No More Dead Kids Page 2
My home, a three bedroom, one story house nestled in between more of the same is just a few blocks from the beach and a short walk from my old elementary school. I’ve lived in that house and that town since I was brought home as a newborn, something fairly uncommon for OB, and San Diego as a whole too, a true native son. A three-bedroom house didn’t mean we had a guest room though, it meant that each of the three of us had a room, each at nearly opposite corners of the house. My parents hadn’t shared a bed for as long as I could remember.
. . . . .
Dan and I have been friends since freshman year, he lived a short bike ride away, just over the hill in true Point Loma. He’s my best friend, I’d even call him my brother, but I guess that’s something only only-children do. Growing up, my friends were my siblings, and that’s just how it’s always been. I’m not an introvert, I’m just a lonely extrovert. And I don’t know if I care, because what else can I do?
Goddamn, I can’t even complain about shit without it sounding like a fucking Upworthy article, but I guess I had to get all of that crap out of the way.
CHAPTER 3.
You Are Going
To Hate This
I WAS HARD-PRESSED to write that personal narrative. Well, I wasn’t really, I was still lazy from the summer and hadn’t been assigned much else in any other classes so I didn’t really want to start working just yet. So instead of working, I decided to put in probably the same amount of time it would’ve taken to write something to instead scour my computer for an old assignment I could use. And what do you know, it was another nostalgia trip looking through things I’d typed up from about fifth grade on; the oldest of which, essays no less, were typed in fucking comic sans. Do kids even know that the ‘save’ icon is a floppy disk, or what one of those even is, I used to learn on those things in elementary school, goddamn I don’t wanna be old.
Even more cringe-worthy were some of the old poems I’d written back when I was in middle school, a time when the most pressing question on a boy’s mind was “do girls masturbate too?” And if these poems were written for school, I can’t believe I ever submitted some of those melodramatic emo-trips to a teacher; I honestly don’t know which were worse, the ones from middle school that are just funny how bad they are, or the ones from freshman year where I really thought I was deep and tried to emulate some sad romantic poets. Ode to my CD of American Idiot.
Green Day’s American Idiot, that was the first album I ever bought with my own money way back when. The second was Dookie, and the fourth was 21st Century Breakdown the day it came out near the end of eighth grade, I picked up International Superhits with it at Best Buy. God, I really used to love Green Day, I still do; I’m proud to be in the class of 13. The third CD I ever bought was Icky Thump, and the sixth, many many years later, was Vessel, still my favorite album; Pure Heroine, Born to Die, and Torres would all come a little later. From my parents I had After the Gold Rush, Joshua Tree, Born to Run, The Beatles 1, Dylan, and The Wall. Dan lent me good kid, m.A.A.d city and Section.80, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Late Registration, Run the Jewels, Illmatic, The Chronic, and Straight Outta Compton last summer to download. And that about sums up everything I didn’t either buy on iTunes as a youngster or convert from YouTube as a more worldly high schooler. When I was younger I was partial to buying the actual CDs because I could play them in the car, way back before iPod Nanos really had a way to connect to a mom’s minivan; now, I like them because I still like music to be tactile, but I wouldn’t go so far as to buy a record player though.
Anyway, back to my poetic waxings as a high school freshman. I found an assignment for Mr. Darcy, and I wondered why he ever talked to me. I’m guessing it was from sometime around the time we read Prufrock in class, for the intimate revelations of young men are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions.
The Descent Of Night
Day falls past the horizon, light does die;
The descent of night floods the sky behind;
As darkness blankets the city, I lie
With myself alone, a lost love to find.
The musk of the city’s haze blinds the stars,
Of streetlights and silhouettes, the lost scars
Of a forgotten town; the totaled cars,
That stank of tar, neon lights of the bars.
Derelict pubs, and gentlemen’s clubs, seat
To the hostilere, drowning in defeat.
The city is dark, the night so long;
I watch from my window, the empty throng.
And I left in-between, the city and my dreams,
Garroted on the anticipation of death.
A lost Larkin in the city I once lovéd.
The industrial mill but sputters and steams,
Whilst I compline for the Eventide of death.
She said that she loved me, she said this as she left.
Thoughts of yesterday, the tomorrow of figment,
A lost symbol of the past, of joy, the signant.
