Topic 27: Once Upon a Time
May. 14th, 2012 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
java_fiendOnce again, I lay my entry upon the altar of the mighty Idol gods. As always, may they be kind, generous and benevolent...
It’s past midnight and the room around me is dark. I look at my hand which is shaking like I’m having an epileptic fit. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and try to slow my racing heart. If I don’t, I know that I’ll never go through with it. And I have to. I can’t live like this anymore. I don’t want to.
I breathe in through the nose and exhale silently, trying to focus on anything but the gun in my hand. It’s heavier than I thought it would be and is hard not to focus on.
Life shouldn’t be this hard. It would be naïve of me to think that childhood should have been a fairy tale. Nobody’s ever is. It’s never all that “once upon a time” and “happily ever after” bullshit we want to believe when we’re kids. But neither should it be the horrendous nightmare mine has been. Nobody should have to endure what I’ve endured. I’m tired of living this horrid existence.
It’s not fair. It’s just not fair and I’m ready for the nightmare to be over. Forever.
*******
I sat at the table in the dining room watching the candle burn down. I listened to the raised voices in the back bedroom. Mom and dad were fighting. Again. I sighed and wiped away a tear that had fallen down my cheek. I heard my mother scream in rage followed by the sound of glass shattering. There was a brief pause before I heard the sound of flesh on flesh as somebody got smacked. I looked up, startled. An eerie and expectant silence filled the house and made my heart race. I’d heard my parents argue plenty of times before but I’d never heard any hint of physical violence before.
“I’m not going to do this anymore,” I heard my dad say. “You’re a crazy fucking bitch.”
“Good,” my mother shouted. “Get the fuck out of here. You’re a lazy, useless piece of shit anyway.”
The shouting continued for a little while longer, punctuated by the sound of things shattering against the walls. Through it all I sat there and watched the candle burn down until the flame guttered out leaving me sitting alone and in the dark.
Eventually, my father walked into the dining room with a suitcase in his hand. He stopped by the table and looked at me. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something but no words came out. We just sat there, looking at each other for a few long moments, an awkward silence between us.
“I’m sorry Mikey,” he said finally. “I’m really sorry but I can’t stay.”
He looked over his shoulder toward the bedroom and then back at me, an inscrutable expression on his face. He looked like he wanted to say more but instead, just shook his head and left. All I could do was look at the little puddle of hardened wax on my birthday cake and choke back my tears.
It was my eighth birthday.
I waited backstage with the rest of the cast, the nervous energy flowing through me, making me feel like I had to pee. The excitement was building like it always did on opening night. Sure, I wasn’t playing the lead in our production but I had a good, meaty role that I liked and was anxious to get the show on the road. I enjoyed working in my school’s theater; it allowed me to step outside of my life and lose myself in creating a new person and a new world where I could be somebody else, where I could be happy. At least for a while.
“Looks like a packed house,” Lindsay whispered over her shoulder as she peeked around the side of the curtain.
I listened to the hushed buzz of the voices that filled our small playhouse. The time right before the lights in the house were dimmed and the curtain went up were always the most terrifying but most exhilarating as well. As I listened to the audience and felt my energy rising, a shrill and belligerent voice cut through it all, shattering my calm and excitement. I looked over at Lindsay who was still peering around the curtain. A few of the other cast members had joined her and were watching the disturbance in the house.
“Bring my son out here,” the voice slurred. “I want to see my son.”
I heard Lindsay and my friends whispering amongst themselves. I didn’t hear much of what they said but I didn’t need to. All I needed to hear was “drunk” and “crazy” to know that my mother had showed up making my heart feel like it had dropped straight into my stomach. I hadn’t told her about the play specifically to avoid a scene like what was unfolding in the theater. But she’d found a flyer in my room and had insisted that she would be there. Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to talk her out of it, I’d begged and pleaded with her to not show up drunk or cause any problems, told her how important this was to me. She’d humiliated me in public more times than I could count with her drunken hysterics. She promised to be on her best behavior and I resigned myself to her presence, silently hoping that she’d forget about it altogether.
“Take your hands off me,” her voice was louder, the slurring more pronounced. “Bring me my son you son of a bitch. I’ll sue you!”
