Dwayne Ackley Stories

As a child I was always afraid. I couldn’t walk from room to room by myself, couldn’t sleep alone. When it was daytime I literally prayed that it wouldn’t get dark.

I was always stressed. Nothing ever seemed to match up and nothing ever seemed right. There were nights when I slept in a car. There were days I was told that I would be kicked out of the house. I was told not to sit close to air conditioning vents because I was told something would grab me.

Then I was rescued. Suddenly I was safe. I was on even ground suddenly, which made me selfish.

Selfish is always easy. You can always think of something that you do not have. You can feed it by buying things you don’t really need, but nothing cures it.

I would get selfish mostly as a defense mechanism. In the back of my mind I was terrified of going backward and re experiencing everything again.

The one thing that always kept me grounded were nightmares.

One that I had continuously was being chased. I would be running down a poorly lit hallway with loud footsteps pounding behind me.

All through my childhood through teenage years, through college, through marriage, through relocation of my life those footsteps would be pounding up behind me.

Then one day I turned.  I realized it was a dream and I chased the thing that had been running after me.  I ran after it until it raced down a long hall way, went into a small room and shut the door.

I pushed on the door, pushed really hard until I could see inside.  The first thing I saw was a mirror.  Through the mirror I could see my Grandparents bathroom and in it was a six year old kid with tears in his eyes.

When I was six years old I accidentally locked myself into my Grandparents bathroom. My safe place where I felt completely in control was suddenly a cage. I beat on the door but I was stuck and completely powerless. All that selfishness, conceit, and rude confidence was replaced by reality. My grandmother found me, despite the fact that I had snuck away.

One pattern that started that day was making my own change by my own terms. Making my own change so that I could outrun everyone else’s.