Hi, where to start. I’m here against my will. My wife insists that I take a little while to work on myself before we end up having children together. I’ve been to six other practitioners and none of them have given me anything like what I’m looking for. I’m not sure I even need anything aside from being told to play the cards I’ve been dealt. I don’t think you’ll be able to tell me anything about myself that I haven’t already discovered through all of the grueling rumination that’s forces itself on me.
Sometimes when I’m about to start my shift at work I experience an intense bout of nausea and usually end up throwing up a few times. I know from where my problem stems. In lieu of you speaking and interrupting me I’d respectfully request that you let me deliver this presentation and for you to save your comments for the end.
I feel this weight wherever I go. Stronger than gravity it’s like everything within me is denser than it ought to be, but when the weight lets up the jitters arrive and I have the overwhelming urge to cut away from everyone and everything. It’s as if I’m being held beneath the water. The palm of someone’s hand crushing the top of my head and submerging it in a murky pond. I hold my breath and it’s painful. The desire to open my mouth and inhale will nearly overtake my instinct for survival. On the cusp of such an action though — without fail — the pressure will let up and I will rise above the water and gulp down a long satisfying breath of fresh air, only to be instantly shoved back into the depths. I cannot express this burden to anyone else, for fear that this cycle is just the baseline of what life consists of, and who likes to be around someone complaining about what we all have to go through by the mere act of being.
The arm which pushed me under is attached to my father, and my issues likely stem from a series of incidents in my boyhood. He was a strict man. A man with strong values that he refused to live by in his private life, but had no issue exemplifying while in public. When I was six years old he saw that me and my younger brother hadn’t made our beds properly. He called us upstairs and told us if we didn’t correctly fold one of the blankets on the floor in twenty seconds — perfectly — we would have to do a set of ten push-ups. Now keep in mind, it seems rather achievable, but we’re dealing with a six and four year old here.
Needless to say we failed. We failed over and over again until our arms started giving out, with my dad making passive-aggressive comments throughout this process.
“Jesus, we really having this much trouble with a blanket guys, alright drop for another ten.” Things like that.
I became so frustrated with my brother that I yelled at him to just let me do it. He was small and slow, and my arms were so unbelievably tired. He didn’t deserve that, but the rage shot out of my mouth anyway. My father then grabbed me by both my shoulders, lifted me off of the ground, and pinned me against the wall. He screamed at me for yelling at my little brother. Whenever he was angry his face would go red, his eyes would narrow, and the veins in his forehead would form a “Y” shape while he was accosting us for something or other.
I got stellar grades. My siblings not so much. My sister Maddie was the youngest of us and had the most trouble — was barely passing. I don’t know how whether passing or failing necessarily matters in elementary school though. My younger brother Ben was a solid B/C student. Me — the oldest — was sitting pretty with a 4.0 GPA. I remember the bus ride home after receiving my first “B.” It was in US History, freshman year. The trip home felt far quicker than usual. Time has a tendency to flow the opposite speed one wants. I stared at my report card in horror of what he might do when he saw it. Every possibility went through my mind. He could start throwing things at me, shout at me, ground me, hit me, even kill me.
When we all got home our dad was sitting at the kitchen table reading a newspaper, his glasses draped out over his nostrils. I took a deep breath and got in line behind Ben and Maddie, and accepted that I was going to be made a rag doll for the rest of the day. Maddie and Ben had improved their marks. Maddie had gone from failing all of her classes to passing all of them with Ds and Cs. Ben had gone from three Bs and three Cs to five Bs and one C. High fives and congratulations all around.
I handed my report card to him. He studied it intensely for a few moments, took his glasses off, and then pinched the bridge of his nose.
“What’s this ‘B’ all about?” He asked.
“I don’t…uh…” I stammered.
“Some pop quiz you didn’t tell me about? Homework assignment missed? What, you just got a B for no reason?” He interrogated further.
“No…I…I don’t think so…” I said.
“Whatever. I don’t have the energy for this right now. Fix it.” He said, snapping his fingers and pointing at the paper. I let out a sigh of relief after we all returned to our room. His standards were impossible to maintain. The moment you pass one milestone — or reach a certain height of achievement — it in effect becomes the new standard. Reasoning all of it out now I can see the ridiculousness of it, but at the time it felt like a permanent state of perpetual failure. I was convinced that if I were an artist and had painted the Sistine Chapel, my father would then demand my every wayward doodle be just as magnificent or else I was getting lazy.
