Keep My Heart Somewhere Drugs Don't Go Where The Sunshine Slows Always Keep Me Close

We, as human beings, are a product of our environment and experiences. Stripping away the false veneer, or lack thereof, the human existence, at a rudimentary level, is a linear experience based upon the building blocks of circumstance. While we navigate time in a linear fashion, our minds often navigate time in any which way they please. Ultimately, life is measured by how we choose (either consciously or subconsciously) to adapt to given circumstances, our perception of said circumstances, and the emotions that flood when face-to-face with adversity. Most of the choices we make in life—especially when we are young and impressionable—are purely reactionary; birthed from a place of instinct and emotion. While it is easy to stay in that place of passivity—constantly feeding the id within ourselves—it is important to remember that it is the choices we make, not the circumstances placed before us, that ultimately define who we are as human beings. The conscious and subconscious choices made by the characters featured in the book Sula, are perfect examples of such an assertion.

“It hurts Mamma.” (pp. 55) Lost in the delirium of his own doing, he sat and stared at the ceiling for hours. The robins who had long since forgotten his name sang outside his window; flies buzzed around his bedroom, happy to share a taste of the blood-tainted water contained in soda-pop bottles on the floor. Whatever had happened to him on that cold day in France was more than he could bear. Lain out on the bed, so distant from everything he once knew—including himself—Plum escaped the pain in the best way he knew how: Heroin. Having been raised by one of the strongest women in the Bottom, Plum fell short of living up to the Peace name. All that time and energy spent by Eva, keeping him alive, had gone to waste. His days filled with an obsession for escape; running from the haunting memories that had forbade him to move on from the pain that had afflicted his every waking move. The answers as to why he fell victim to such a habit—an urge to purge whatever it was—aren’t clear. Having been raised by such a strong and pragmatic woman, who was so fueled by hate for his own Father, had left him unprepared for the pain he was to discover halfway across the world. Plum could have returned a stronger man, displaying a strut down Carpenter’s Road that’d put all the other men in the Bottom to shame—thankful for surviving a cold and bitter war. Instead, he chose what was comfortable; what soothed him; what filled the void that was, perhaps, carved out by a mother incapable of nurturing her children in the way one would hope.

“He cried soundlessly at the curbside of a small Midwestern town wondering where the window was, and the river, and the soft voices just outside the door…” (pp. 12) The running soldier with no head, sound of bullets catching the air around him, and the suddenness of it all consumed his every waking thought. A simple blink would pull him back to the battlefield—back to the fields where his veins ran cold and the lights went out. Control. Control was what he needed now; anything to keep himself from being pulled back into the shadows—the fields that had shown him just how quick a life can be seized from this earth. Order. Order and tidiness would keep this house of cards standing—keep his head from spinning any faster than it already was. The Bottom viewed him as broken, and rightly, so—who wouldn’t be after all that time spent locked in a cage within his own mind. Shell shock –now referred to as Post-traumatic Stress Disorder—was to define the rest of his life. Unfortunately, there were no means of treating such an illness back then. If there had been, maybe there would have been a chance for him; maybe that little girls belt, nailed to the side of the wall, wouldn’t have sufficed in keeping him company; maybe those people of the Bottom would not have died at the hands of their own rage, in the tunnel they were forbidden to build, on National Suicide Day.

“So

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