The Boy at the Window
The image that stays with me isn’t a casino or a vision.
It’s a six-year-old boy standing at a picture window in his Sunday clothes, waiting for a father who never arrives.
That’s where the story begins.
Not the abandonment itself, but what a child decides it means: that he must be the kind of boy people leave behind.
The window became a dividing line. On one side the world kept moving. On the other side was a boy trying to understand why he had been left out of it.
When no one knocked on the door, I turned the silence into evidence.
Something about me must have been disposable.
That belief followed me for years. The pursuit of women. The need to prove myself. The sabotage. The drinking. The habit of playing both hunter and hunted.
All of it traces back to that boy at the window, still trying to solve a question he was too young to carry.
The Bus
At thirteen I boarded a bus to my father’s home.
I thought I was escaping.
Years later I see it differently. The bus didn’t deliver freedom. It just changed the setting.
The house was different, but the pattern was familiar. A father who drank. A temporary place to land. Another version of the same emptiness.
What I carried with me was the same strategy I’d been using since the window: learn the room, read the temperature, become what people needed.
Charm if necessary. Silence if necessary. Performance if necessary.
Whether I was selling encyclopedias or numbing myself with substances, the goal was the same.
Belong somewhere.
But the belonging was always conditional, because the person earning it wasn’t real. It was a performance built around the old belief that something about me had to be corrected before I could stay.
The boy at the window was still there, just older.
The Station
The shift didn’t come through effort.
It came through stopping.
In the stillness of this 12x8 room I didn’t just remember that boy. I sat with him.
Not to analyze him.
Just to see him.
For the first time the question changed. Instead of asking why he had been left behind, I started asking what he had been carrying all these years.
The answer was quieter than I expected.
He wasn’t broken.
He was alone.
My reconciliation with my mother helped clarify that. Our conversations about sacred pacts and old wounds didn’t erase the past, but they changed its shape. Hearing the lullaby Bobby Shafto again reminded me of something I had forgotten.
There was love before the rupture.
The wound didn’t create me.
It happened to me.
Roland A. James
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1067348301
I’m looking for readers willing to spend time with this trilogy and tell me honestly what lands and what doesn’t. Books are free. Brutal honesty is the only currency I’m asking for. If you’re interested contact me at Mr.RolandAJames@yahoo.com.
It’s a six-year-old boy standing at a picture window in his Sunday clothes, waiting for a father who never arrives.
That’s where the story begins.
Not the abandonment itself, but what a child decides it means: that he must be the kind of boy people leave behind.
The window became a dividing line. On one side the world kept moving. On the other side was a boy trying to understand why he had been left out of it.
When no one knocked on the door, I turned the silence into evidence.
Something about me must have been disposable.
That belief followed me for years. The pursuit of women. The need to prove myself. The sabotage. The drinking. The habit of playing both hunter and hunted.
All of it traces back to that boy at the window, still trying to solve a question he was too young to carry.
The Bus
At thirteen I boarded a bus to my father’s home.
I thought I was escaping.
Years later I see it differently. The bus didn’t deliver freedom. It just changed the setting.
The house was different, but the pattern was familiar. A father who drank. A temporary place to land. Another version of the same emptiness.
What I carried with me was the same strategy I’d been using since the window: learn the room, read the temperature, become what people needed.
Charm if necessary. Silence if necessary. Performance if necessary.
Whether I was selling encyclopedias or numbing myself with substances, the goal was the same.
Belong somewhere.
But the belonging was always conditional, because the person earning it wasn’t real. It was a performance built around the old belief that something about me had to be corrected before I could stay.
The boy at the window was still there, just older.
The Station
The shift didn’t come through effort.
It came through stopping.
In the stillness of this 12x8 room I didn’t just remember that boy. I sat with him.
Not to analyze him.
Just to see him.
For the first time the question changed. Instead of asking why he had been left behind, I started asking what he had been carrying all these years.
The answer was quieter than I expected.
He wasn’t broken.
He was alone.
My reconciliation with my mother helped clarify that. Our conversations about sacred pacts and old wounds didn’t erase the past, but they changed its shape. Hearing the lullaby Bobby Shafto again reminded me of something I had forgotten.
There was love before the rupture.
The wound didn’t create me.
It happened to me.
Roland A. James
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1067348301
I’m looking for readers willing to spend time with this trilogy and tell me honestly what lands and what doesn’t. Books are free. Brutal honesty is the only currency I’m asking for. If you’re interested contact me at Mr.RolandAJames@yahoo.com.
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