The routine is, they call me and I don't answer. I wait for the voice mail. I don't listen to it. It's always the same, what's the point? Our conversations are so predictable I might as well rig up a tape recorder to play my role in the conversation. So what's the point?
My phone rings and I let “Dad” disappear into my missed calls list and go about my day. It was easy to go about the day. In fact, easy is an understatement. I skipped class and avoided responsibility as usual in a delightful haze of innocence.
It was the email that jarred me. The gist of it was, “We need to talk.” Those words, each so harmless in their nature, put together burned into my eyes like the monster hiding under the six-year-old's bed. My brain deciphered them and assembled them and I choked. My stomach and my throat switched places, and I picked up my phone. Instinctively my thumb danced from button to button. Phone against my ear, my chest avoided the panicked hyperventilation threatening to break through the gates. Ring once, my stomach clenches. Ring twice, my skin ripples like a pond disrupted by an oversized stone. Ring thrice and my eyes squeeze tight, partly from the sleep deprivation and partly from the desperation.
Sleep deprivation, yeah, that should be mentioned. Thirty some hours awake I lay in my bed and nothing further away than slumber. Per my routine, I recognized my sleeping schedule was useless and in a less than scientific attempt to correct it I spent the night awake, distracted by video games, coffee and alcohol. That email blinded me at the wrong end of a day spent sleepless. It was fun to pretend my body deprived of necessities invented these fears. Unfortunately, it was undeniable that dad's email carried an imposing weight signaling naught but some painful self discovery.
The phone stops ringing. Go to voice mail, tell me nothing except my father's name, and at what point I should leave my message. Terrified, I return to my sleepless faux-comfort under my blanket in bed and wish I could sleep. Flashes come, one by one, a parade of stills assaulting my brain. The things that could possibly be wrong are well documented by my imagination: Your four year old nephew stares at his no longer breathing twin suffocated by the rope they danced with. Your grandma suppresses tears as she makes the call you waited for, he died in his sleep. Your dad tries bravery when he tells you his cancer returned.
The phone rings. Dad is calling. Thirty six hours I have been awake now. My hand jumps to the phone from its prone position along my recumbent body. My head doesn't move. My eyes don't open. Memory flips the clamshell open and lifts it to my ear. Without thought I shove the phone to my head and demand, “Hello?” From there my tension dissipates. Fear of the known is more palatable by the body than dealing with horrific scene followed by more horrific scene playing in your brain's theater. The unknown encompassed everything bad that might possibly happen to me. The known only made me consider the cancer suffocating my father's carotid artery. My brain was satisfied and glad for a specific terror to delve into. Ecstatic, it dived into the clammy skinned familiarity of depression. Overjoyed, it pulled my stomach up into my lungs and started spitting the rage. Entrhalled, it told my body how easy it was to give up.
My body tingles and does nothing else. I don't control my limbs anymore. I don't know what to do, and if I did I wouldn't know how.
He tells me in simple words his situation does not look good. The day finished with my body resting in our sofa on the porch, sucking down cigarette after cigarette, draw after draw punctuating the punctuationless existence of a man trapped in a moment. Friend came and friend went. She didn't care. He didn't want to know. She didn't want to know but asked anyways. He wanted to know, and he cared, but he was too scared to ask. At this point I was alone. I know this pain will not end soon. It will live in my heart and coat the inside of my skin, creating a dragon hide separating myself from the rest of the world. So quiet and loud the world swims around me. “Please turn off,” the glaze over my eyes begs. Finally the porch grows tiresome. So you get ready for bed.
Bed and sleep and its been almost forty eight hours and you know sleep is what you need but that is where the nightmares stay. You open that box of pills because you need to sleep and it doesn't really matter if you're not drinking, right? So you'll take, what, four times the recommended dosage? Yeah, that sounds right, your situation is easily four times shittier. Then you, I, he, still can't sleep so crack a beer. That CO2 release, that anxious, metal pop is exciting as the first sip finds that spot in your stomach, uncomfortable and hurtful in the most satisfying way possible. And you sip and gulp because you know somewhere at the bottom of that can is the answer, that world where the hurt goes to sleep for awhile. You find the bottom of that can and goddamnit the world is still around you. So you go back to the pills, one more and one more and then they're gone all sixteen of them and you're still awake so you say goodbye and break back into the booze. And then it's goodbye to the self that you love, the others that you love, and the self that you remember.
