Hide & Seek

Calhoun Mane instinctively concealed his feelings about a difficult past too painful to consider. The adults around him never tried to address the unresolved issues lingering in his mind. As a teenager, he accepted his shyness, which helped him fit in socially without drawing attention to himself. When he put on a song-and-dance routine to be the center of attention, his behavior made others distrust his sincerity. He was an obvious basket case, just trying to survive ninth grade.

Calhoun had enough trouble after realizing his grade point average had fallen below a 1.5. He lived in secret, sofa-surfing with friends who didn't know about the past that haunted him. Those who noticed the pain behind his exhausted eyes contributed out of the kindness of their hearts. A God introduced to him by hypocrites watched over his poor choices, offering merciful blessings disguised as occurrences. Angels came in many forms, hidden in plain sight.

As a child, while living with his birthmother, Calhoun took refuge in a closet during a game of Hide & Seek. His siblings searched the whole house for him. That night, Calhoun found comfort in hiding with a family friend his age. Beth was a perfectly normal youngster whom he adored. He immediately sensed her sensitive side and desperately wanted to emulate it. They became lifelong friends, but even this dynamic did not reveal the depth of distrust in Calhoun's soul.

Now, as an adult with a slew of new philosophical knowledge, Calhoun stopped hiding his emotions. He wrote them into a journal for years. The publishing endeavors that came from such honesty made for an intriguing book, and he held nothing back to help readers reclaim their lives. Done tastefully, his narrative reached depths so relevant to healing that only the necessities of survival filled the pages. Graphic details would have hardly defined the life he used as subject matter. The God he studied for years became the antidote for repairing what felt broken.

Calhoun's soul was a portal, searched and found.