When I was younger I felt miserable. What does a child know of misery, many say. Especially a child who, rather than a few close to home deaths has never known tragedy.  I was not abused, my home life was not full of discontent and I was not exposed to recklessness. Still, something kept me from being the happy go lucky child that most seemed. It ate at me night and day and yet at the same time how was I supposed to know these feelings weren't normal. Maybe there was a secret to turn it off that I did not yet acquire.

At a very young age I feared death so much that I rarely left the house. I feared for my own death but more so the death of those I love. Captured by fear I would pray nightly that got take me first, so that I would never have to feel this horrible empty pain that I had at its most powerful moment. Still at this  point in my life I had not been through a "tragedy". Most said that I was simply a sensitive child, that I would grow out of it.

Teen angst, that is what they called the next phase. Whatever it was called I had a lot of it. Mostly I got through the day's hearing how I was overreacting and that I would get through this teenage hormonal change. I was so busy listening to other people tell me how little of a deal this was that I didn't bother to think maybe there was a real problem. Maybe this was life.....to live in so much misery that death would be welcomed if it wasn't so frightening.