Falling Like Snow

This started out as a writing prompt, I was giving three lines I had to use and craft a story around and I was given an hour and a half to do it. The lines I was given was, "We started dying before the snow and like the snow, we continued to fall." With "Sitting in a kitchen sink," and "The sky was static." 

it was interesting, and my group liked my story enough to tell me I should post it on my blog, so here it is.

We started dying before the snow and like the snow, we continued to fall. The sky had grown dark and our blood turned the soil beneath our feet into mud. Alive and cut off from the rest of my unit, my thoughts turn back to my father and how I use to write to him every night from the kitchen sink imagining I was with him hunkered down in that fox hole, he was a soldier then fighting overseas. He had gone missing when I was just thirteen, like my grandfather before him, who had fought bravely in the Vietnam War and his father back in the second great World War.

I still remember how my mother clung to me as she cried and how I was unable to take my eyes off the casket being lowered deep down in the cold, dark ground. I didn’t cry then, the tears wouldn’t come for another few years, because I knew he wasn’t inside that box they buried so deep, nothing but a uniform, a photograph and old memories, I knew it wasn't him they buried. For months I imagined him coming home, stealing into my room to tell me everything was alright and how he would muss with my hair, before kissing me goodnight. But that day never came and I swore I’d never go to war and that I wouldn't fall in line with the family tradition of never coming home from War. Patriotism seems to be in our blood, even when we’re left with little to no choice, for at twenty eight my country was at war yet again and one night after work, I found the draft letter addressed to me in the mail.

Fear washed me as I read and reread those words, ordering me into the armed forces and the date I was to report to that military base for training. I must have stood outside for an hour before my wife came to join me, I couldn’t speak, the dread had turned my tongue to lead and all I could do was hand her the letter with trembling hands and her tears began falling like rain as she crumbled the letter in her fist and drew me close, promising to never let go. We cried and held each other for what felt like the last time, even as the rain began to fall, drenching us both as we repeated our vows there in the driving rain, kissing away each other’s tears, she wants me to run, I tell her I won’t, I assure her that we’ll be alright, I promise her I’ll return home, I tell her lies.

Then there I am, on that bus, leaving my civilian life behind, kissing goodbye my wife and seeing my eight year boy watching me from kitchen sink with his face pressed up against the windowpane and it was then my heart began to break, for he looked so much like me the day I watched my father go away.

The days seem to pass in a blur, they cut off my hair,  and we marched till we sang, we all became friends as we learned how to fight. By graduation day I was stepping up onto that plane, feeling only half-alive, just going through the motions, believing that this was it for me, that I was already gone, for I had come from a family of patriots and none of them had ever returned home, the line I feared would go on unbroken, as heroes of war.

Artillery exploded in the air around our craft, causing even greater turbulence, and my brothers all disguise and hide their fear, with cheers and jeers, while I close my eyes letting my thoughts turn to that of my wife and child, I imagined him as I might, playing soldier with his friends, imagining that he was fighting alongside me, helping keep this country free and safe. His face was all I could see, etched forever into my mind, along with the look he gave me as I marched up onto that bus. Realizing I would never go back, I would never return home, the thought made me feel both empty and hollow, making me numb, a shell of the man I once was, who before this had never so much as fired a gun, or thought about taking a another life, but here I was, a soldier of war.

But every night had been the same, I’d fall asleep thinking of my son, knowing I wasn’t much older than him when this happened to me and now I could feel the ghosts of my father and his, our entire family line standing all around, haunting me.

Then there I was boarding the plane that would take me to some foreign land that threatened the very freedoms of the land that I’ve always known and loved. But that was then and now I’m here, trudging through snow drifts two feet deep, bleeding and fatigued with the snow pulling at my legs with every step.  My toes and fingers had long since gone numb from the cold, so I stop to stare up at the sky and it reminds me of static seen on old TVs, with the falling snow soothing the singed flesh of my face.

Closing my eyes and it’s all I see, blood and flames.

Our transport exploded moments after our boots touched the ground. The explosion was deafening, throwing me to the dirt, saved only by the man behind me, whose body shielded me from blunt of the explosion, making him one of the first who wouldn’t be making it home. Burned and bloody I crawled out from beneath the bodies of my comrades to the sounds of gunfire erupting all around me, but still I rose, disoriented and lost, just as the first snow flake landed and melted against my cheek.

Ears ringing, I turned towards the enemy line and charged headlong into their ranks, their screams filled my ears, long after they were gone and it was then I realized the screams had been my own and I couldn’t stop, not until long after the clip in my rifle had emptied and I was covered in the blood of both my fallen brothers and my own. We were twenty strong before and now we were but five.

With our faces streaked with dirt, blood and mud, we turned as one and charged into hell, amidst the rain of bullets, the guns and the sound of the drums beating in our ears and blood stinging our eyes. We’ve broke the enemy lines time and again. It hadn’t been a day, but I’ve already had my fill of war, even though this was just the beginning and like the snow we starting to fall. Exhausted, sore and fatigued, I soon myself standing alone in a field of white looking up at the sky and thinking of home, when I heard the crack of the rifle and saw the snow before me turning to crimson as I fell to my knees, praying, please God….

Falling face down into the snow, expecting the world to end, I felt the rough hands gripping me and wrenching me up out of the snow and with my heart hammering in my chest, not knowing if I’d be tortured or killed, when I look up into the hard, weather worn face of the man I believed to be my executioner, but there was something oddly familiar about him that I couldn’t quite place, he’s shouting something and it takes a moment for me to realize he’s American like me and asking if I was hit.

