Everyone has a story....a past that is as much a part of him as the chapters of a book that have been read and covered yet embedded in the reader's mind as he adds new ones in his quest to finish the book.
Some hide their stories away behind thick walls of normalcy and misconceptions, while others carry theirs on proud shoulders, expecting people to read them and drop pity and favor into the charity hats that they carry, always before them, as if the world owes them for the pain they have endured.
Weight-heavy enough to weigh a person down or to propel him forward as he stumbles through life burdened with pages that can never be rewritten, much less erased. There is no paper thick enough to mask the words that lie on the pages beneath it; pages weakened by years of flipping back and forth.  There are not enough words or ink dark enough to hide the story that shows through, obscuring what lies on the surface.
Even before I was born, my story contained chapters.....