Regarding Life and Being Truly Free

(For some reason, I rarely have anything to say. But I cannot help feeling compelled to say something now, because how else will I come to terms with these cavernous holes I have dug myself into? On the other hand, how does anyone go about accepting life?)
     I have known that I would die for so long that I can't recall ever seeing life as more than a line segment, a short span of time during which I, along with everyone else in turn, would develop, and subsequently deteriorate. To me, life has always been an anxious wait for the hammer to fall while dreading the thought of seeing myself slowly waste away. And yet, I have never wanted for passion, never succumbed to the inevitable self-destruction of my pessimism. Even now, I imagine being free and perhaps being at peace and at ease. 
     But I do not know what freedom really is, or really feels like; not because I haven't been free, but because I have always felt trapped. Trapped by my own idiosyncratic flaws, all my god awful failings, all the people I've hurt - so many fucking people - trapped by an environment I didn't ask to be brought into, and by painful awareness I might have lived without. I am forever damned by the scars I allowed myself to make, by the weakness that is all my longing and desperation, the love I allowed to wound me and render me bitter and cynical. 
     So even though it scares me immensely to suggest it, the only solution I have ever employed is fueled by a philosophy that life is short and although joy, for me and many others, is bittersweet, it is the only joy available to you. If we are not all searching for joy, it is only because we have yet to understand it. In spite of all the things I have kept inside and allowed to boil, things which will stay tucked away for the rest of my life, I have found joy. Somewhere outside of ourselves, there is much more to life. I take comfort knowing that a happier world exists outside my head.  