Nodding, I clumsily paw at my shoulder. He looks at me, examining the wound and pulls me towards him to examine the entry wound at my back, after he lowers his head to the exit wound just below my left shoulder, he tells me I’m lucky for it passed cleaned through, but I don’t feel lucky. Then to my surprise, he begins scooping up snow and packing it into the wound. I bite my tongue so hard I taste blood would have keeled over if he hadn’t been holding me up. Through the tears that filled my eyes, I see his uniform for perhaps the first time, but it was all wrong. It was beige instead of camouflage and looked to be out of time and out of place, surely I imagined it couldn’t be warm enough to keep out the cold that was cutting through me despite by winter fatigues and thermal wear.

Patting his pockets, he sighs, shaking his head, and begins tearing at the hem of his uniform, using it as a makeshift bandage, cinching it tight over the wound, before hauling me back to my feet.

“C’mon son, on your feet, don’t make me write another letter of condolences I’m tired of losing good men.”

“Sir…” I breathed, between gasps of breath, “Sniper….”

Nodding down at my rifle, he asks if it’s loaded, and I tell him yes, but with only two rounds. Which was all I had left, he says one is all he’ll need and snatches it up off the snow and pulls me stumbling behind him. I stop, to turn back to see him taking a kneeling position as he peered down the sights of my rifle.

“Better get going so if you want to see that family of yours again.” Then without another word, I hear a second gunshot and this time I feel the bullet grazing the left side of my head.

“Go,” He says, squeezing off a round, “Looks like there’s more coming,”

I'm in no shape argue, but before I can, I feel a hand gripping me roughly by the shoulder, pulling me forward and almost off my feet. I turn to see another solider, pulling me along through the snow; he was wearing a uniform of forest green, with a M2 Carbine tucked under one arm, which he was using to fire into the field behind me.

“C’mon, we’re pulling back,” he says shouting, before seeing me struggling before I can say a word, he moves to pull my around his shoulders and proceeds in helping me run and I’m too out of breath to ask who he was, or what was going on. But I could hear the tanks and gun fire erupting everywhere behind me as if hell itself was chasing on our heels.

The marine, forces us to stop every couple of steps to turn and fire back into the field behind us, but through the falling snow I see nothing but shadowed shapes and what I can only guess are the enemy lines moving in to flank us, accompanied by flashes of light as the enemy returns fire. The marine’s carbine clicks dry and he turns to me, and through the driving snow he shouts for me to keep moving as he turns back to the driving force and begins reloading.

I open my mouth to ask him what he's doing, when the grenade goes off from where we was standing, with force of the explosion driving me into the ever thickening snow. I fall into the hard packed snow with my right side feeling like it was on fire.

I try to rise, but the pain lances up through my side, making me feel as if my ribs were being torn apart, and I can’t help the scream that escapes my lips as I fall back into the snow, fumbling for my side and feeling the warmth washing over my fingers, knowing that it was my life rushing out of me and turning the snow around me into fresh crimson.

Gritting my teeth I try to rise again, when I hear a voice overhead, and I feel gentle hands turning me over on my back.

“He’s alive,” The person shouts to someone behind him, I can tell my his accent that he too is an American, from Boston I think,  his uniform was an olive drab, with his sleeves rolled up past his elbows, with a sheen of sweat covering his exposed flesh and despite the blistering cold winds or the falling snow his touch was warm.

“Okay buddy, looks like you took some shrapnel to the ribs, just hold on and I’ll get you patched up and ready for the LZ, I think I can remove it,” he says and I feel him rolling me over onto my uninjured side and fresh pain lances up through my ribs as he pokes and prods at the wound that feels like agony and fresh tears well up in my eyes.

I scream into the snow, digging my fingers and hands into the snow drifts around me, I want to grab his arm and make him stop, but my arms and legs feel as if they've been tied down. Inch my agonizing inch, I feel him pulling at the shrapnel embedded deep in my side and it feels two feet long and half as thick, but once freed I find myself able to breathe easier and he’s packing the wound with fresh snow, before doing his best to bandage me up, then he's dragging me back up to my feet. I’m so tired I can barely stand, so I lean against him as he helps walk. Behind me I can feel the heat from explosions and the rain of snow and earth falling down around us, followed by burst of gun fire from all around us, and a mixture of shouts and screams. Whose I'm not sure.

My knees buckle and I fall to my knees, reliving my first drop where I lost half my brothers, but the medic is quick to haul me back to my feet, and grunting from the exertion he tells me to keep going and not too look back, to never look back, ordering me not give up, to never give up.

I don’t.

I just keep walking, focusing on placing one foot after another and I'm trying not to think of home, because it would be more than I could take. With every step I expected to feel a bullet piercing my back or slamming into the back of my skull ending what little life I still had in me and I could scarcely believe that I was even still alive as it were.

Then I felt the medic’s body go limp as a bullet struck him in the back, causing his body to pitch forward and me to fall in a tangle of arms and legs on top of him. He was dead by the time I untangled myself and pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. The back of his head had become a mass of dark blood and I found myself fumbling to free his sidearm from his person, when another hand closed tightly around my wrist, hauling me up to my feet before I could free his pistol, and it was then I noticed for perhaps the first time how the snow was kicking up all around me, followed by the whoop, whoop of helicopter blades cutting through the icy air.

“Forget it, he’s dead, we need to get you out of here!” Shouted a voice over my head and I looked up to stare into the face of my father moments before I lost consciousness. The next thing I remember is waking up in a military hospital. No one quite knows how I survived, or why, no one saw the pilot, or even the Black-hawk helicopter that dropped me off before flying away, disappearing from sight and radar just as quickly as it had appeared. A story I tell no one but my wife, for I have no other explanation, other than I was saved by the ghosts of patriots.

