AidanDennis.com

5/22/06

"Hello?"

And I say

So you called

So what

I called a billion,

million,

trillion

Times

And you didn’t stop to care (until now) about me

And then there was the time that your roommate thought that I was Melinda

What was so important that you could not even call back to say ‘Give me some time’

Perhaps the army was good for you

You seemed to like me enough during the summer

But maybe sitting on the dock staring at the stars holding hands long embraces cool hand on the back of my neck quick nip at my ear gentle eyes smiling face laughing body I love you

Is not enough

"Hi"

4/9/06

The Story of Fox: Letter Four

The name Dolores means "sorrows." In a way, it is really ironic that she named me that. My life has been full of so many troubling things that people might feel sorry for me. I think that they might even say I have some right to feel sorry for myself. But I am not going to do that. I realize that what’s done is done and however hard you try, you cannot change the past. I think that the reason my mother hated the name Dolores so much was because my grandmother, her mother, was named Dolores as well. My mother and my grandmother never got along well. Grandma expected great things from my mother. My mother was smart, bright, and gifted in high school and that first year of college. Everyone thought that she would become a doctor, a lawyer, or an accountant, that she would get a high-paying job, marry, and raise a family that would succeed just like she did. But things don’t always work out the way that you plan. My mother started to go to a lot of college parties her sophomore year. She started drinking heavily at night and then would skip class in the morning because she would feel so lousy. Then, she fell in with a boy who thought that he was such a hotshot. He was my father. My mother became pregnant with me the beginning of her junior year. She and my father dropped out of college and planned to marry so that they could be a family. He had a job at a locksmith’s and my mom was working at a diner. Needless to say, my grandmother was furious. She did not know that my mother had been slacking in school. Once she found out that my mother had stopped attending college, she demanded that she return and finish her education, even if she just got a degree at the lowest level. She could always go back and finish completing her higher education later, once I had time to grow up a bit. My grandmother even offered to take care of me after I was born so that my mother could still live on campus and then once she graduated, I could become her daughter again. My mother did not listen. She felt that she was going to live a fine life with her boyfriend and that she did not need help from anyone else, least of all her mother. After all, Grandma was just a housewife all her life. What could be so bad about a life devoted to family? However, what my mother lacked, and my grandmother had, was a husband who held a well-paying job in order to support a growing family. And when Grandma was growing up, women rarely had a job of their own. They were wives and mothers because that was all that they could be. My mother refused to see this. Another fact that she refused to see was that my father was cheating on her. He often came home smelling of other women and alcohol, with lipstick smeared on his face and neck. Then, my father was accused of raping a woman. At this point, my mother realized that there was nothing for her with him, and she returned home to my grandmother with me in tow. Once again, Grandma was furious. She did not want to help my mother anymore. In her eyes, my mother had ruined her life. Grandma filed for permanent custody of me, saying that my mother was too mentally unstable to care for me. She was denied because the judge believed in keeping children with their parents unless it was absolutely necessary to remove them. My grandmother then kicked my mother and I out. And thus began my life away from my mother. My mother went to her sister and asked her if she would care for me. She said yes. From that day forward, my family played the game "Musical Chairs with Dolores." I was constantly passed around and swapped. One particular exchange that I remember occurred when I was seven. I had been living with my uncle Steve, my mother’s brother, and his wife Catherine. Catherine hated children and especially hated me because I was the daughter of her husband’s mess-up sister. She arranged to have me live with her cousins, my family only by marriage. They dropped me off at my new home and returned to their house with a set of china and a fridge. I had been traded for plates and an appliance. I felt worthless. And so it continued, until my mother finally got her act together and took me back. To this day, I still am not certain if my mother ever meant it when she told me that I was a mistake. But I am equally not certain that she meant it when she told me that she love me, either.

