Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 17:52:08 -0400
From: Diena Taylor <jupiter2@ma.ultranet.com>
Subject: "The Park"
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Disclaimer: Lucas isn't mine. I'm just borrowing his point of view for five
minutes or so, and then I'll give it back.

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"The Park"


I went to a park last week when I was on shore leave. I hadn't been to a
park since I was seventeen, but that one didn't really count. It wasn't
really a park, and we weren't there for fun.

I sat on the grass and took in the sun's warm rays for a while - God I miss
the sun. Artificial lighting on a submarine is no substitute, no matter how
"realistic" they may market it as.

There were children in the park that day, playing catch, and laughing, and
being children. How I wanted - still want - to be one of them; carefree and
happy, no worries. I'm laughing now, picturing _me_ with no worries. But I
still want to be a child, with a warm and loving family to come home to
after school. I never had that, even when I was a child. I was never
_allowed_ to be a child, and there was never a warm and loving family to
come home to. There was just fighting and yelling. And college. There was
always college. I'm just glad Stanford was in California and I didn't have
to put up with my parents' fighting all the time - only when I came back for
vacations.

I watched these children with a growing pain in the pit of my stomach,
because it was then I realized that I could never ever have those years
back. Not the ten years I was on Hyperion, and not the countless years I
spent in school when I should've been acting like a child, not an adult. I
suppose I'm making up for it now, wanting to live on the wild side, thinking
I'm invincible, that nothing can hurt me. Or maybe that's because I'm still
mentally a teenager. Either way, I've lost so many years and now I'm in the
Navy and I'm going to lose even more.

The children started playing "war", with some of them playing as the UEO and
some as Macronisians. Their innocence about what they were playing simply
added to the impact I felt. These children would, undoubtably, be a part of
the real war someday. 

As I write these words I wonder why I'm even doing so. Is it because the
pain I'm feeling is so strong that I need to do _something_ before I go
insane? Or is it because I want someone to find out how I feel? Either way,
the words are written and that's another thirty minutes of my life down the
drain.

~Lucas




Copyright 1998, by S. Angelo



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What does everyone think?


Diena :)


********************
"This is one of those character builders my friend. You hold on tight, take
the whipping, and you come out stronger on the other side."
	--Ben (he really understands the basis for ELFing)

"Everything works out in some way."
	--Dagwood

"To me, 'more than happy' sounds like a serious mental condition. 'We had to
put Dave in the mental home. He was... more than happy.' "
	--George Carlin
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http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Labyrinth/3589/
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