Scars of Who We Are. Rebekah. Chapter XIV

Chapter XIV-Rebekah   

                             As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s amazing how small your life seems once you pack everything you ever own at nineteen and load it into the back of your father’s truck. It took two trips which we had divided up between two days of moving my stuff up to New Port, where I was to live with my father and grandmother. It felt strange saying goodbye to the place that had once been my home and had spent so much time within and finally walking away from everything. It was hard. Even though she wasn't the best mother in the world, she was still my mother and for better or worse, I still loved her. I only wished that she could love me too and I wish I could tell you why I loved her. But I suppose it was the little things and something to do with all children loving their mothers. Leaving me to often contemplate about all the things that could have been. But I couldn't let a few good memories anchor to someone who would only drag me down to the bottom of the sea. It was sink or swim and I chose to swim.

               

My grandma & the closest I had to a mother.

                     After two days of moving my stuff,  we went to Burger King to pick up my last paycheck, followed by a short trip to the Bank of Kentucky to close out my savings accounts, ideally to transfer the funds over to a bank closer to where I was going to be, which was fifth third. However my mother had already beaten me to it, the young woman at the desk politely informed me that my account had already been closed two days prior, by my mother.               

           

    All the money I got for graduation, money I had saved doing odd job while growing up, but all money I was going to save for college or put towards a car was gone. Every penny I had saved since I was fourteen. The poor girl must have thought I was insane as I started to laugh, knowing I should have seen this coming, but I didn't. Because when you’re under 18, you need a co-signer and I agreed to make her mine, figuring if I was ever in a bind she could withdraw some cash for me. Also, I was fool who believed if I had her name on my account it would show that I trusted her and bring us closer together. But I was wrong. She had taken it for herself, or perhaps even given it to my older brother, but I'll get to that in a minute. But i shouldn't have been surprised, because a year prior, I wanted to get a high school graduation ring along with the rest of my friends and my mother talked my dad and grandmother into pitching in, they agreed and pooled their money together to send her a few hundred bucks so that I could get a nice ring.
               

                Two years prior I had been the proud owner of a dirt bike that I was given a year before and a mini bike the year previous from my grandpa on my mom's side. Then one day I noticed both my bikes were missing from our garage and when I inquired about them, I was told my step-father had taken them to get serviced. But as time wore on I kept getting excuses as to why it was taking so long to get my bikes back. Until one day, I came home early from a friend’s house and by chance I happened upon  my mom on the phone with my brother, which wasn't uncommon, they called each other every day, but then I overheard her saying,

                “Dominic I can’t afford to give you any more money right now, I already gave you the money for Josh’s bikes...”  Then I froze there on the bottom of the steps, knowing that she didn't know I was home and that I had just overheard the truth of why it was taking the guy so long to finish tuning up my bikes, because they were gone, sold.

                I never confronted her though, I figured if I did she’ll only deny it, or give me some excuse, or sob story, or somehow turn it around on me for ease dropping even though it hadn't been purposely done so. You can't help but hear something you overheard. So I let it go and quietly fumed and never thought of it again, until that day at the bank when the young woman was telling me my account had been closed.

               Anger soon gave away to depression and I spent the next few days just lying on my grandma's couch, feigning illness so that my grandmother and father wouldn't worry. Truth was, I was broken and couldn't stop thinking about all the things my mother had done, wondering if she ever loved me at all, or if it was all just some ploy to rob me blind and to make my life miserable. Everything I had been working towards was gone and at nineteen my life felt like it was over. The task of starting all over from scratch seemed daunting and I was afraid of failing again. I blamed myself as much as I did my mother, hating myself for not getting out when I had the chance, for not being smarter and not better protecting myself. I hated my naïveté.

            I ended up beating myself up for days, before finally finding the strength to pull myself together. My cousin Nick contributed more than he knows to helping me find the strength to pull myself back together again. For after hearing I had moved in with my father and grandmother, he took it upon himself to help me stand back on my own two feet again, reminding me how to have a good time, how to laugh along with helping me rediscover my lost smile. Every week we hung out, went to the movies, biking, or simply sat around and shared a few laughs.

                After a while I was finally ready to start all over, walking the streets of Newport everyday going to every business and filling out applications and always following up the next day and the day after. Eventually the Newport Library got tired of seeing me coming in every day and asking for work, so they finally offered me a job as a shelver.

                A few months later the calls started, my mother was trying to get a hold of me, wanting to talk. At first I avoided her calls like the plague, refusing to speak to her, always telling my dad or grandma to tell her I wasn't there or that I had just left. I didn't want this woman anyway near my life. As far as I was concerned she was poison. 

              

             But eventually, my grandma and even my father of all people began telling me that I needed to talk to her and I should see what she wants. So then one day she called and I answered. I could hear the tension and the relief in her voice and the tentative way that she spoke that she was afraid I'll hang up before she got to say what she wanted to say to me. At first she was asking me questions about how I been, what I've been up too and how it was living with my father. I kept my answers as short as possible, afraid of accidentally opening that door that would lead her back into my heart, until she started crying... between sobs she confessed to everything, apologizing profusely for not being a good mother and for never being the kind of mother that I needed. She begged for my forgiveness, and for another chance. Reluctantly I cave and agreed to let her back into my life.

             

            For a while things were okay between us, I started spending time with her and the rest of the family again and as if by some unspoken agreement, none of us mentioned the past or what it was that drove me away from home and all of them. In time, it began to feel like family again. But over time, the cracks began to show and suddenly I wasn't good enough and my job at the library had become a disappointment. Things slowly escalated from there with little snide comments and the "forgetting of my birthday" and eventually things degraded to the point where I didn't like the way I was being treated. I couldn't help but feel like I was becoming the target of ridicule, with nothing I ever did being good enough and I was constantly being treated like I was some little kid and calling me selfish and greedy because I didn't come around more, ignoring the fact that I was working and also had another family so to speak.. But I bit my tongue and kept trying to make things work, wanting them to work and trying to watch my own behavior to see if they were right. But I was feeling torn again between what felt like to warring factions, my mother's side and my fathers.

