When your life turns into a train wreck.

4 - Looking through that rain covered window

Have you ever sat in your car, had your iPod or the radio playing, and suddenly this song comes on, and it's like your whole life has led up to this moment. Your whole life has shaped and molded you, prepared you for this one song, this one car ride, this one train ride, this one plane ride, just so you can look out of a rain spattered window while dramatic music plays in the cabin, or the car, or in your ears.

Let me tell you, I've done that about three time in my life, and every time, I imagine myself as some random person, that's had their life flipped upside down in the worst way possible, and they're just staring out the window. I feel like this adds to your life. That one you acquired when you were pushed out of your mother's womb back in chapter one. You know, that life. Yes, the one that's staring you down like it's a snake, and it can't decide whether it wants to bite you or not. These kinds of snakes always tend to bite, but sometimes they're not always venomous. It depends on how you raise that snake.

Unless, of course, it's a huge African mamba snake, like the one my mum saw when she was in Kenya. Those snakes go after people, just to spite them. It doesn't matter how you raise it, how much love you show it, that snake's going to bite you in the ass, hard.

So you have to kill the snake before it kills you. But sometimes you and this snake can live in the same house, under the same roof, and just co-exist together. I do this with many people in my family, like I do with my own snake (which is a garter snake, by the way). It sort of slithers around, spends most of its time with my dog, and sometimes likes to bite me right before I go to bed, to remind me it's there. Especially on Sunday nights, when I like to forget there's school in the morning. It 'crawls' its way up to my room, into my bed, under my covers, into my pajama pants, and bites like its life depends on it.

So I believe that snake is the source of all my problems. Don't get me wrong, I love that little shit with all my heart, but sometimes I just want to skin it and make a nice . . . something out of it.

Most of you reading will most likely have a specific snake to your personality. Some of you will leave pesky comments like 'My spirit animal is an eagle, they're so majestic.' and you will make me dry heave my lunch, because if I say you have a snake to you, you have a goddamned snake to you. You can be anything you like. Be it an eagle or a modest box turtle, but you all have a snake to you, and I believe that. Like how some of you believe there is some single 'God' up above there, cursing me with whatever ailments he sees fit.

I'm not going to get into religion right now. Not in this chapter. You all don't know me well enough yet to not prejudge me. Though I'm sure you all already have. I digress, though, and continue by repeating that you all have a snake to you. Whether it be a coral snake, or that horrid black mamba (if yours is a black mamba, I'm terribly sorry for you, and I hope it ends quickly) or even a fancy little western rattlesnake. Mine's a garter snake.

I don't know how I know this, but it's like all of you somehow just 'knowing' that there's a 'Heaven' up there in the sky behind those damn pearly gates. It's a little bright green garter snake, not much longer than my arm, and I think it's that size so it can sneak up and surprise me whenever it feels like.

So you have your life, or your snake, however you'd like to refer to it now, and it's gained an extra piece because you just looked out that window, and pretended for three minutes to be that dramatic scene from that dramatic movie. You've stared out the window while 'Fix You' played on the radio. Or whatever touchy song you want to listen to.

Then again, I could be wrong, and all of your could be these stoic, gross, emotionless, monsters that don't feel things like remorse and regret. All you could be feeling now is confusion why I just called you that, but then you'd shrug it off, because - Oh no wait, what that an emotion? Quick, back into rock mode.

It's not a sin to have emotion. It's not against any federal law to cry in front of people. There's no unspoken social rule that makes everyone hate you if you decide to laugh at something that isn't stupid. If someone makes a smart joke, and all these idiots around you are just drowning in their own drool, but you get it, then laugh. For godssakes, laugh. If someone gets you so angry, that you just want to scream and rip their head off, tell someone. Show some damn emotion, and scream it out. Yell, kick a wall, get it out. Someone breaks your heart, or your dog ran away? Good, perfect time to cry about it. Tell your friends to get umbrellas, because here come the fucking water works.

Of course, who am I to talk? I was locked away in an asylum because I cut myself to make myself cry. I physically could not cry in front of people, not that I wanted to. Of course, that's all behind me now, and if you so much as smile at me, I will most likely break down in tears.

Now, I want to warn you readers (yes, all two of you) that if your snake is any kind of anaconda, or snake that kills by wrapping itself around its prey and squeezing the shit out of it, you may want to do something about that. My own mother has decided to adopt a new Burmese python, instead of her old rat snake. She's still got that rat snake, but it sits in the corner and it's really shriveled looking. That Burmese python though, has got my mum in a choke hold. She's a teacher, and she's drowning in her work. Being a teacher, at elementary school level, has taken its toll on my mother. Worksheets, field trips, and just keeping really misbehaved children in line.

Her snake was nice at first, like mine was, and how everyone's was, but hers was replaced with one she didn't want. That has also happened to me, and it happens to a love of celebrities, and jsut famous people. Her nice black rat snake, which helped her get through that shit divorce with her shit husband, and find a new husband, and helped her go to university again. Then she tossed it aside and welcomed this big scary new snake, and that one promised an income, and a good job.

Then this happened, and I hope to whatever celestial dieties that will listen, that she wil take that black rat snake back in, because that Burmese shit is starting on my own snake too, and I'm worried for it. I call these snakes 'it' and 'they' because you can't really give your life a gender, let alone a name. I think that as I'm writing this, I have to remind myself that the snakes I'm writing about are just easy ways of writing about lives.

Then here we are. The end of the chapter. We've talked about snakes. Nothing what the chapter title implies, but you also thought that 'When your life turns into a train wreck' meant a teenage drama. Looks like I'm duping you left and right, aren't I? I'd like to know what kind of snake you think you are, so why don't you tell me? I'd like to know, see if you're right.