Ah, the Lonely Road:

I found no point in holding on to the past when you have a whole future ahead but now that I find myself standing still, I look back and regret that I have never done so. Thinking again though, life's just beginning for me and it's never too late to start.
Never too late for me anyways...

Now I remember, they call this town Riverwalk. This place can be described as one of those sleepy towns you sometimes dream of. You know the dream, some quiet misty town where there's always this sense of lingering mystery about it. This is that place for real.

This place scared me as a kid. The house we moved in gave me the creeps. My mother can attest that I didn't get one wink of sleep for two weeks when we had just moved in and when I did get some sleep, I am always awakened abruptly after a few hours of slumber. I guess because I've always felt that something was wrong about this place. I never really knew what but I always had that feeling that I wanted to get out of here. Most kids had a boogeyman to blame or the monster underneath their bed but for me, there never were any monsters. It has always been this place.

It's different now. I've grown up and like all monsters, they are locked up in your closet. I gave up trying to figure this place out and I made a life here instead. You grow up and move on but I've always had one problem, I hated taking risks. If you just look at the word, it's not even a nice word to write. It's all got these jaggy letters on it and when you say it, it feels like a hiss more than a word. Risk involves two things, succeeding and failing and I was never a fan for both. Success is overrated and failure just isn't pretty. You'll know what I mean. Read on, I've got a lot to say.

But I remember what Clair once said to me, "The biggest risk might be not taking one at all". What was it then, six years ago? It was when we went to the carnival and I was deathly afraid to ride the roller coaster. I was so afraid that I started to cry and was about to make a scene. But Clair pulled me aside and told me that. I didn't understand her at first and honestly, she didn't either. She just knew it's the right thing to say even if she didn't get it herself. That's the kind of quirk she had, she just knows what to say and now that I think about it, she did have a point because when I rode the coaster, it was great - probably one of the most exhilarating times in my life even.

Now, I'm still afraid to ride the roller coaster and every time I'm asked to ride it, I have to gather all my splattered guts just to get enough balls to get on one. That's risk, splattered guts and balls you need to swallow. You might be able to swallow it or vomit it out but you just know it doesn't taste good either way. I guess what Clair did was put a little sugar on it to make it not taste so bad. It's kind of like what my mom does with slicing onions. She slices them really, really small so you won't notice it when she adds it to the spaghetti and meatballs.

By the way, I don't like onions either.