         

               

But then I met her, Rebekah Josann Stidham, my lighthouse who guided me from my own darkness and the rocky shores and treacherous shores of my soul. My dealings with my mother and her family was tearing me apart and I was gradually sinking back into my depression, beginning to believe in my own worthlessness and that I was broken, destined to spend the rest of my life alone.

Rebekah changed all that, I me her by chance at the library; she was a volunteer along with her sister Rachel and Rebekah's smile reminded me of Christmas morning and the sound of her laughter was as soothing as a warm breeze in the fall.. She was the first girl I ever met who made the first move by leaving me at work after we first met. She was...and still is the most beautiful girl I've ever laid eyes on, sweet, attentive, understanding and her laugh had a almost musical quality about it and she was always quick to laugh and the ease of which her laughter came always brought a smile a to my lips

But I never told her about my past, or my mother, instead I pretended to have a good, healthy relationship with her and her family, so that she wouldn't think I was some guy weighed down with a crippling amount of emotional luggage. Plus someone once told me that I should never tell a love interest about all the things wrong with me, for they can become overwhelming, thus become a turn off. So I let her get to know me in the present, for the person I was and not who I had once been.

         Overnight it seemed we had become best friends, even though I had already fallen head over heels in love with her on that that day we first met, losing myself forever in her big doe eyes. I loved her then and ever since, although back then I was afraid to admit it, but still everyone knew it. But I was afraid of what would happen to my heart if my love once again went unrequited as it did with Sherry.

             So I remained her friend, for the longest time, longing every day to hold her in my arms and to kiss all of her worries away….But I was fool and I was afraid, so I dragged my heels for the longest time, feeling constantly at war with myself. Then one day another guy came along, who was a singer like her, a real musician, who was well on his way of turning his passions into a career. She grew to where she talked about him all the time even when she was around me. I knew without her saying that she was torn between him and me. But in the end, I decided he could offer her more than I ever could, so I walked away. I didn't fight for her or try to argue my case, I simply stopped calling/texting her, avoided her if I could, but remained friendly whenever I ran into her.

                Eventually, things with her and Caleb fell apart, then somehow she found her way back to me and we became fast friends again. Then before I knew it, she had fallen in love with me, or as she told me, she was always in love with me, but her father had disapproved of me and when I disappeared from her life she thought that maybe she was meant to be with the other guy, (Caleb so she chose to be with him.) But now she was finally distancing herself from her father and wanted to live her own life, one she wanted to share that life with me which she did.

            We were together for six months before I finally decided to bring her around my mom’s family. Albeit I was curious if what I perceived as disrespect was real, or was all just in my head. She would be my impartial witness, because I still hadn't revealed any of the truth about my childhood and I wanted...needed some kind confirmation if what I was seeing was real or not.

So I took her down to my mother's for thanksgiving and to my surprise my mom and her family fell in love with her almost immediately. They fawned over; she was the daughter my mother always wanted, beautiful, charming, talented, graceful and modest. But for some reason my family also seemed to go out of their way to paint me in a negative light. Harping on me whenever I wasn't being the perfect boyfriend, (I.E pulling out her chair, or refilling her glass for every three sips she took, all things I kept thinking was odd and even though she kept trying to tell them that she didn't like that kind of hovering. Insisting that did like doing some things for herself.

              
               

                At the end of the night, she and I went for a walk and I asked what she thought of my family and I noticed her hesitation as she told me they were very nice to her. However I had known her long enough to know when something was bothering her and when I asked what it was she said,

       "I don’t like how they treat and talk down to you all the time, it’s almost like they don’t think of you as a person….”

                “Oh…” I said, knowing she was confirming what I had been feeling this whole time when I've been trying to heal the past and mend all the broken fences between me and m family.

                “I’m sorry, I didn't mean anything by it, I know it’s your family and you love them,” She whispers, kissing me, before pulling me closer against her. I could lose myself forever in her warmth; for nothing in this world had ever made me feel better.

                “It’s okay,” I assure her, “You’re right, I just needed confirmation.” I confessed, returning her embrace and her kiss, happy to have her as a part of my life and knowing I would have to tell her everything once we got home.

                “I just don’t think they’re good for you, I felt like the whole time they kept trying to turn me against you for some reason.”

                “You saw that too?” I asked, smiling sheepishly, knowing she had also become my rock. I would have probably married her too and would have if I could go back, but that's another story for another time.

          

   

          By the time we made it back to the house, Rebekah already had me feeling better and that night we spent the night at my mother's. The following day we were having dinner, a follow up to our thanksgiving day feast and while the food was being prepared my mother had asked me to help my little brother's put together a Star-wars Lego set, which I eagerly agreed too. But fifteen minutes in, my mother asked Rebekah if she could talk to her upstairs for a moment because she wanted to show her something. I don't know why, but something in my mother's tone struck me as a little odd. So I waited several minutes before finally deciding to sneak upstairs and see what she was up too. I heard them talking down the hall in my mother's room, along with my aunt and they were asking her why she was with me. She explained that she had been in love with me, that I had been the sweetest, most caring and thoughtful guy she's met and she loved my sense of humor, and my intellect. When I heard my aunt start asking her if she met my older brother and how handsome, smart and funny he was.

                My heart started to sink and I realized as I stood out there in the hall, that my mother, along with her sister was trying to convince her to choose my brother over me. I heard my own mother say how Dominic was so much more handsome than I was and how he’d be such a better match for her. My heart broke into a million pieces that day; I stood out in the hall.