12/18/05

11/20/05

People can be so stupid sometimes. I can be so stupid sometimes. Stupidity was what put me on the streets, not the fact that I didn’t have a man, like Sylvvia said. My mother died when I was fifteen. She was an alcoholic and abusive. She always told me that having me was a mistake, that I was a mistake. She said that my daddy was in jail for raping a woman, and I am pretty darn sure that she didn’t make that up. She always tried to pass me on to relatives so that she could go live her life. Every year, I would move to a new relative’s house. Sometimes they would be aunts and uncles, other times they would be distant cousins. I think that my mother was related to every person in the state of Alabama somehow. I was a handful as a child, but then again, given the circumstances of my life, can you really blame me? Growing up thinking that your very existence was a mistake can leave a kid broken inside. And I was broken for a long time. Sixteen years of my life I was broken. I acted up in school. All my teachers said that I had the potential to be a great student; that I learned quickly. All I had to do was apply myself and I would go far. But I thought that since I was a mistake, why bother making a name for myself, mistakes don’t go anywhere important. When I was ten, my mother was placed in rehab for her problems with alcohol. She was in there for a year and when she came out, it was like she had had a soul transplant for a while. She got a job and rented an apartment. I went and lived with her and got settled into a school. For two years, she did really well. She stayed away from all alcohol like she was supposed to and she didn’t yell at me anymore. She told me that she loved me and that all those times she had called me a mistake she had been mad at herself for letting her life get that way. I started doing better in school. Pretty soon, I was at the top of my class and I had friends for the first time in my life. Life was looking good for us. We were happy. Then my mother met this man. He was an alcoholic too, except rehab hadn’t worked for him like it had for my mom. They started dating and going out at night. He got her drinking again, and I hated him for that. I felt as if he ruined our life. Pretty soon, my mom was fired from work for missing because of her hangovers and spending all our money we had saved on booze again. I lost all my friends in school because I was taking my anger out on them that I was feeling towards my mother and her boyfriend. Then, when I was fifteen, she ran away to Vegas with him and got married. It was that night that she died. After the "wedding" they went out and got drunk, as usual. Driving home to tell me the news, I assume, my mom ran the car off the side of the road and killed herself and her new husband. Served him right, wrecking the life that my mother and I had. I try to remember her in the good ways. Sometimes it is just so hard though. For so much of my life, she wasn’t there. Just a postcard from a different part of the country saying how glad she was that she wasn’t with me. She always called me by the name that she had given me, a name that she hated so much, she gave it to something that she hated at the time. My name was Dolores.

8/08/05

I stole a loaf of bread and a jar of chunky peanut butter today, just for the heck of it and to see if I still had the skills. On the way home, I walked past the shelter and saw all the people handing out the sack lunches that were made by school kids trying to get some service hours in before they are released from school for the summer. The shelter reminds me of Sylvvia. Since it was the first place I met her and where we hung out most of the time, I really got emotionally attached to the place. She was the one who made it what it is today. The way that she reached out to people like me, her smile and kind heart, made the shelter seem like a place that I could live in forever. But of course, I had to get a job and then when I made enough money to support myself, I had to move out and start living my life like a normal person who has never been homeless. Except the fact of the matter is that I have been homeless and I will never forget that period of my life, nor will I forget Sylvvia. I love the apartment that I live in now. It is great and I can call it my own. I painted all the walls the color of the sky, to remind me that for the longest time, the sky was the limit to my home. Some nights, I take my bedding out onto the little grated porch that I have off my kitchen. It overlooks Millwood Park, where I spent countless nights sleeping on park benches. I chose this apartment for that very reason, the view of the park. I lie out there on the cramped space, feel the iron on my back, stare at the stars and the moon, and remember the laughs and smiles Sylvvia and I shared. I was still called Fox then. Come to think of it, I never told her my other name. She never asked, and I guess I never felt the need to tell. It was probably better that way. She accepted me the way that I was, and I accepted her. I think that she almost needed me accepting her more than I needed her accepting me, and I was the homeless one. Her mission was to do the most good in the world that she could possibly do. And for a while, it seemed that she might actually succeed. She did so much good in one year alone that they renamed that shelter after her. Now she never goes there anymore, and I figure that one day she will end up on the streets just like me because of the way that her life is going. She has the mindset now that to live a happy and successful life, you need to have a man. I tried to tell her to take a look at my life and I don’t have a man. Then she just came back with the reply that the reason that I was on the street in the first place was because I didn’t have a man. I let it go after that, because talking about the real reason that I was on the streets was too painful then. I never told Sylvvia this either, but I will write it here, the story of how I was forced to live on the streets for a whole year of my life.

