"The Place I Remember Best" by Jack Gower

The place I remember the best isn't so much of a place as it is a feeling, a moment in time. If I had to locate it, to direct some poor lost tourist or stranger on the street, I'd point stiff fingered to the very center of my own being. Maybe in my amygdala brain matter mush.

Each particulate bursting at the seams with unspeakable secrets. Haunted murky memories of the past and glistening genetic predispositions foretelling the future, far better than any crystal ball.

I discovered this place while I was still young, eager, and naive enough to keep searching so relentlessly in my juvenile quest for meaning or purpose. I stumbled down into a well hidden snare of hopelessness, a deep dark pit of angst and despair. Shouting all around ashamed and scratching at the cavern walls.

I can still recall that nauseating sinking anchored weight. Feeling as if the floor might give out at any moment and I'd plummet through the elevator shaft. And it would give out and it did. Again. More times than I cared to count.

It isn't the drop that's so unsettling, it's the anticipation. The blinding screeching deafening suspense. On guard at all times of the day or night with no off switch or program override to tell this body, my own body, to stand down. Deactivate. Massive amounts of cortisol coursing through my veins stimulating hyper vigilance and surreal, almost hallucinatory, sensory perceptions.

Some mornings I can still taste the faint bitter residual fear from my nightly drives down my subconscious dreams and the bad part of town in my head.

Yes, that place

That place is still there. In here. In me. Inside of mind. It is who I am.The difference being now I no longer fear it. After surrender and acceptance I could begin to really look around my internal surroundings. I know the way in and the way out.