         I know I could have made a scene and kicked the door open, confronting my mother, but instead I retreated and went back downstairs to play with my younger brothers, trying to pretend I didn't hear what I had. The next day I went and saw Rebekah and asked her what happened when my mother was talking to her in private and she told me everything that my mother and aunt were trying to talk her into breaking up with me in order for her to date my brother. Thankfully Rebekah loved me and was loyal to a fault, my heart and my guiding star, my best friend. And in that moment I knew I had to keep my distance from my mother and shield Rebekah from her as well…

                

Scars of Who We Are Chapter XIII

Chapter 13

“We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues.”

― Anne Lamott

                A month after my suicide, I was a patchwork of emotions, struggling to pull and hold myself together all the while sensing that something foreboding was waiting for me somewhere off on the horizon and was looming ever coming closer with each passing day. I was afraid, but I also knew whatever was heading my way was something I would have to endure and that in time it would make me stronger, better.

The Grant County Fair

I had been working the night shift at Burger King and like most people’s first jobs I hated it. But it wasn't the grease burns, or the late hours, getting home every morning around two or three am and having to wash with lava soap just to get the smell of burgers and fries off me. I hated it because my life just felt worthless, I couldn't see my dad because I was often working and I was seeing my friends less and less. The situation was made worse by my mother who would come and bang on my door every morning at ten am, screaming at me to not sleep the day away, even though I had just got home, showered and unwound just a few hours before. I felt like I was becoming a zombie, just going through the motions. Wake up tired, shower again, eat a little breakfast and watch my little brothers before going in to work at seven.  I was nineteen and already felt myself falling into a boring and lonely routine.

     As if sensing my growing frustrations, my two best friends started visiting me at my work, often waiting hours after we've closed just to give me a ride home, since I had yet been able to procure a car.                       (Well I did technically get a car from my grandpa for my last birthday, but unbeknownst to me my mother gifted it to my older brother, until he was done with it and got a new car himself, allowing her to sell the car that was meant for me.)

Matt and his lovely wife.

                But Matt and Steven were like the brothers I never had, they enjoyed having me around and often went out of their way to make me feel accepted and loved. (which I so desperately needed, I didn't know it then, but looking back now, I know I was looking to fill those holes my family have left in me. So they became my family, filling in those holes I so desperately wanted…needed to be filled. Because family to me is what you say it is and doesn't always have to be defined by blood or marriage.)

Then one night after they picked me up from work and we sat around Matt’s pool discussing the summer and how his would be coming to a close because he was going into the Marines and would soon be leaving our little crew behind to protect and serve our country, discussing the possibility of this moment being the one moment in time that would never again come around, that this was it, the days of our youth was steadily winding down and we had to do something to commemorate this event and so we decided to have one last hurrah.

Our plan was to go attend the Grant County Fair, but for all of us to go in Goth, because we lived in a closed minded, back water little town, populated mostly by hillbillies and country bumpkins. Also for me at least it’s always been easier for me to act carefree when I’m dressed up and adopt the characteristics of someone else. I no longer cared what any of these people thought or would say to me, so in a way I guess we were just trying to make a statement against conformity, to be someone else other than ourselves.  Once there Matt decided to have a little fun by staging a fake fight with another one of our friend, John and being young and stupid we all agreed it’ll be fun to see and it was and almost resulted in us being booted out of the fair. But once everyone figured out it was all faked, everything was well and good, with the rest of the night becoming most memorable indeed.  Although I must confess, the whole time I kept an eye out for Sherry, hoping to see her somewhere in the sea of people there at the Grant County Fair.

Steven

It took three days for word of our shenanigans to get around to my mother and Chris (My step-father.) and they none too pleased and I had been asleep for a mere five and a half hours when they came banging on my door, screaming at me to open up the door. Bleary eye and sleep deprived from working even later than I usually did, I opened the door just to be immediately shoved inside as they forced their way into my room, with the accusations already flying.

Immediately they began questioning me about the fair and I answered honestly, thinking it was no big deal and did my best to explain the situation for what it was, our one last hurrah before we risked never seeing our friend again. But they weren’t having it, instead I found myself being accused of being in a suicidal cult and how I was tarnishing Chris’s good name as a police officer and for the first time in my life I found the conviction to finally stand up for myself and cry, “Bullshit!” and reminded them that I never once gotten in any kind of trouble, I never once broke the law, or drank, did any drugs and I never caused any problems at school.

But my mother wouldn't have it, she stepped to me and started jabbing me in the chest with her finger, telling me I was to call Matt, Steven and the others and tell them how I could no longer be friends with them. An act I couldn't find more humiliating and so I stood my ground and defiantly told her no.

                She hadn't expected my answer and I knew from her body language that she had expected me to give in, that I would cave as I always did. But I didn’t and when she asked what I meant I told her.

                “Look, my friends and I all graduated High-School,  and none of them have ever been in any kind of trouble, or been arrested, none of them smoke or do drugs, they’re good and they’ve been good to me and they’ve been there for me than you ever were. They’re my family and have been my family in all the ways you never could be, I won’t turn my back on them for you. “ 

                “I don’t care,” She says, “You either call  your friends up right now and tell them you can’t be friends with them-“

                “Mom,” I interrupt, “I’m nineteen, I’m not my brother and my friends aren’t his friends, mine are better.”

                (Which was the truth, my brother’s friends have all been, or gone to prison…some still are and almost all of them have either been expelled or dropped out of high-school, with most of them already hooked drugs, or alcohol. Unlike my friends who worked hard, kept their noses clean and help motivate and even tutor me on their own when I was falling behind.   

                “Call them, or we’re kicking you out!” She screamed and I smiled. Because I realized her threats didn’t bother me anymore, I was free and my eyes were finally opening to all the lies she ever told me. This was what my father had kept trying to warn me would happen. My mother was going to kick me out because she had no further need of me, no child support and me longer the prisoner she always wanted me to be.

