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?