I stepped to the curtain and moved it aside. Everybody’s head was turned, whispering to one another as they watched my mother being escorted out of the playhouse. I sighed and shook my head, letting the curtain fall back into place. I turned to my friends who studiously avoided my eyes and I felt the heat burning in my cheeks. Lindsay, the only one who would look at me, stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We still have a show to do. Focus on that.”
The look of pity on her face made me want nothing more than to stop existing, to crawl into a hole and die. I just wanted to be forgotten by everybody.
It was my fourteenth birthday.
“You ungrateful little shit,” she screamed at me.
Her speech was slurred, she was unsteady on her feet and I could smell the alcohol on her from five feet away. I often wondered how she was able to make it through an entire workday half-crocked like she always was.
“I’m sorry mom, I just thought that—”
“Bullshit. You didn’t think,” she screamed even louder. “You just do whatever the fuck you want to do like the whole fucking world revolves around you and the rest of us can just go fuck ourselves. You’re just like that piece of shit father of yours!”
I looked at the ground, unable to meet her eyes. I was supposed to be meeting my friends in little more than half an hour and wanted to just get the hell out of there. The last thing I wanted was to spend my evening being screamed at by a rage-fueled drunk. Tonight was supposed to be fun, goddammit.
“Mom, I have to go.”
She looked at me, the hatred on her face plain as day. In one swift movement, she picked up the store-bought cake, the one that said “get well soon,” and hurled it at me. It came straight at me in slow motion and I was completely powerless to move out of its way. It connected with my face, jolting my head backward and filling my nose and mouth with the scent and taste of cheap chocolate.
Through the mask of frosting on my face, I never saw my mother coming at me. Heat and an intense pain erupted from my nose as my mother’s fist made contact. Already stunned, the force of the blow dropped me onto my back. Shrieking with fury, she straddled my chest and continued pummeling my face with her fists until the pain grew severe enough that I blacked out.
When I awoke, I was in a hospital bed. Pain radiated from every corner of my body and I felt the familiar heat of shame burning my cheeks as the nurse tended to me. I was used to covering the cuts and bruises on my body so to be exposed like that, for somebody else to see my shame was a level of humiliation I’d never experienced. It wasn’t the first time she’d hit me but things had never gone that far before. I felt like things were spiraling out of control and that I needed to stop it once and for all.
Tears of anger and of shame feel from my eyes as I lay in the hospital bed I would occupy for two weeks.
It had been my sixteenth birthday.
*******
I take another deep breath and try to steady my hand. The ticking of the clock on the nightstand is impossibly loud and it rattles my nerves. I swallow hard and try to calm down, to focus. I think back to the night my dad had left us, see the look on his face again and suddenly understanding blossoms in my brain. It was the look on his face that, all these years later, I had never understood. Until now. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to leave me. He had to.
He had to have known that if he didn’t leave, if he let himself continue to be pushed and abused by my mother, he would have found himself in the position I’m in now. Desperate. Angry. Without hope. Humiliated, degraded, and run down at every turn. That’s just who my mother is, always has been and always will be. She wears you out and tramples the life out of you. I’ve endured the humiliation, the scorn and public ridicule. I’ve dealt with and hidden the remnants of the beatings I suffered at her hands when she was at her most drunken and erratic. But none of that came without a cost to my soul.
I’m tired. So tired. It’s time take back the one scrap of power from her that I can. I can choose between life and death. I can choose between forever living under her thumb; living a life of sheer misery and “quiet desperation” as they say. Or I can seize control and take that away from her. I look at the gun in my hand, gleaming dully in the weak light. I choose to take control of my own life. It’s time.
My hand still shakes but not as much before. Taking a deep breath, I place the muzzle of the gun against the head of my sleeping mother. She murmurs and snorts in her sleep. The stench of alcohol seeps from her pores and saturates the air around me. Strangely, I feel a sense of calm descending on me.
Without any emotion or even a sense of real malice, I squeeze the trigger and flinch at the roar of the gun. I pull the trigger again. And again. And again. And again. The amount of blood is shocking to me, even grotesque but all I can feel is an overwhelming sense of relief. My heart slows and I feel something akin to peace blooming within my chest. For the first time in what seems like eons, I smile. A genuine, heartfelt smile.
It is my eighteenth birthday.
This has been my entry for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
therealljidol Season 8, Topic 27: Once Upon a Time. As always, thank you for stopping by to give me a read and thank you so much for all of your support over the weeks of the game. I can't tell you how much it means to me. So thank you! When (if) the poll opens, don't forget to swing on by, read some really fantastic stuff and spread a little voting-love around!!! Thanks, guys!!!