Lake of Green Water

Lake of Green Water: Ten Years Post-Trauma


       In the heavy heat of summer, the tepid water before me is alive and demonic with the trashing movements of blissful children in careless play. But I have come to visit a grave, one which has been all but lost: its tomb robbed, its stone worn bare, its earth unkempt. It is said that time heals all things. Perhaps this is true. Perhaps the slow tick of time covered the wound that was left so many years ago, the skin no longer sensitive; the scar gone.
       The summer before kindergarten, when I was five and she was six, was one of days with cold nights and hot afternoons. Ignorant of the ever encroaching school year, we went about our merry lives without a care in the world, much like any other children would. But our parents, to celebrate our final summer before we were swallowed up in a seemingly never-ending world of textbooks and homework, took us camping. We stayed in a large, two-room tent that housed Emma, my father, and myself, my father in one section and Emma and I in another. While he slept heavily in the farthest room from the zipped-down door, we sat, wide awake in the front section. We were both dynamic children, apt to bounce off of invisible walls with nameless exhilaration, so sleep was the farthest thing from our minds. It was not long before we started running out of things to talk and laugh about when Emma got an idea: fishing. A man-made lake was only a few yards from our site. There was a dock built specifically for fishing with no one outside to guard it, or notice us at all for that matter. So I agreed. I grabbed the tackle box after tiptoeing out of the tent and ran to catch up with Emma as she skipped away from me.
       In the shadow of the trees, we could just barely make out the rippling reflection of the water. Emma raced blindly through the trees while I struggled to hold on to the tackle box that was a substantial amount of weight for a five year old to carry. But somehow, I ran as well, and although she had been a few feet away to begin with, I attempted to close the space between us. And I would have, but I tripped. It was stupid, really. I tripped over my own two feet, and the tackle box fell out of my hands onto the ground where it was emptied of its contents. Silver hooks gleamed, bladed smiles grinning animatedly from within the menagerie of rubber lures and unused, brightly feathered flies. I glanced up just long enough to see my friend disappear into the darkness. I tried to pick up everything as quickly as I could, but I could tell that my knees were bleeding and to be alone, in the woods, in the dark.... I got up and tried whispering Emma's name into the trees, but all I heard in reply was the wind. I began to make my cautious way towards the soft ripples that I could see more clearly ahead. Then I ran; again. But the closer I got to water, the more worried I became. The silence crushed me, and it was getting hard to breathe. I stopped running and stepped out of the trees, but to no greater comfort. I looked all around.
        I heard it before I saw it. A wild thrashing in the water took me by surprise, and the choking muffled cry was enough to convince me that it was time to run again. I threw myself down on the dock and screamed her name, but Emma made no reply. The water was still moving, though, and I could hear her gasping for breath, so I reached my arm as far down as I could. I felt myself panic, but all I could think of was my friend, and how I needed to help her, that she couldn’t swim…. I started screaming again, telling her to grab my hand, until after a few moments, she did. I had her hand in mine and I believed she was safe.
      But she was heavier than I had thought, heavier than the tackle box that I had been carrying only minutes before. I tried to pull her to the surface, but she slipped out of my grip. I tried to use both hands, but it was cold outside, and the water was colder. I quickly lost feeling in my fingers, then my hands, then my wrists. I tried to wriggle her out of the freezing water somehow, but I couldn't. And she slipped farther and farther away from me until I lost her completely. Screaming at the top of my lungs, screaming her name, I begged her to come back, to try, but I knew she could not hear. And it was not long before the ripples stopped and the water settled and silence surrounded me.
       After that, I remember not being able to breathe, feeling my lungs contract and my throat burn, but my chest dry and empty. I made myself get up and run, run even though my legs burned and even though the cold air stung my eyes. I ran and fell, several times, disoriented by the pulsing blood in my ears. It took me a few minutes to find the tent again because I stopped seeing the world around me when she slipped beneath the cold surface of the water. I stumbled. Forced myself through the rough plastic and, wheezing, dragged myself to my father's side of the tent. I woke him up and started screaming again. After I had managed to utter a few intelligible words, he got out of the tent and started running towards the lake. I watched him go, but I could not move. I collapsed on the ground. The last thing I remember thinking about was the tackle box, and that, were it not for my dropping it, Emma may have survived the night.
       There is no way to forget. No way to go back to the harmony of youth once it has been tainted by the memory, the fear, of death. No way to close your eyes and without waking up to a harsh reality. No way to return to a dream once it is lost in the moments between sleep and waking.
I remember Emma’s hair, the graceful movement of her dark locks onto the slender bend of her shoulders. I remember her laugh…her smile. I remember the pain of ignorance, of not understanding what it meant to be dead. I remember thinking that she would come back. I remember the thick feeling of dread welling up inside when I realized that she wouldn’t. I remember not being able to cry.
       Sitting now on the bright tinctures of new swing-sets, you would never know the merciless reality of the things hidden here, for the laughter is too real. All that is left now is the burn of the phlogiston orb, the pink skin of ignorant youth, and the elation of living.

An Excerpt from "The Lethal Timepiece" by Lydia A.

It began with the descent of a coffee bean. In the green of Owen's eyes, there was another man overlapping his actions: a vivid deja-vu. His knuckles slept, digging into his chin and throat, his thorax leaning heavily over the steaming mug on the counter. Across the room, the apparatus gurgled stubbornly into the torrid soup and spat its creature into the coffee pot with bitter hisses and snarls. The dull repetition of these sounds was drawing Owen back through the eye of the needle into the warm smallness of sleep. He closed his eyes momentarily, allowing the weight of his head to fall, before blinking his way back to the present where a tiny clattering had tickled his ears. Reaching his hand down to the white tile floor, Owen captured between his fingers a bean, a coffee bean that had lost its way.

The back of Owen’s neck twitched, his brows flexing as he turned the black speck over, concentrating on something very far away. There was an itch somewhere in his brain, a small uneasiness that threatened to rise up, to disrupt the quietude of Owen’s inertia. From somewhere, he saw an image of himself, shaking his head, pursing his lips, pinching his nose, and his fingers raking the back of his neck.

            He shook his head, pursed his lips, pinched the bridge of his nose, and his fingers raked the back of his neck.

The motions had occurred as if beyond his control. For a few moments, he was lost in a contemplative fog, baffled by the accuracy of his deja-vu. The similarities suggested premonition, but Owen was not a spiritual man, and thus began to be haunted by the idea of such coincidence. His eyes were gaping, still dilated and encrusted with the sands of sleep. As he sighed into his coffee cup, his tongue seizing the inky heat, he mulled over the thought of deja-vu, thought about it deeply; dissected it and forgot its meaning, all the while rolling the little black dot between his fingers.