I was responsible for my siblings while my parents were at work — which was every day. From 6AM until 6PM I was in charge keeping two young troublemakers in line. Their mistakes became my mistakes considering I was responsible for them, and if I were being responsible they wouldn’t be in the position to make such mistakes. This scheme of rules turned the lot of us — even my mother — into pathological liars for a time. I learned all of the intricacies of the well-crafted lie. Every parameter must be accounted for or else he would find it and begin an aggressive cross-examination. He would tell us, “Listen, if you lie to me it’s going to be much worse,” but it wasn’t. The truth and the lie got the same treatment. Allow me to give an example.
My sister wanted to skip school one day. I sent my brother off to the bus stop by himself while I tried to reason with her, but she kept telling me that she, “had an idea.” The rule in the house was if we didn’t have a fever and weren’t puking we were to attend school. My dad needed photo confirmation of the vomit or a picture of the thermometer in our mouth with a reading of over one hundred degrees. I wanted to just run off to school. I wasn’t sure which was more irresponsible. Leaving my youngest sister in the house alone and missing school, or letting my brother go off to the bus stop on his own.
She gathered up a couple of eggs, a can of vegetable soup, a bunch of potato chips, cookies, and orange juice. She tossed them into the blender, dumped it out into the toilet, and then took a picture of it and sent it to our father. I called him and asked him what I should do. He told me to go to school, that he’d be home early, and asked me to make sure she leaves the doors and windows locked. I did what he told me.
After I came home I noticed that my sister was laying down on the couch playing video games as if nothing was wrong. I immediately ordered her to get a blanket from our room and a large bowl or bucket from the kitchen. I didn’t know what early meant and so I hurried as fast as I could manage. I washed the blender thoroughly and put it away. How would we explain the missing food? She ate it? Why would a sick person be eating this weird assortment of foods? Cookies? Eggs? The vegetable soup I can believe but the potato chips and orange juice? It was a disaster waiting to happen.
I high-tailed it to the convenience store about a block down the road on my bike with a bunch of change from my piggy bank and purchased replacements for all of the missing food items. I took two eggs from the new carton, put them in the old one, and discarded the new one. I did the same with the cookies. The orange juice I needed to dump down the sink so that it was filled to the exact same level as the previous orange juice, and then discarded the other bottle. A similar process took place for each of the ingredients in my sister’s vomit concoction until it appeared that nothing whatsoever had changed. Everything was then hidden in a trash bag and brought outside to the bin.
It was on this level of subtlety and precision that I was operating daily. Each of my movements being judged for consistency. My eyes must open from sleep the right way. I must breathe properly. If only I could’ve bent and stretched myself into the perfect shape — then maybe he would’ve loved me for a second. He can never know this, but if I had known that there was a glorious glowing “Atta Boy” at the end of it I’d put myself through it again.
I wasn’t the only recipient mind you. My father once discovered my younger brother had around three weeks worth of unfinished homework assignments hidden under his bed. I could hear him screaming from downstairs, and so I rushed up to see what was going on. My dad’s back was facing me and he was standing in the doorway to our bedroom. My brother moved his head to the side and shot me an obvious look. A begging pleading look. The look a cat gives you when it’s barely clinging to a thin branch over a swift deep river. My dad noticed this and turned around.
“Get out of here. This isn’t your business,” he shouted.
I did what he told me and took my younger sister outside. She sat in the yard, picked individual blades of grass from the ground, and tossed them to the wind. I sat in a chair with tears welling in my eyes pretending to be engrossed in a book while the walls of the house muffled my father’s screams and my brother’s cries.
I peeked up from my book for a moment to see — in the second story window — my father backhanding my brother. When we eventually returned inside Ben wouldn’t speak to me about what just happened. He just looked down at my feet and said that he was going to try and get some of his homework done. The decision not to get between them is still the worst thing I’ve ever done. I made it out of raw cowardice, and deprived him of a partner in his suffering. I don’t know how my mother lived with herself, making that choice every single day.
That night — after everyone had gone to sleep — I crept my way into the kitchen and grabbed one of the knives from the block on the counter. I lightly tapped the tip of the blade on my index finger to evaluate how sharp it was. I tested how tightly I could grip the handle and wondered whether or not it could be successfully wrestled away. I held it in a fist with the blade pointed toward the floor and practiced my downward swing. How quick it was. How many times I could stab him before he knew what was happening.
I got all the way to the bottom of our staircase and stood there. I was at a precipice. One so dark and so deep that it wasn’t possible to see what lurked at the bottom of it. Not even the most radiant light could pierce through and give me an indication of what might await me should I dive straight in. I could sense peering over that ledge left a stain on me somewhere. A speck of rot floated up from within the chasm and was sucked into my body during one of my hyperventilations. I walked back into the kitchen and returned the knife to its holster, but the pestilence which established a colony in my heart did not disappear afterward. It’s a difficult thing, knowing the terrifying secrets of those beloved by the world outside. Knowing the depths to which Man can sink before it should be conceivable to you. You starts to think you don’t know anything anymore. That you’re not even human. That even the inevitability of death is nothing but hallucination.
