I know you’re not going to believe this, but quite frankly I don’t care. You want me to write about the most significant event in my life? Well, here it is, and if you think I’m just making things up for the heck of it, then you can send me to the principal’s office. You always do.

It started when I was five. My dad had died in a car crash before I was born and my mom married Jenkins, a real piece of work. He was an angry drunk, real heavy on the booze, and he liked to hit my mother, or anything else in sight. Well, one night my mom went shopping, left me home to watch cartoons. He was supposed to be out playing poker with his buddies, but he came home early, drunk as usual, but madder than normal ‘cause he’d lost, big time.
I hid. What else could I do? I was five and terrified. He found me anyways, like he could smell me, smell my sweat and hear my heart beating like a pigeon’s. He started to hit me. A minute and I couldn’t tell if my lip was bleeding or my nose. I’d tried to curl up, but it wasn’t any use.
And then something snapped, something in me. In my brain, maybe, or in my heart. I think I died in that moment. But I left, I checked out. It was adios, real world!
I don’t know where I was, but it was bright. For a minute I couldn’t see. Then I realized there was nothing to see. It was darkness and light at once, coexisting, and so profound that it burned like a black flame. And there was nothing else but that, and it filled me up. I don’t know how my fragile body stood the force of infinity, but it did, and I took it in.
And when it was done, he looked down at my broken body in triumph. But it was inside of me and it lashed out, and I lashed out. And I looked down at him and there was fear in his eyes, and I was no longer afraid because nothing would ever hurt me again.