It’s past midnight and the room around me is dark. I look at my hand which is shaking like I’m having an epileptic fit. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and try to slow my racing heart. If I don’t, I know that I’ll never go through with it. And I have to. I can’t live like this anymore. I don’t want to.
I breathe in through the nose and exhale silently, trying to focus on anything but the gun in my hand. It’s heavier than I thought it would be and is hard not to focus on.
Life shouldn’t be this hard. It would be naïve of me to think that childhood should have been a fairy tale. Nobody’s ever is. It’s never all that “once upon a time” and “happily ever after” bullshit we want to believe when we’re kids. But neither should it be the horrendous nightmare mine has been. Nobody should have to endure what I’ve endured. I’m tired of living this horrid existence.
It’s not fair. It’s just not fair and I’m ready for the nightmare to be over. Forever.
I sat at the table in the dining room watching the candle burn down. I listened to the raised voices in the back bedroom. Mom and dad were fighting. Again. I sighed and wiped away a tear that had fallen down my cheek. I heard my mother scream in rage followed by the sound of glass shattering. There was a brief pause before I heard the sound of flesh on flesh as somebody got smacked. I looked up, startled. An eerie and expectant silence filled the house and made my heart race. I’d heard my parents argue plenty of times before but I’d never heard any hint of physical violence before.
“I’m not going to do this anymore,” I heard my dad say. “You’re a crazy fucking bitch.”
“Good,” my mother shouted. “Get the fuck out of here. You’re a lazy, useless piece of shit anyway.”
The shouting continued for a little while longer, punctuated by the sound of things shattering against the walls. Through it all I sat there and watched the candle burn down until the flame guttered out leaving me sitting alone and in the dark.
Eventually, my father walked into the dining room with a suitcase in his hand. He stopped by the table and looked at me. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something but no words came out. We just sat there, looking at each other for a few long moments, an awkward silence between us.
“I’m sorry Mikey,” he said finally. “I’m really sorry but I can’t stay.”
He looked over his shoulder toward the bedroom and then back at me, an inscrutable expression on his face. He looked like he wanted to say more but instead, just shook his head and left. All I could do was look at the little puddle of hardened wax on my birthday cake and choke back my tears.
It was my eighth birthday.
I waited backstage with the rest of the cast, the nervous energy flowing through me, making me feel like I had to pee. The excitement was building like it always did on opening night. Sure, I wasn’t playing the lead in our production but I had a good, meaty role that I liked and was anxious to get the show on the road. I enjoyed working in my school’s theater; it allowed me to step outside of my life and lose myself in creating a new person and a new world where I could be somebody else, where I could be happy. At least for a while.
“Looks like a packed house,” Lindsay whispered over her shoulder as she peeked around the side of the curtain.
I listened to the hushed buzz of the voices that filled our small playhouse. The time right before the lights in the house were dimmed and the curtain went up were always the most terrifying but most exhilarating as well. As I listened to the audience and felt my energy rising, a shrill and belligerent voice cut through it all, shattering my calm and excitement. I looked over at Lindsay who was still peering around the curtain. A few of the other cast members had joined her and were watching the disturbance in the house.
“Bring my son out here,” the voice slurred. “I want to see my son.”
I heard Lindsay and my friends whispering amongst themselves. I didn’t hear much of what they said but I didn’t need to. All I needed to hear was “drunk” and “crazy” to know that my mother had showed up making my heart feel like it had dropped straight into my stomach. I hadn’t told her about the play specifically to avoid a scene like what was unfolding in the theater. But she’d found a flyer in my room and had insisted that she would be there. Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to talk her out of it, I’d begged and pleaded with her to not show up drunk or cause any problems, told her how important this was to me. She’d humiliated me in public more times than I could count with her drunken hysterics. She promised to be on her best behavior and I resigned myself to her presence, silently hoping that she’d forget about it altogether.
“Take your hands off me,” her voice was louder, the slurring more pronounced. “Bring me my son you son of a bitch. I’ll sue you!”
I stepped to the curtain and moved it aside. Everybody’s head was turned, whispering to one another as they watched my mother being escorted out of the playhouse. I sighed and shook my head, letting the curtain fall back into place. I turned to my friends who studiously avoided my eyes and I felt the heat burning in my cheeks. Lindsay, the only one who would look at me, stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We still have a show to do. Focus on that.”
