He comes home from his shitty, passionless job to an empty apartment, perhaps an empty house. He sits at his dining room table and drinks cans of cheap beer as a painful reverie of all the shame, guilt and regret from his past plays over and over in his mind like a morbid, mental picture-show.
He picks up his beer, strolls into his bedroom, leans on his dresser, and stares at himself in the mirror, looking into his own eyes for a hint of hope in himself, for a reason to love himself, for a reason to live another day.
After awhile, he sighs and sits down on the edge of his bed. And after a few more moments, a few more swigs of liquid courage in the effort to swallow that persistent lump in his throat, he reaches his free hand beneath his bed, pulls out the shoebox, opens it, and stares down at the gun.
He puts down his beer on the corner table and picks up that little machine of death, staring at it another moment before putting the barrel into his mouth — but thankfully, he can’t do it. Trigger shy, as always, he thinks to himself. Even so, it focuses his mind on the moment, and the picture show in his mind slows, slows, until it lands on one of the many he’s known, if only in passing, and feels he had wronged during high school.
He puts the gun back in the box, fastening the top, and pushes it back under his bed with the back of his foot. He then takes out his phone, looks up that person on Facebook, and messages them.
Just to say hi. Just to apologize. Oh, how might this one respond?
Its like spinning the wheel of potential misfortune. Its like Russian Roulette without the mess.
And so he waits…
***
On my way home Tuesday, I stopped by Circle K and there was one or two people in front of me. Rather than just let my mind wander, I took a quick glimpse at my phone. On the lock screen I found that I had I gotten a Facebook message from Derek Maddow. I was confused and curious, but by that time it was my turn at the counter, so I elected to leave it to read when I got home.
Before cracking open a beer, I took out the phone and discovered that I had yet another entirely unexpected message from yet another person.
As for Derek’s message, it was short.
“Just saying hi. Sorry if I was a jerk. I was. That’s all.”
Though I went to school with him, I don’t remember ever having had a conversation with him, or even interacting with him much, really. I heard through the grapevine that he had “behavioral problems” and that his mother, a rather crabby-looking woman who worked at the school, had gotten to the point where she just couldn’t deal with him anymore. Nothing she did worked. She didn’t know what else to do. In the end, if I remember correctly, he got sent to military school, after which he fell entirely off my radar.
No one at school seemed to dislike him, at least so far as I could tell, and I always found him to be comedic relief during class — Mrs. D’s English class specifically. She was this short, perpetually red-faced woman with puffy white hair and intense emotions. She drove a red sports car and was constantly getting pulled over. The dynamic between her and Derek was amusing as hell, and as frustrating as his jokes and sarcasm might have seemed to her at times, he always got her laughing, which was something that tense little lady certainly needed, if you ask me.
And there were assholes in school, without doubt, but Derek? Not once. Not on a single occasion can I recall him ever being a dick to me.
This is essentially what I told him, too, when I texted back. He thanked me and told me that using humor has always been his defense mechanism. He then told me he had always admired my artistic ability and that this was a talent he’d always wished he’d had.
I wondered if perhaps that was what had inspired him to message me, as I had recently posted some recent artwork of mine on Facebook after failing to do so for some time. Years, I think. I was rather shocked at the response I’d gotten in general. One other person, a girl I had also went to high school with, would also text me within the next day or two complimenting me on my work. And then my sister’s father-in-law wanted to buy one of my pieces, and as a consequence I sold my first piece of art in the last decade or two.
I never knew my artwork — or myself, or anything about me, for that matter — was ever on Derek’s radar.
He said that over the past twenty-plus years since we all graduated, he had messaged a lot of people and found himself surprised. Everyone who should have told him to go fuck himself had failed to do so, he explained, and those he anticipated might just say hi back to him more often than not tore him a new asshole.
I was still looking for some clue, some faint hint, some vague suggestion regarding what he might feel so guilty and self-loathing about. It clearly didn’t begin and end with me. I made one good, sincere attempt to get him to explain himself, to describe what it was he thought he had done that was so wrong, but he dodged all those bullets Matrix-style. He clearly only wanted to reach out and apologize — on the surface, anyway. I respected his right to privacy and pushed no further.
Its strange how we can judge ourselves, and how differently the same world can look through the lens provided by a different pair of eyes, a different mind, a different pathway of life experience. The guy seemed so tortured. And as apologetic as he was, it seemed to kill him inside so much he couldn’t bear to express, even in writing, specifically what it was that plagued him about himself so much.
Over the years, more than one person from my class of ’97 committed suicide, and after what he wrote to me, a concern in me began to emerge that he might be a candidate. Whatever plagues him weighs heavily on him and a haunting scene began to play out in my mind days later when contemplating this.
That was the little portion that proceeded this rambling of mine. Nothing more than a dark, worrisome fantasy of mine, I sincerely hope.
His message wasn’t the only I received on Facebook that evening, either. Another was from Claire, who decided to drop me a line after two fucking years because she was coming back to Ohio for a short vacation and thought it would be weird if she did so without informing little ol’ me. And she added that she guesses things are weird between her and I right now.
She guesses.
Things, really, they’ve always been weird between us, its just that I’m no longer willing to invest in the kind of fairy tale I’ve always cautioned her not to chase after. In other words, I’m no longer willing to be a blindly hopeful and hypocritical dipshit. Her and I would never work out because despite my empathy for her, despite the connection between her and I that I felt so strongly and cherished for so long, we’re too different. I’m too weird. Her and I, I had to admit to myself, are simply not compatible.
Hell, I’m not sure I’m compatible with anyone.
I’ve got guilt, shame, and regret of my own. Fuck, that heap gets higher by the goddamned day, but I’m not going to kill myself, nor am I willing to fool myself.
I know we can’t escape history. I know that the past is always present. But doing the same thing over and over expecting different results, that’s bloody insane. And with respect to that particular flavor of insane, I’ve had my fill. So I turn my back on this. I deny this. I refuse to allow myself to fall into the same empty hopes and delusional thinking I’ve fled to in the past.
I will not engage. I will not succumb to the temptation. And I refuse to kill myself, for the record, save for perhaps in metaphor.
I will get through this. I want to believe Derek will get through this. And for all I know, Claire, in this marriage — yet another fucking, fucking marriage — has already gotten through it. For all I know, she’s finally living that fairy tale she always fucking wanted and I would never be able to give her.
And I hope she’s happy. I hope that this is her present and her future and that she can leave me in her past, where I likely belong.
I keep telling myself that that’s enough.
And so tonight I yet again place that metaphorical gun back in the metaphorical shoebox and push it back under my metaphorical bed with the back of my metaphorical fucking foot, and then I pick up my phone and spill it all in my fucking blog. And then I decide to go to my new art desk and draw some more.
And I keep telling myself that that’s enough.
Chronicles of a Madman. 