“Alright…I’m gone.” I rasp and I pick up my phone as she asks me where I’m going to go and so I tell her, “I think I’ll go live with my dad for a little while.”  

                She watches me then as I pick up the phone and dial my dad’s number, telling him I needed a place to stay that I was being kicked out and he told me he’d be on his way.

                When I hung up my mother started going off on me, rattling off everything that was wrong with me, how weak and pathetic I was, that I was nothing but an ugly little coward. I didn’t expect any less from the very woman who told me much of the same for my whole life and just quietly packed up my things as she followed me around, accusing me of being a mischievous liar, always sneaking around and how my dad wouldn’t put up with my attitude or behavior, along with every little thing I did wrong since I was seven and how one day my father would end up beating me to death.  Which was when I finally snapped.

“Enough!” I barked, “Just stop it okay, seriously when does it does it stop with you? You won alright? I’m moving out, you can stop blaming me and holding me accountable for things I did when I was seven. Because believe it or not I was a good kid and despite what you think, I was always just misunderstood. But still I grew up and I’ve changed, I’m not being all sneaky and seeing what all I can get into any more, because yes, I do remember how I used to sneak around and look in people’s  cupboards, search rooms, look in closets and sneak off, but you know what I was seven! That’s what kids do, I never stole or took anything except for candy from candy jars, but I was a kid. And yes, I use to lie so that I wouldn’t get in trouble and to avoid getting the paddle, but I was eight years old and you act like it was yesterday. For crying out loud, haven’t you noticed in the past ten years that I’ve always admitted to things I’ve done and would only deny the things I hadn’t, letting you beat a false confession out of me, that you would then use to further incriminate me for things I hadn’t done, just so that you could have someone to blame for everything that’s wrong.

                “Josh you’ve always been a liar and vindictive, trying to get back at me cause you think you’ve been done wrong!” She snapped back.

                “Are you kidding me?” I asked, “And why would you think, that I would think that? Could it be you know you’ve been treating me wrong all these years and you think I’m like you and just been holding it all inside until I can get a little payback? That’s sick and I think you’re sick.”

                “Josh I can’t believe you would say that,” she shot back.

                Shrugging, I shake my head,

                “Do you ever stop to wonder about why it is you think I’m such a horrible person? My whole life all you ever done was blame me for things I didn’t do and whenever I would try to plead my innocents you wouldn’t stop beating me until I confessed and would always hold that confession against me, telling me it’s why you could never believe me, because I confessed to you the last time after fervently denying something I told you I didn’t do. But do you recall how many times and how long it would take of you beating the hell out of me before I confessed? Did you ever once stop to think that I would have admitted to anything if it would have stopped you from hurting me, grounding me, punishing me and making me go without dinner?               

               No matter what I did or what happened you would judge me as being guilty before even speaking to me and automatically assumed the worse about me when I gave you no grounds to do so.  I’ve always been a good kid, stayed out of trouble, always doing what I was told, what I should, so much so I often get teased for always being so straight laced and afraid of ever doing anything even remotely bad or wrong. But you see only what you want to see in me and I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the threats, the accusations and being treated like a second class citizen, so I’m done, you got your wish, and I’m no longer your son.”

              

                Then I shook my head grabbed my bags and shoved my way past her, to wait out in the driveway for my father to pick me up. My heart was still racing, I never spoken to my mother like that before, heck until then I barely even stood up for myself…like ever. It felt good, if not a little scary and hurtful, because I finally admitted what I never had to courage to really face. Which was there was nothing I could do, nothing I could ever say, my mother hated me and would always see me as some stupid delinquent that she could bully and manipulate. Although a part of me was already looking back, thinking about my little brothers and how much I would miss them, imagining there reaction when they would ask about me and dreading whatever lies my mother would feed them. But this was something I had to do, I had to cut ties with my mother no matter how much it hurt, otherwise I would simply drown.

          But little did I know, that my mother's little rein of terror upon my life was far from over....


 

Scars of Who We Are Chapter XII

Chapter 12

-“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” Anne Lamott

               

At eighteen I finally broke down and killed myself, for I had enough. I had just graduated High-school and felt like life had thrown everything including the kitchen sink at me. Even graduating high-school hadn't felt real to me, or like something I really deserved. I kept expecting word to come down that there had been a mistake and I wasn't meant or supposed to graduate along with my friends. It felt weird saying goodbye and walking away from all I had known, High-school was something I once hated and feared coming to every morning because of bullies, the pressures of just getting by and the unforgiving social hierarchy. But, it was also the place where I made some of the best friends anyone could possibly meet and it was the place where I had fallen in love for the very first time. Sherry Troy had been the sister of one of my good friends and falling for her was something I had never meant to do. For when we first met that day in the cafeteria I had already knew that her social circle would never approve of me. She was popular, gorgeous, funny and sincere; she was also dating one of my friends. But as life happens, things happen and life changes, because the of them ended up breaking up and her I grew closer, exchanged numbers and started talking on the phone almost every day.
                About around that time my mother gave me some real motherly advice, which was,

“Listen, when any girl talks to you as much as this one does, calling you almost every day, it means she really likes you.”

                But I couldn't accept that, she didn't know Sherry, she didn't me and good things didn't usually happen to me. But I was young and just beginning to get schooled in love. Sherry gave me a reason to get up every day, seeing her was like Christmas morning and it gave me strength to face each day. For once I had something to look forward to other than the weekends I got to spend with my dad.

Of course I still remember the day when her sister Jane had approached me in class and told me how her sister was falling hard for me. It had been the happiest day of my life and felt like I had finally been thrown a life preserver and according to Jane my eyes lit up and sparked like the fourth of July, robbing her of her breath as she was taken aback by the purity of my reaction of hearing her news. I couldn't believe it, I was inspired.  

