The Ugly Face of Violence: The Journey from Hell Retrospective

This song always brings me back to all the folks I've known who didn't hop off that ol' Junk Train in time. I remember spending this one night in May picking gravel out of my head and broken glass out of my hand. A very good friend of had decided to attack me after going on a two-day Angel Dust, cocaine, heroin, Jack Daniels, and Painkiller bender. I hit him twice square in the jaw and once in the gut, pulling my punches to not hurt him. And then I realized that he had that murder look in his eyes, pharmacueticals coarsing through his veins and completely oblivious to pain. I ended up having to beat one of my best friends to a bloody, unconscious pulp to keep him from running a knife through his ex-girlfriend's new lover.

Sometimes, I have to remind yself of how far I've come to remind myself of where I want to be someday.

I had a realization last week that I've essentially become what Coloradoans refer to as a "Granola Head." My freezer is full of fair-trade coffee and Morningstar Farms vegetarian burgers and "chick'n" patties. My fridge is full of soymilk, Newman's Own products, Gator-Aid, and Iced Tea. I had a Luna Bar for breakfast. I've got some insense burning next to some Virgin of Guadalupe scented candles. I'm debating what to take to a colleague's barbeque this afternoon.

I rarely stop to think about how lucky I've been to make it in this world, or how truely blessed in life. Its so funny to think I was once considered the leading candidate for an state-provided orange jumpsuit by several teachers and considered most likely to be dead by 21 by my peers. The first girl I ever kissed-kissed (at 15) ended up going to prison for her involvement in a double murder and has since commited suicide.

I remember having to keep friends from choking on their own tongues when they'd OD. I remember stepping in front of a Glock 10mm at this party in Midlothian, Virginia, to keep a girl's boyfriend from shooting one of my boys in the face. I look at my hands and realize that the arthritis I'm developing in my 27-year-old hands is nothing compared to the damage those hands have done to earn that karma.

And now I eat Luna Bars for breakfast and research information poverty. Life can be such a twisted, ironic bastard...

Back when I was 17, beating the living crap out of a friend of mine to keep him from doing something stupid, I remember looking at myself in a bathroom mirror afterwards and feeling nothing but weakness and hopelessness. I remember pouring peroxide onto the teethmarks on my shoulder and washing my head down with rubbing alcohol. I remember the stench of the shit-filled broken toilet next to me, the smell of the grasstains and black earth ground into my clothes.

I remember looking into that damned, graffitti-covered steel looking glass into my own blood-red savagery. I remember feeling the loss of my humanity as I scrubbed my friend's dry, blackened blood off my face, chest and hands, naked and cold against a backgrop of naked, cold tile. I couldn't close my right hand very well; I had a pretty good gash above my left eye. I remember scrubbing so hard my skin was almost raw - worried that my grandmother and sister would see my shame. I worried that the Admissions Offices at Virginia Tech, Northern Colorado, and Colorado School of Mines (all three accepted me and were waiting on my final decision) would get a call from a probation officer saying that my ass would belong to the Commonwealth of Virginia for 1-3 years.

A 1390 on my SAT, a 3.0 GPA, and afew weeks from graduation. I outweighed my friend by about 50 lbs. Imagine a 145-lb Welterweight stepping into a boxing ring against a 190-lb cruiserweight. My biceps were larger in diameter than my opponent's legs. If I hadn't pulled my punches or controlled my temper, I would have possibly permanently injured another human being. I could've earned my oft-predicted orange Department of Corrections outfit with one wrong blow to a temple or one misplaced knee to the throat or spine.

That face that stared back at me that night, that face is etched in my memory forever. And I don't ever want to forget how pathetic and weak I looked. My brutality ripped out a piece of my heart and left it smeared all over a gas station bathroom. My friend's quest for revenge over something as silly as a high school relationship turned him into a lustful demon consumed by the reflection from his own blood-red reflection. Violence, in the end, only brings about pain. It is not a lifestyle, it is not a purpose, and it is never the ultimate answer to anything.

Now I'm a librarian pushing thirty, a decade removed from that night in Buckingham County, Virginia, a decade's worth of growth and settling into this whole Middle Class thing. I live on a street with happy children who fill the air with the sounds of innocence. I'm worried about the world they'll grow up in.

I'm content with myself. I've rejected that long-held illusion that I'm somehow the same scared kid I was back then or that my entire existence will be judged on that one moment in time.

I can afford to be an optimist. And I can afford to drink my fair-trade coffee and eat my meatless patties on whole-wheat buns.

Blessed be the peacemakers, after all. Even those who only make peace with themselves.