It's a strange world we live in. There are so many things that can be explained, yet some many things lacking an explanation. Love, lust, hate, insanity, passion. They're all things that people in the human race ponder. I never believed in any of it. I thought it was all just caused by an over-active imagination. It turns out that triggers other symptoms.

I wish I could ramble on forever about all the random feelings I've felt. It really wouldn't be too horribly long, my ramblings. I've actually never really cared much for anything aside from my studies, so it was kind of a dull world. I normally only felt irritation or fulfillment. I never really fell victim iniquity or ecstasy. I was at a happy middle.

The heavenly rapture only came once and was quite short lived. I wanted it to stay forever. But then I lost it, and I denied it to those I loved in fear of them being hurt by the loss. That, though, is another tale.

This, my friends, is just a small portion of my life. The events happened years ago and still pain me today. I wish I would have published something sooner and gotten my fifteen minutes of fame over with long ago. It might have saved me some of this. But I feel I must write; I must share our account with the world. It's what we both set out to do, so very long ago.

But I'm getting off topic again. My mind tends to wander off at the most sporadic of moments. I wish I could chain it up on some way.

I'm forty-three now. I am, as I have been for some time, single. I am not alone however. I live with my son, who is sixteen- and what a striking young man he makes! I try and shelter him from everything that has come to harm me, but I'm afraid, in its own way, it's destroying him more than anything I've yet to come to know. Slowly I'm realizing that one can't come to know joy without first knowing misery. Perhaps that is why that small period of time in my life was so happy.

I've loved but once, yet it feels as if I've lost a million times. It makes me feel foolish to read all these words flowing off my tongue just like, as he once said, the poetry out of an old book. How I long to hear him say it just once more.

Now I'm beginning to believe I'm giving too much away about the remainder of this tale. I guess it's just some sort of dramatic foreshadowing that you have to really dig into the understand. Or, simply, read on and the answers shall become clear. I don't want to come right out and say what'll happen in the ending, but just give you some hints. For all you, I could be full-out lying to you and bull-shitting all this sappy stuff. Only reading on will tell.

Oh? I've caught your attention now, have I? Or haven't I? If I haven't, then why, for Heaven's sake, are you still reading? I don't want you to waste your time and then go off ranting to your friends about what a crazy lunatic you believe me to be. You don't even know me. As they say, don't judge a book by it's cover, or, in the this case, it's prologue.

Well, I believe I've gone on long enough. It's time for you now to venture about sixteen and a half years in the past. There, you will become the witness to a very personal story. My story. Our story.