                I went home that night and wrote Sherry a poem proclaiming my love for her, playing coy all throughout the day, until we were walking to our busses when I slipped my poem into her hand and walked away smiling like an idiot on parade, felt like I could do anything, the world was mine.

The next morning her other sister Terry approached me that morning, excitedly telling me how much her sister had loved my poem and how no one had ever wrote her a poem before, that she was so happy and excited that she was actually and completely overjoyed. So now I couldn't wait to see her, I couldn't wait to tell her how much I loved her, I couldn't wait to feel her arms wrap around me, to hold her tight, imagining what our lives would be like together, picturing what it would be like to one day proposing to her, getting married and growing old together. (What they don’t tell you about being a hopeless romantic)

It wasn't

Sherry Troy, who's smile was and is still like the sunrise.

until lunchtime rolled around that I finally had the time to approach and ask her out, surrounded by her sisters and all of our mutual friends. She answered with a disgusted no, and after hearing all day how much she liked me by all of our friends, so I was dumbstruck, managing a feeble, “What?” And when she repeated her answer I could feel my dreams shattering and falling like rain all around me, my heart felt like it was breaking in two.

“But…my poem…” I mumbled numbly, “Was garbage, so I threw it away,” She replied, making me want to just crawl into a hole somewhere and die. But then came Terry and my friends trying to supportive and reminding her how crazy she was for me. She denied them over a dozen times, each one a blow to my heart, hearing her telling not just me, but everyone how she never liked me and never will. I wanted to beg them to stop, to ask them to stop trying to help me because it had hurt too much.

                I ended up spending the rest of my high school career in this on again, off again dance with her, trying to win her heart with every song and there were times where I could have sworn she had the same feelings for me, but whenever we would get close, it was like someone or something would always drive us further apart. It drove me crazy and eventually I gave up on chasing her, I walked away from love.

                But on graduation day, her sister Jane sees me and pulls me aside and asked me if I still had feelings for her sister.

                I couldn’t bear to speak the truth, I was too afraid to so much as think about her out of fear it’d spark that torch I carried for her and be left feeling like a love struck fool all over again, so I shrugged and said, “I don’t know….”

                Taking my hand, she pulled me close then and I could feel her eyes exploring the depths of my own and before I could ask what this was all about she says,
                “I have to tell you something, my sister did like you and probably still does, the reason she never said yes, was because of me.”

                I could feel my brow furrow, because I didn't understand, it didn't make sense to me….she had been one of my closest friends and I couldn't fathom why she would be sorry, or what she could have done to keep Sherry and me apart, then she said something I never expected to hear, because I had known her for years, she was my friend and confidant.
                “I've been in love with you for a long time and when I saw that look on your face when I told you how Sherry felt about you, I was jealous and I told her nothing but lie about you. I told her this had all been a game to you, because you only wanted her to make some other girl jealous. I told her you only seemed nice but in reality you were really just a player…And I’m sorry, I shouldn't have gotten in the way.”
                I could feel the earth giving away beneath my feat, I never felt or knew such an act of betrayal even existed in this world. I had no words, I couldn't speak, and all I could do was turn and walked away. It’s wasn’t until writing this that I realized that I still haven’t spoken to Jane since that day. But still every now and then I can’t help but wonder what my life would have been like if she never intervened.

Sherry and her sister Terry

               

                I turned away from my friend and walked away from her that day without ever looking, feeling a small twinkling of hope that it wasn't too late, believing I still had a chance to fix things and maybe, just maybe pick up from where we started. That day I couldn't stop scanning every face in the hall and the crowd of my graduation ceremony, hoping to find her face someone among the countless faces, to see her staring back at me. Imagining what I would do when I saw her and having this little fantasy that I would see her, walk up to her and pull her away from whoever she may have been talking to, pulling her against me as I leaned down to kiss her lips of soft velvet.

                I never did find her and I was too distracted to join in the excitement of celebrating of finally graduating from High-school, I was somewhere else while my friends were busy living in the moment. But I was too busy thinking about her, anxious to get home to call her and to just hear the sound of her voice. But when I finally got around to calling her no one was home and so I took off and went to my best friend’s graduation party hoping she’ll be there, but she wasn't.

                Days go by and I can’t seem to ever seem to get a hold of her, or catch anyone to just tell her that I called.  Eventually, one day her mom answers and she tells me that Sherry had moved out a few days ago and was now living with some boy she had just met. I don’t remember hanging up the phone, just the feeling of my heart breaking and the pieces falling down all around my feet.  I feel defeated and numb, I was given hope and it was in was torn away from me in one fell swoop. Shell shocked I wondered out of my room, hoping to find some reason to keep believing….to believe in something, anything, wanting to find some purpose and maybe a little hope. But my mother found me instead and asked why I was moping around. For once, I decided to just talk to her and tell her everything, hoping that I’d receive some of that age old motherly advice, or receive a little of that love that always seemed so out of reach. Instead she interrupted me before I could say but two words and said,
                “I don’t care, you’re just stupid, pathetic loser and I can’t stand you, I never could and the worse thing is that I never wanted you. You’re nothing but a stupid mistake and if it wasn't for your father I would have never birthed you, I wanted an abortion and he’s the only reason you’re still here because he wanted you. You were the accident that was never supposed to be and I think you would have been better off dead, because no one will ever love or want a pathetic, weak loser like yourself. “

                She turned and walked away from me then, striding toward her craft room, mumbling about how much she resented me and I hear her tell say with my own ears that the only reason she put up with me for so long was for the child support and the money. I couldn't believe it, I didn't want to. My father had been right all along, it’s exactly what he’d been trying to warn me about for years, but I never listened and now I could feel what remained of my already broken heart shatter into a million little pieces.  Leaving it so broken that they could now pass seamlessly through the eye of a needle, I was broken, in every sense of the word and I couldn't move. Not at first anyway. All I could do was watch disappear into her little craft room, expecting at any moment for her to pop back out and tell me this was all some sort of twisted and cruel joke, I didn’t want to think she was serious. But after several minutes of just standing there speechless with my mind reeling. I hear every 18 minutes someone commits suicide and ever forty seconds, someone attempts one. And I was about to become another statistic.