            The coffee-maker uttered a relieved sigh and quit its regurgitation, which jerked Owen back into his morning habituals. He glanced at the clock above the stove across the room from him, putting down his coffee mug as he realized with remarkable indifference that he was probably going to be late for work. With a bitter moan, Owen reluctantly allowed his legs to carry him out of the kitchen, through the living room, and down the hall to his bedroom.

It was often necessary for him to function in this perfunctory manner, because unlike the monotonous moles whose cubicles surrounded his tired work-space, Owen had dreams. He laughed at the thought of calling his occupation "work." All day, he sat at a desk accumulating paper, stacking it neatly in trays (supposedly to assume the appearance of organization, Owen often theorized); and throughout the day, various individuals would arrive to remove chunks of his white, rectangular mountain. He sometimes thought that if, one day, no one were to come to his desk to chip pieces from his ivory tower, that it would bridge the gap between the earth and moon, and that he could walk on it indefinitely, perpendicular to this disgusting routine, straight to that beckoning orb.

            Owen often went to the moon. He would lie on his back on the floor of his cubicle, his feet secure against the infinite reams before him, and walk up. Defying gravity and all semblance of reason, he would walk the entire 238,900 miles, in silence. His office shoes, brown loafers that were conveniently comfortable, kissed the edges of memos, faxes, announcements, reminders, clip-art birthday party invitations, and printable coupons from the coffee shop that no one liked, but that everyone went to because the good coffee shop was expensive and all the way across town. But Owen made his own coffee at home, and so the papers kept piling up until he was immersed in them, and could not breathe for fear of getting paper-cuts in his throat.

Regarding Amity Bitzel

     The first time I thought about killing my father was probably when I was about four. At the time, my mother, brother and I all slept together downstairs; not in beds, but scattered throughout the living room. My brother, who is eight years older than me, slept at the far end of the room in the big couch from which you could see the dark foyer and the hallway in front of the stairs that led into the kitchen, and perhaps a little of the pitch black that lead up to the second floor. I occupied a love-seat that blocked a set of french doors that I never saw opened, and at my feet, in the corner where the living-room met the sun-room, was a big black recliner that my mother slept in.
     I don't have many memories of my childhood, mostly because for many years I saw everything through a thick haze. Today its as if the entire period is this foggy memory that I have, but can't recall well enough to know that it wasn't just a dream. What I do remember is lying awake in the wafting darkness as I imagined leaning over my father's sleeping body and lodging a ball-peen hammer in his skull. I had these thoughts every night, and I could not even begin to recall the endless hours spent awake thinking of ways to get away with brutal and savage murder without being caught. I suppose that at the time I didn't consider my status as a minor, as a child no less, to be an element I could have employed to my advantage, but if I had, I am sure I would have made it farther into the process than fantasizing.
     Amity Bitzel said even on a good day, it felt like living in a child's version of war, just waiting to see if the bombs would start falling and wishing you had shelter. I often felt exactly that way, and when I heard her story on Ira Glass's This American Life, I felt bad for identifying with her; because my father never beat me. I recall being spanked, and he would ask me if I wanted now, or later. I always said later, desperately hoping he would forget; he never did. But beyond that, my father never hit me. He didn't have to. I have always felt guilty for identifying with people like Amity, who suffered real physical abuse, because in comparison, I had it good.
     I can recall once when I was sobbing and distraught; he hugged me and I tried to pull away, but he wouldn't let me. It was very cliche. He held me as I cried, and the whole time I felt an anger, a furious resentment building in my core and it only made me cry harder. I tried many times to think of my father as the enemy, as evil and cruel, someone with harmful intentions. The truth, though, was that no one was important enough to him to justify the thought. His blatant indifference was just as painful and frightening and hurtful as his beatings would have been, had we gotten any. My father didn't hit me, but he did take a bite out of my heart, my brain, and my soul. To this day I feel the emptiness that he created.
     Amity went on to share an e-mail her father had sent explaining his management of childhood trauma in an attempt to appeal to her sympathy. He talked about his abusive father, and that he eventually learned to love him, to forget the bitterness. I have hated my father for years and I consider myself weak for feeling bad when I say that there's no one in the world I hate more than myself except my dad. Which I say a lot. Amity's father included this in his message: "I regret and feel guilty all the time for being a bad father." My father has never admitted being unkind and denies being abusive. My father has never apologized because he has never changed; because he thinks nothing is wrong.
     Now I am 18 and when a romantic man suggests taking me away from everything else, I leap. I crave and yearn and will spend my life in desperation of escape. But I can't get away. He has planted himself within me, and thus I walk around, full of his emptiness, aching.

