stirring a massive pot of chicken stew in a fire department when I first saw him. Let's call him Matt.
Matt is 17 years old, but he has the gravelly voice of a man, and the face of a tired pre-teen. He was tossed onto my path throughout my entire Saturday, and somehow I learned a vast amount of personal information about him in a few hours.
In his red pickup truck, listening to some outdated Christian contemporary tunes, he told me the story about waking up for his first day of school in the ninth grade, and being in the back of a car, covered in piss and vodka.
Reminding himself not to speed, even on the abandoned country road, he explained that he had to be careful when driving. When he was also fourteen he had stolen his grandmothers car, high as goshdang kite and intoxicated, causing him to wrap it around a tree. His grandmother couldn't press charges though. Because then he would tell everyone about where he got his weed. If you get my drift.
In rehab, at FOURTEEN, he barely did school. He sat and lost himself in withdrawals all day long.
His mom has disappeared with his baby sister that he has never met. She taught him how to pop the pill before she left though. A lesson he forked over his youth for.
He told me more, and more, and more. Sometimes he laughed, he never lost his composure. He saw it all in his mind and said to me, "I did it to myself."
He is graduating from high school early now. Clean. Forgiven. But when I look at him from an unobserved place, I see wells of ashy residue that the narcotics painted him with.
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