In that moment I lost my faith, I hated God. I couldn't fathom why he would make this woman my mother and never allow me any real happiness. I had been hopeful my entire life, wanting and trying to believe that things would get better, believing that they had to. But my battles were too numerous, too long and hard and I was tired. Immediately I turned and headed upstairs, grabbing a few prescription pill bottles my mother had kept in our medicine cabinet. I’m not sure what all I took, but I took seven or eight pills from every bottle that read “Only take 1 every 12 hours,” And “Do not mix with other medication” Then not wanting to risk anyone seeing what I was up to, or trying to stop me, I shoved the pills down into my pocket. This was my decision and my choice and I wasn’t going to give anyone a chance to stop or delay me.

         With a bottle of Vicodin that I had left over from my wisdom teeth surgery,  along with the various other pills that I had stuffed down into my pockets. Then I took one final look at my reflection in the mirror and waved goodbye to the person I used to be, the person I used to know.

       Returning to my room, I closed and locked my door, filled my cd player with my favorite cds and took a bottle of prescription sleeping pills, along with about 3/4

                I wrote a single sentence on my desk’s notepad, “This is my goodbye, I’ve waited too long, I’m not worth anything, and tell dad I’m sorry.”

                It didn't take long for the room to start to spin and for the shortness of breath to begin and I fell onto my bed, crawling up onto the sheets feeling so cold as my body went numb, feeling pins and needles all over body, I felt like I was suffocating, struggling to breathe and it was then my world went black.
                At first darkness was all I could see and feel. I was relieved, because I was finally free from all the pain and loneliness that plagued me for long. No longer did I feel all the pain that was tearing my heart apart, It was over and death wasn't so bad I thought, I felt a strange sense of comfort in darkness that coiled and wrapped around me. I was a little disappointed though, I was hoping to find myself before God and demand an explanation, an apology for all that been wrong. But I didn't and I didn't see a light at the end of the tunnel, or loved ones who had already passed over. Instead I found myself in a world surrounded by darkness and for a moment it was soothing and a little peaceful. But then I felt this jerk and then I had this sense like I was falling. I was falling faster and faster,  feeling what felt like cool air rushing up to greet me as I plummeted downward, feeling the air grow and become warm, then hot as it rushed over me. The realization of what I have done hit me then. I had committed a cardinal sin, I had committed suicide, I wasn’t going to get my trial, I wasn’t going to able to curse at the God who made me and let me cry so many tears. I wasn’t going to get answers and I would never learn why or the reasons for any of it, I was going straight to hell.

                In my fear I cried out to God and it was then I felt descent slow and the heat dispel, until when I was once again just floating there in the inky blackness and I felt like was being watched and I sensed this profound sadness in the air around me, before I felt what I can only describe was warm comforting arms wrapping around me, pulling me close and lifting me up. I have no words for the feelings that washed over me. The love I felt was overpowering and I felt like a child in the warm, loving arms a loved one, of a father who was holding me close. I began to cry as I heard the voice apologizing for the struggles I’ve had, that despite what I had done, he was still proud of me, but telling me not to lose hope and that I had to stay, I had to go back, asking me to stay strong, to have faith and to live, to really live, that I’d go on to do great things in time.

                But I didn't want to, I wanted to stay in this place that I was, I clung to the father, pleading to stay and I saw the faces of my father, my grandmother, my friends and all of those who would miss me. It made me sad, but still I didn't want to go, I was happy here and now, in this warmth.
                So he showed me something else instead, he showed me myself, decades later, living a life where I’m happy, with my dreams finally coming true and I see the world waking up and finally beginning to read again, I see a family, a loving wife.

                Without really thinking I feel myself letting go and I’m blinded by this sudden light that seemed to appear out of nowhere and when I look around, I discover I’m outside and I’m flying, miles above the earth, the view is breathtaking. But I’m actually was falling, down through sky, past the clouds, with the world rushing up to greet me, the air is cool against my skin and comforting as it rushes through my hair. I see my house, coming into view and I’m falling faster. I’m not afraid, but I bring my arms up protectively around me as I fall into the roof, passing insubstantiality through the shingles and support beams of my house.  I Falling through the kitchen where my mother had started making dinner and I can smell macaroni and cheese from the pot on the stove, before I pass through the floor to where I saw myself, laying so still and alone on my bed, where I crash with a jolt into my body.

                I sat up just as I reunited with my body, taking a sharp intake of breath as I rose up off the bed, it hurts to breathe, yet I’m gasping for breath. I’m cold and my body burns as blood rushes back through my limbs, giving me a feeling pin and needles, that you often get when a part of your body falls asleep. But mine was all over and then I crawled out of bed, where I collapsed on the floor and passed out once more.

                I firmly believe that I died this day; but you may have come to your own conclusion. But this is what happened to me and when I woke up, I felt okay, even though I knew my the worse was far from over, instinctively I knew would be leaving Grant County and saying goodbye to all my friends until the day came when we would meet again. But I knew whatever came and no matter how things would turn out, I would survive it. I may have died a coward, a scared and frightened little boy, but I was born again and in so doing became a man.   

                Closing note: a few years ago thanks to the advent of Facebook, Sherry managed to look me up and send me a friend request. We still talk and she tells me she’s always had strong feelings for me. But she’s currently in a relationship and has a few kids and to me she’s just as beautiful as she was the day I first met her in the High-School cafeteria.

Halloween 2008 I'm the Crow and these are my cousins.