I Know A Man

I know a man who pushed the envelope, went to the limit, laughed in the face of possible death, had no fear when he committed to an insane thought and knew when he had gone too far and blown it out. He felt rather than knew the shifting and rearranging of brain cells brought on by years of neglect and lack of adequate nourishment. 
I know a man who faced, at a young and tender age, the abject desolation of abandonment and the carnage of a world imploding in the void that was left. Each day that passed another piece of the familiar tore loose flying off into the strength of the pull of the void. Pieces of who he was and who he could become flew side by side into the gaping darkness until the wound of being left alone closed up enough to shut off the void. The brain began a healing of sorts replacing the missing pieces with a little of this and a little of that in a random pattern.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
I know a man who emerged from the cocoon spun of sorrows and broken dreams believing he could stave off the loneliness if he did not care at all. He did not know he left the cocoon ill prepared for loneliness and not caring at all would attract an absence of affection that, in the years to follow, would crush him.