This all came to a head when I was sixteen. I used to have a habit of leaving my towel on the floor of the bathroom when I got out of the shower. I was sitting in a chair in the living room texting a friend of mine when I heard his footsteps stomping into the living room. I didn’t do anything other than sit there and tense up for whatever was about to happen. He grabbed me by the ankle and pulled me out of the chair. He dragged me into the bathroom by my foot, the back of my head slamming against the small dividers the jutted out of the floor between rooms.
“Pick up your fucking towel!” He screamed at me.
I was shocked to discover that it wasn’t my towel sitting there.
“It isn’t mine,” I said.
“Isn’t yours — well whose is it then?” He said.
From the living room Maddie piped up and said in a squeaky voice, “Uhh…sorry dad. That was me,” she said.
“Oh, alright then,” he said as he let go of my foot and casually strolled into his bedroom as if nothing had happened. The arrogance. The sheer gall of it all. If I couldn’t put my foot down here I never would. I calmly walked back into the living room, picked my phone up from off the floor, and started texting my friend again as if nothing had happened.
Around twenty minutes later in my father comes, hat in hand, “Hey, I wanted to say I’m sorry. I didn’t know the towel wasn’t yours.” He said.
“I don’t accept your apology,” I responded.
“You…what do you mean you don’t accept my apology I messed up and I’m telling you I’m sorry.” He said — agitated.
“And I’m telling you I don’t accept your apology,” I said and continued to type away.
“Won’t…alright, Gimme your phone. Give it to me! Won’t accept my apology,” He said.
I gave it to him and told him that I still wasn’t going to accept his apology. He knew that I had him on the ropes. He was absolutely in the wrong and I was absolutely in the right and I had — at last — picked the perfect battle. This infuriated him you see? The argument escalated for a few minutes.
For the first time I raised my voice at him and said, “You can’t drag somebody across a fucking house for something they didn’t do and expect an apology to fix the whole thing. You just don’t fucking do that!”
Once again, he grabbed me by my shoulders and pinned me up against the nearest wall. I could not let him know that I was afraid of him. Despite my heart racing and my muscles contracting to the point of cramping I stared him dead in the face. I did not move a single muscle on my face. My eyes had nothing inside them, my lips were relaxed, jaw unclenched, absolutely stone faced.
“Wipe that fucking look off your face,” He shouted at me.
But there was no face. The infection that had taken root within me had spread, and this final confrontation left my heart dry and devoid of all blood and warmth. I transformed myself into an abyss so completely that all he could see was his reflection. I made myself as cold as was necessary to absorb his heat without melting.
“Get your fucking hands of my brother,” Ben shouted from behind my mom.
I can’t tell you precisely what he broke within me that day, but it’s not repairable. It will remain broken forever. I hope I broke something within him too. I hope the exhausting ache of the rot eats him when it’s hungry. We didn’t speak much after that. My mother eventually left him, but then she started to resent me because my nausea issue was making it difficult to hold down a job. I ended up leaving the nest at the ripe old age of twenty two. When I was a boy I would read about people who went through great hardship in their youth, and went onto to so great things. That is not true for most of us.
Most of us get through it, and then cook food for rowdy assholes in diners. Serve drunk jackasses their fifth shot of the night. Drive for some taxi app or whatever. And every free instant is spent in a movie theater being shown a feature-length film of the worst moments of your life — with you desperately searching for a convincing way to tell yourself that there was something you could’ve done. That it means something. That great suffering comes with great reward. That you’re entitled to some recompense by some just law of balance for the pain you carried.
It’s only a small leap from there to romanticizing the despair that dwells within you. Wouldn’t want to do that. Suffering — in all its depth — doesn’t come with recognition. There’s no blue ribbon. There’s no “Atta Boy” when all is said and done. It comes with needing to eat and sleep like everyone else. It’s getting to experience tedium. Like taking lukewarm showers for the rest of your life after years of ice baths. The pendulum doesn’t swing into ecstasy as one hopes, but instead gets lodged in the safety of the fulcrum. I can’t run from these demons. They’re wherever I am. I can’t fight them. I’m only hurting myself. I can’t outwit them. They know what I’m going to do the same moment I do. All I can do is take their hands, lead them in a long fine dance, vomit before I go to work, and hopefully — one day — awaken to find myself dancing alone.
Time’s up? Yeah, here’s my card.
Short Story: The Seventh Session
Damn good work.