7/20/05

The Story of Fox: Letter One

Sitting under the noonday sun, I am thinking back to the experiences that I have had over my lifetime, all seventeen years of it. Everything has changed and I seem to be the only one who is showing that they are affected. Amber and Scott act as if they were always as close as they have grown, and Sylvvia continues to become more distant and cold. I worry about her and wonder what thoughts run through her head. Why is she wasting her time, thinking that her life will never get anywhere? She is the most creative person that I have ever known and she uses all her energy on finding men that use her, abuse her, take all her money, and then leave her. It infuriates me that she does not see the pattern that her life is in. And now I sound like my mother. She always used the word infuriate. I vowed once that I would never use that word because she used it, but now I find myself using it all the time. Could it be that I miss her? But who in their right mind would miss a person who passed them on from relative to relative until they were 10, kept them for 5 years, and then got herself killed in a car crash because she was driving drunk? I guess that person would have to be me, and since I fit the description then I suppose that I am not in my right mind. If you must know, I am writing all of this rambling in an orange and green floral notebook. Orange and green are my absolute favorite colors. The notebook I stole from a grocery store because I had to have it and I didn’t have any money to pay for it. I am sure that if I asked, Scott would have given me money, but that was back when he paid attention to me, before I introduced him to Amber and she stole him from me. But I will get to that later. You are probably wondering what my name is and I suppose that I can write it here since I will never ever let anyone read this. My name is Fox, at least, that is what I am called now. They call me Fox because of my pointy ears and my sly ways. I can steal just about anything and all of the brilliant plans that are put into motion come from me. Maybe later I will tell you the name that people used to call me, but for now think of me as Fox.

6/28/05

 The Thief

The first time I ever saw them together, the younger one was crying, her blonde, wispy hair whipping in the wind as if it were on a leash, gaining ground then quickly loosing it to fly back in her face. The older one paid no attention to her, so intent was she on the sand castle that she was constructing, well out of the way of my destructive fingers. When it became obvious that her older sister was not going to rescue the tiny red boat that I had stolen for my own, she hiccupped several times, wiped her gritty hands across her eyes, and sat down dejectedly. She stayed in that very position until her mother called her and her sister in for supper. Time passed before I saw them again, although I cannot quite recall exactly how much time. To me, time moves so slowly that I hardly bother to keep track of it anymore. They had grown bigger, of that much I was certain. It was on this encounter that I began to feel the longings that suddenly rise up from my depths, the longings to caress a human and make them my own, to posses them and never let them go. I knew then that I would have those girls. It did not take them long to come to me. I appeared warm and inviting, the sun reflecting off the brilliant blue of my skin and making them squint. The elder came first, running recklessly towards me, her auburn hair streaming behind her in her joy to surround herself in me. The younger came less quickly but still as excited. I allowed them to frolic and splash and enjoy themselves, then, when I could hardly bear it any longer; I lured them out farther from shore and then farther still. A huge wave swamped them, the product of my nervous energy and anticipation at having them for myself. Grabbing their skinny, suntanned legs, I pulled them down with me, diving deeper and deeper until their thrashings ceased and I could hold them without a fight. Gently I rocked them, back and forth, back and forth, watching in amazement and joy as their hair caught the sunlight and became dancers, one in red, the other yellow. The lips of the younger were slightly parted, as if about to speak, but I knew that she would utter no words again, and the thought of their silence alongside mine made me shiver and shake. I swamped the beach, carrying a great handful of sand with me. In the distance, I heard the voice of their mother calling them to come in, there was a storm fast approaching. When they did not arrive quickly as before, she called again, tension making her voice louder and higher than before. I kept a close and tight grip on my treasures, my newly stolen gifts. Finally, their mother sent the father out to look for them, thinking that they had ventured down the beach out of hearing of their mother’s voice. A scolding would await them when they arrived home. Their father found nothing, not even their footprints in the sand, since I had swiped those away in arrogant ownership of all that was theirs. He called desperately their names and the sound of his voice carrying worry and grief made my stomach churn. Suddenly, I had no control of myself. From the depths where I had hid them, a great heaving shudder dislodged the girls and their bodies floated to just under the surface of my translucent skin. Great sobs swept the girls closer and closer to shore and their father standing there, searching in vain for his daughters. His eye caught on the brightly patterned fabric of a swimming suit and slowly recognition crawled across his face. A sound unlike any I have ever heard in all of my existence ripped from his throat, high, mournful, and strong, as if hoping that it could give him back what I had stolen. I had taken what I desired. I had held his girls in my grasp; they would forever be mine now. The life that had ebbed from them was now a part of the great power that was me. I cannot say that I will never steal a human again, for without the life they give me, I would cease to exist. I am nature’s fury, humans’ friend and foe. I am the world’s greatest thief.