Happiness

     For obvious reasons, people use one another constantly. Day after day, someone takes advantage of someone, and in this way, mankind has stolen from itself and sucked the marrow from its own bones only to find its belly empty and aching. In all the years of wanting more from a world that offers so much in excess there has never been a single person to reach the top. There is no ultimate goal. Who was the most successful man who ever lived? Was it the businessman whose company earned millions, who drove an expensive car, who golfed, who gave his children money instead of love and consequently rose to height of the elite? Or was it the poor man who could not give his children money, but instead taught them to love, gave them knowledge, wisdom, and gratitude?
     For decades, commercialization has fueled the thrust towards the "American Dream" but it seems that this dream is one that has changed over the years. In 1931, James Truslow Adams defined the American dream as an ethos stating that "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement." But peel away a hundred years of calloused faith and hope and what is there left but the desire from which everything sprung? Is not the true dream, American or otherwise, to be happy? To be truly fulfilled and not just satisfied or satiated but to be happy enough to smile and laugh without cause or question.
      Men have dedicated their lives to promoting the idea that happiness can be bought and sold but the truth is that it can't, happiness can only be felt. You cannot buy or steal or borrow the things that true happiness comes from. We can only fight to cover up the vast emptiness that is plaguing modern man, eating him from the inside-out. We can climb the ladder as long as we want, but will the unknown thing that's waiting for us at the top be worth the struggle? Will it make you happy? Will it even be there at all?

Dear Reader,

Do you know that you are beautiful? Do you even know what beauty is? Because the term is often thrown about in such a careless manner that the word loses its meaning. I believe that there are beautiful things everywhere that are hidden in the inconspicuous folds of ugliness, and most often beauty is wasted. Beauty is the only thing that makes us worth wanting. Dear beautiful reader, do you know that you are worth wanting?

Opening Up

     I used to believe that "naked" was what you were when you showered, bathed, changed clothes, had sex. I used to think that I was naked regularly, that everyone was. When I was fourteen, I decided that in a perfect world, we would all be naked, crouched under the bleeding heat of an untouchable Sun, filling our dry mouths with dust as we cursed dumbly at the unchanging orb; eating dirt, hissing at the sky. I once believed that you could shed your cotton and polyester skins to assume the garb of creation and become "naked."
     I have learned, however, that nakedness is more than can be beheld by the human eye. Nakedness entails  vulnerability, helplessness. Perhaps those of us who are willing to admit our weaknesses are the most naked. Regardless, there are some things that cannot be hidden by clothes, or makeup, masks, sheets, walls. It is as if every person is possessed by some carnal weakness that forces us to drive expensive cars and wear designer clothing. And yet we are naked. We cannot protect ourselves from the harshness of reality, but instead we strive to protect ourselves from the threat of nakedness. We find ourselves cold, desperate, alone, and ugly, and thus toil to clothe ourselves. We are cold, so we struggle for warmth. We are desperate, so we work until we have excess. We are alone, so we search for love. We are ugly, so we wear masks and makeup; we trade faces and alter appearances.
   
     What are we trying to hide?
   
     The truth is that this question can be answered. One piece at a time, we can put together what will amount to the insecurities of mankind, and although it may be impossible to overcome them, it will at least be easier to face them directly. There are many stories to be told herein, and if I find I am not alone, I will share them in a way that is pleasing to the reader. Until then, I convey my anonymous affection and most humble gratitude.