One night, a long time ago, I spent an entire night memorizing twenty definitions for the word "life." The word was to be on a vocabulary quiz the next day. Most of the students wrote it off as the easiest word, one to which the definition would come naturally. I knew better, and I knew that my rival would as well. The only thing I could think of to garner the better grade was to devise the most thorough definition to this simple word.
It turned out that there was only enough room on the quiz for one definition. I was furious, and I spent most of the time carefully choosing between the twenty. The one I finally chose was "the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual; one or more aspects of the process of living." I got full points, extra credit even, but it didn't matter. I still lost. My constant enemy managed to get more extra credit than I did. Ever since then, I considered his definition to be the one true definition of the word.
I was wrong, though. Both of those definitions were wrong. Looking back, believing that I have experienced life myself, the most appropriate definition I can find happens to be half of the fifth definition I learned all those years ago. Life, as I have learned, is "a specific phase of earthly existence; the period from an event until death." With this definition in mind, I have lived two lives within my one biological experience.
This account is in a way my autobiography, my life story. The event in question was my decision to leave the place where I grew up. I will not be able to take the reader through to my death, but I can take you as close as possible, as I know it is soon at hand.
I hope that in making this account, it is my first life that I will see flashing before my eyes when I do die, when I go to wait for that pathetic bastard of a killer in hell.