Berkshire Place Beckons: Chapter 1

This is the second and concluding volume in my 1970's memoires. The place was Charleston, the capitol city of West Virginia, and the year was 1975. It was the summer between my Second and Third Grade years and, after having spent eight years living on Rockford Court, my family had just moved to Berkshire Place. Rockford Court had been a nice middle class neighborhood, but now that both of my parents were working, we could afford better, hence the move. It was still a time of innocence, happy days, fun adventures, and unbridled expectations. On its face and at the time, my life continued to be all unicorns and rainbows, but my new school had mandated that I begin taking a very strong, mind-altering drug for my seizureific condition, and as time progressed, I would begin to struggle more and more and upon numerous levels as a result. By the time that my Fifth Grade year rolled around, the symptoms of what would become my mental illness were strongly pronounced, and almost totally unbeknownst to the school and my family, by my Sixth Grade Year I was already hopeless lost within them. The dots were there, but nobody was connecting them...myself included. Not long thereafter, my family would soon suffer a catastrophic tragedy. It would be the kind of tragedy that never gets better and that never goes away, the kind that you simply have to learn to live with.

And please note that this manuscript needs further editing on an overall basis, but here is where the completed draft currently now stands.