The look of pity on her face made me want nothing more than to stop existing, to crawl into a hole and die. I just wanted to be forgotten by everybody.
It was my fourteenth birthday.
“You ungrateful little shit,” she screamed at me.
Her speech was slurred, she was unsteady on her feet and I could smell the alcohol on her from five feet away. I often wondered how she was able to make it through an entire workday half-crocked like she always was.
“I’m sorry mom, I just thought that—”
“Bullshit. You didn’t think,” she screamed even louder. “You just do whatever the fuck you want to do like the whole fucking world revolves around you and the rest of us can just go fuck ourselves. You’re just like that piece of shit father of yours!”
I looked at the ground, unable to meet her eyes. I was supposed to be meeting my friends in little more than half an hour and wanted to just get the hell out of there. The last thing I wanted was to spend my evening being screamed at by a rage-fueled drunk. Tonight was supposed to be fun, goddammit.
“Mom, I have to go.”
She looked at me, the hatred on her face plain as day. In one swift movement, she picked up the store-bought cake, the one that said “get well soon,” and hurled it at me. It came straight at me in slow motion and I was completely powerless to move out of its way. It connected with my face, jolting my head backward and filling my nose and mouth with the scent and taste of cheap chocolate.
Through the mask of frosting on my face, I never saw my mother coming at me. Heat and an intense pain erupted from my nose as my mother’s fist made contact. Already stunned, the force of the blow dropped me onto my back. Shrieking with fury, she straddled my chest and continued pummeling my face with her fists until the pain grew severe enough that I blacked out.
When I awoke, I was in a hospital bed. Pain radiated from every corner of my body and I felt the familiar heat of shame burning my cheeks as the nurse tended to me. I was used to covering the cuts and bruises on my body so to be exposed like that, for somebody else to see my shame was a level of humiliation I’d never experienced. It wasn’t the first time she’d hit me but things had never gone that far before. I felt like things were spiraling out of control and that I needed to stop it once and for all.
Tears of anger and of shame feel from my eyes as I lay in the hospital bed I would occupy for two weeks.
It had been my sixteenth birthday.
I take another deep breath and try to steady my hand. The ticking of the clock on the nightstand is impossibly loud and it rattles my nerves. I swallow hard and try to calm down, to focus. I think back to the night my dad had left us, see the look on his face again and suddenly understanding blossoms in my brain. It was the look on his face that, all these years later, I had never understood. Until now. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to leave me. He had to.
He had to have known that if he didn’t leave, if he let himself continue to be pushed and abused by my mother, he would have found himself in the position I’m in now. Desperate. Angry. Without hope. Humiliated, degraded, and run down at every turn. That’s just who my mother is, always has been and always will be. She wears you out and tramples the life out of you. I’ve endured the humiliation, the scorn and public ridicule. I’ve dealt with and hidden the remnants of the beatings I suffered at her hands when she was at her most drunken and erratic. But none of that came without a cost to my soul.
I’m tired. So tired. It’s time take back the one scrap of power from her that I can. I can choose between life and death. I can choose between forever living under her thumb; living a life of sheer misery and “quiet desperation” as they say. Or I can seize control and take that away from her. I look at the gun in my hand, gleaming dully in the weak light. I choose to take control of my own life. It’s time.
My hand still shakes but not as much before. Taking a deep breath, I place the muzzle of the gun against the head of my sleeping mother. She murmurs and snorts in her sleep. The stench of alcohol seeps from her pores and saturates the air around me. Strangely, I feel a sense of calm descending on me.
Without any emotion or even a sense of real malice, I squeeze the trigger and flinch at the roar of the gun. I pull the trigger again. And again. And again. And again. The amount of blood is shocking to me, even grotesque but all I can feel is an overwhelming sense of relief. My heart slows and I feel something akin to peace blooming within my chest. For the first time in what seems like eons, I smile. A genuine, heartfelt smile.
It is my eighteenth birthday.
This has been my entry for
therealljidol Season 8, Topic 27: Once Upon a Time. As always, thank you for stopping by to give me a read and thank you so much for all of your support over the weeks of the game. I can't tell you how much it means to me. So thank you! When (if) the poll opens, don't forget to swing on by, read some really fantastic stuff and spread a little voting-love around!!! Thanks, guys!!!