4/22/05

As I sit here in my lonely desolation,

Pondering what life could have been like,

Which road I should have taken,

Which song I should have sung,

I see a sparrow flutter, fluttering, flutter

Towards my windowpane.

A pane covered in grime and dirt,

But somehow manages to still let in the Light.

The sparrow sits and cocks his head, as pretty as can be,

And suddenly I realize that windowpane’s like me!

Although dirty and imperfect, I can still let in the Light.

And to this day, I let the Light of Jesus shine.

2/25/05

Our Greatest Fear

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate,

but that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.

We ask ourselves: Who am I to be brilliant, 

gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking

so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are born to make manifest the glory of God within us.

It is not just in some; it is in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,

we consciously give other people permission to do the same.

"As we are liberated from our fear,

our presence automatically liberates others."

Nelson Mandela (Inaugural Address)

2/15/05

Reflection on Oneself

Standing before me is a girl. This girl, whose life is full of turmoil and strife, sufferings and hardship, hatred and deceit, is becoming a woman. Through this transformation, she will find happiness and joy, love and generosity, hope and courage. However, the most important thing that this girl will find is Life, Life in the Father and Life in the Son and Life in the Holy Spirit. Full of strength, she will continue on her journey to freedom; freedom from the oppressive bonds that pull her down and suck her into the whirlpool of chaos that is her life at present.

This girl, innocent and naVve as she is, controls her own destiny. What lies cupped in those pale hands with the slender fingers are the seeds to a new beginning. This beginning will never be reached if she does not realize her potential. The gifts she possesses have the radiance to banish all darkness from her life. The darkness that seems to cling to her very soul, to suck all hope of this new beginning out from her frail and taxed body, would be cast out the moment she opens her deep blue eyes and looks around her at the gifts lying dormant at her sides. Gifts so much like seeds waiting for the sun, waiting for the Light, waiting for the Life that only she can provide.

This spectacular young girl, having realized that the only one to raise her from the depths of the ocean floor would be herself, gathers the mantle of grace and peace about her slender frame and rises to the Life that awaits her. Casting no backwards glances, the Power that created all Power engulfs her. She is home at last.

1/23/05

Here is a silly little story that I wrote for a friend of mine named Alex. He was silly enough to ask me for a story, so I gave him what he wanted. Needless to say, he was a bit shocked at the shortness of it, but who knows, maybe someday I will write more on it. For now, enjoy what is written.

His name was Xela.

Xela had many wonderful things because he ruled a vast kingdom.

Nevertheless, he wasn't happy.

What Xela wanted more than anything in the world was a friend.

He searched high, and he searched low, but no friends were to be found.

Therefore, Xela put up an award.

This award would go to the person who could bring him a true friend.

If they succeeded, they would get half of Xela's kingdom and a permanent supply of skittles.

If they failed, they would receive eternal banishment from Halo 2 and all other games like it.

Many tried and failed.

Carrots and goats did not seem like true friends to Xela.

Then, on a misty and damp day, a fair maiden arrived in the kingdom ruled by Xela.

She brought with her a tale.

This tale was told to a kindly baker who offered the maiden a loaf of bread.

It goes as follows:

Once upon a time, in the land of Nod, there lived a Sea king and his daughter.

The king desperately loved his daughter, but she would not return his love.

Instead, she loved a MORTAL!

The daughter eventually ran off with the mortal and in turn had a daughter.

This daughter was the most beautiful child you have ever beheld.

Tragically, her parents were killed in a fit of revenge by the Sea king, leaving her a desolate orphan.

This young girl has traveled the world, searching for a kindly soul to take pity on her.

That was the tale the maiden told the baker.

The baker had an idea.

He took this poor girl to see Xela.

As she told her tale to the boy, he was captivated by her sweet nature and vast beauty.

Xela was determined to make her his true friend.

He gave the baker the award of skittles and half his kingdom.

As for the girl, he offered her anything her heart desired.

And do you know what her answer was?

A friend.

Xela and the maiden became fast friends.

And the kingdom prospered and everyone was happy.

1/4/05

11/23/04

11/07/04

10/23/04