Beginnings

I was a precocious six year old.

I realize that anyone reading this could easily dismiss this statement as the childish pronouncement of an adult who never really got past the self-indulgence that would motivate one to write such a thing. As I begin to write these words forty-four years later I’ve had a lifetime, well, half a lifetime really, to consider that what was uttered then, and is being recalled now on these pages was not a boast.

It was far from that.

It was to be the beginning of a life circumscribed by a secret. This secret would shadow every step that I would take, in fact every thought that I was to think. This secret, and the fastidious lie that I would weave around it, would occupy nearly my every waking thought – and not a few of my dreams.

One day I would summon the courage to put it away and step out into the light.

© 2008 Renée Thomas