My phone rings and I let “Dad” disappear into my missed calls list and go about my day. It was easy to go about the day. In fact, easy is an understatement. I skipped class and avoided responsibility as usual in a delightful haze of innocence.
It was the email that jarred me. The gist of it was, “We need to talk.” Those words, each so harmless in their nature, put together burned into my eyes like the monster hiding under the six-year-old's bed. My brain deciphered them and assembled them and I choked. My stomach and my throat switched places, and I picked up my phone. Instinctively my thumb danced from button to button. Phone against my ear, my chest avoided the panicked hyperventilation threatening to break through the gates. Ring once, my stomach clenches. Ring twice, my skin ripples like a pond disrupted by an oversized stone. Ring thrice and my eyes squeeze tight, partly from the sleep deprivation and partly from the desperation.
Sleep deprivation, yeah, that should be mentioned. Thirty some hours awake I lay in my bed and nothing further away than slumber. Per my routine, I recognized my sleeping schedule was useless and in a less than scientific attempt to correct it I spent the night awake, distracted by video games, coffee and alcohol. That email blinded me at the wrong end of a day spent sleepless. It was fun to pretend my body deprived of necessities invented these fears. Unfortunately, it was undeniable that dad's email carried an imposing weight signaling naught but some painful self discovery.
The phone stops ringing. Go to voice mail, tell me nothing except my father's name, and at what point I should leave my message. Terrified, I return to my sleepless faux-comfort under my blanket in bed and wish I could sleep. Flashes come, one by one, a parade of stills assaulting my brain. The things that could possibly be wrong are well documented by my imagination: Your four year old nephew stares at his no longer breathing twin suffocated by the rope they danced with. Your grandma suppresses tears as she makes the call you waited for, he died in his sleep. Your dad tries bravery when he tells you his cancer returned.
The phone rings. Dad is calling. Thirty six hours I have been awake now. My hand jumps to the phone from its prone position along my recumbent body. My head doesn't move. My eyes don't open. Memory flips the clamshell open and lifts it to my ear. Without thought I shove the phone to my head and demand, “Hello?” From there my tension dissipates. Fear of the known is more palatable by the body than dealing with horrific scene followed by more horrific scene playing in your brain's theater. The unknown encompassed everything bad that might possibly happen to me. The known only made me consider the cancer suffocating my father's carotid artery. My brain was satisfied and glad for a specific terror to delve into. Ecstatic, it dived into the clammy skinned familiarity of depression. Overjoyed, it pulled my stomach up into my lungs and started spitting the rage. Entrhalled, it told my body how easy it was to give up.
My body tingles and does nothing else. I don't control my limbs anymore. I don't know what to do, and if I did I wouldn't know how.
He tells me in simple words his situation does not look good. The day finished with my body resting in our sofa on the porch, sucking down cigarette after cigarette, draw after draw punctuating the punctuationless existence of a man trapped in a moment. Friend came and friend went. She didn't care. He didn't want to know. She didn't want to know but asked anyways. He wanted to know, and he cared, but he was too scared to ask. At this point I was alone. I know this pain will not end soon. It will live in my heart and coat the inside of my skin, creating a dragon hide separating myself from the rest of the world. So quiet and loud the world swims around me. “Please turn off,” the glaze over my eyes begs. Finally the porch grows tiresome. So you get ready for bed.
Bed and sleep and its been almost forty eight hours and you know sleep is what you need but that is where the nightmares stay. You open that box of pills because you need to sleep and it doesn't really matter if you're not drinking, right? So you'll take, what, four times the recommended dosage? Yeah, that sounds right, your situation is easily four times shittier. Then you, I, he, still can't sleep so crack a beer. That CO2 release, that anxious, metal pop is exciting as the first sip finds that spot in your stomach, uncomfortable and hurtful in the most satisfying way possible. And you sip and gulp because you know somewhere at the bottom of that can is the answer, that world where the hurt goes to sleep for awhile. You find the bottom of that can and goddamnit the world is still around you. So you go back to the pills, one more and one more and then they're gone all sixteen of them and you're still awake so you say goodbye and break back into the booze. And then it's goodbye to the self that you love, the others that you love, and the self that you remember.
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