The Jackson River Bridge

Alone on a bridge staring into the dark water...

 

He was not born Noah Waters, but constant rejection often has a way of encouraging one to walk away from everything they have known while giving birth to the person they are meant to be. This is Noah's story...

 

I was a sixteen-year-old runaway when I worked my way to the edge of the Jackson River Bridge and peered at the moonlit water swirling below. To be fair, I wasn't an ordinary sixteen-year-old. I had an affliction akin to autism that left me with fragmented memories of my childhood, memories that inspired nightmares filled with demons that tormented me while I slept and awoke me screaming in the dark void of my room. Even I understood that I had few choices, and all were bad. There was nothing for me on the side of the river I had come from, and I had no reason to believe that the other side of the river offered anything better. Logically, jumping seemed a way to break the tie. The stalemate only broke when I heard a voice emanating from the darkness. The voice belonged to a man wearing a hooded garment that shadowed his face, a man who chose to live on the grounds of an old monastery with a dozen cats. The moment he stepped from the darkness my life began to pivot. I first learned to trust him, then love him. He put me on a path toward a future I never imagined possible that night as I stood on...The Jackson River Bridge.