Well, we got through that together, and that’s what’s important. It really kind of goes to show where I was back then, grandiose and morose, almost yearning for some big sadness in my life to make me dark, mysterious, and interesting; something to make me a true brooding poet. But really the saddest thing or the reality of the saddest thing is not a man, defeated, weeping at the loss of his precious time and only life as I once thought, but it is instead the man unaware of this, the man who does not wallow in his failures or misgivings but does not even think of them. They are pushed down and forgotten; no remorse, no contemplations, no second thoughts about dreams lost or given up, it is simply a wasted life. Those are truly the thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
I’ve lived with what I now know is depression for my entire life. I realize now that for me and for a lot of people it is a struggle every day to fight off that depression or sadness or insecurity or uncertainty, whether it is on the surface or deep inside, and keep functioning as an adult and do the things that we are supposed to do. But we do, all of us. As Camus said, “nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
I never understood the term ‘battling depression.’ Battling cancer makes sense, it’s an adversary, something separate and menacing that can be beat. But depression isn’t some invading force or something that can be defeated, it is me. Depression is just the worst parts of me and a whisper in my mind to embrace them. A battle with depression is a war against oneself, which, I guess, is apt.
For the narrative, I ended up just writing about my summer, and how I sometimes wonder if my love of driving has something to do with my last name and how I should really get around to reading On the Road. In class Mr. D asked if anyone wanted to read aloud, and Ken immediately raised a hand up, pinky and ring fingers lowered over his palm like he was the fucking second coming, or maybe it was just out of laziness, like he could only give the effort it took to raise his index, middle, and thumb.
When he started to read I immediately knew he was one of those kids, the kind that always overshares; whether that was a product of too much attention as a child or too little, I do not know. Naturally, he wrote about death.
“To wake up is a gift, to have food at the table is a gift, and to have a family to eat with is a gift,” he began in a somber monotone like he was narrating a Cormac McCarthy novel.
I was already rolling my eyes, and he hadn’t even established a central conflict.
He continued, “When my grandfather was alive, we always used to spend the holidays at his home, Christmas, Easter, his birthday, and every summer. The hundred-mile drive to his home was an inconsequential distance between the two of us. He lived in t
he home he built, in the home he brought his new wife to live in, in the home my mother was born in, in the home my mother and her brother grew up in, in the home his wife passed away in, and in the home he left. In the home, where his memory will live on.”
Oooh, parallel structure.
“To wake up at his home was to wake up to the engaging, pungent smell of day-old coffee steeping in the use-stained pot. He always brewed coffee, he always over-brewed coffee. He took his cup with milk until it was as tan as he was and one-half a packet of the pink. To wake up at his home, was to wake up to him already up, already reading the paper, already with toast in his thirty-year-old toaster oven, already drinking his cup of coffee. I would wake up at his home, open my eyes to the sun streaming in through the drawn curtains next to my borrowed bed; the flecks of dust dancing in the light. I would get up, my feet would hit the warm synthetic, scratchy shag rug; the rug, which matted the floor of the entire home. The carpet was of a military tan, going yellow from the fifty-year sun. The feeling of the carpet, growing halfway over my feet, would caress my toes as I would walk to find my grandfather. The old dry smell of the carpet would be replaced by the hot moist air of a steeping pot of coffee, and then the burnt smell of toast as I neared the dining room. I can still see him look up at me from his paper, as I enter the room, his glasses at the end of his big nose, and his loving eyes glancing at me. A quick warm look, as if to reassure me that everything would be alright. That warmth was home.”
Okay, I get it, and it’s wrong of me to judge, I mean I wasn’t any better my freshman year, it’s just that I never had the gall to inflict the things I wrote on others. It’s not that bad anyway, but that’s not what matters, it’s personal, and it’s something important to him so I shouldn’t judge.
“Even now I remember the saccharine joys of that home as a blissful pleasure in my morose and melancholy mind, beset with the encumbrance of the adult world.”
Oh come-fucking-on.
“When I was young, even younger than I should have been, he used to give me coffee. He made a cup for him and a cup for me. My cup had milk until it was white and sugar until it was candy. He gave it to me in a spoon, one sip at a time. I grew with him. He helped me as I grew up, and I helped him as he grew old. When I was eleven, he moved down to our house. He still was the same man with the same routine, only in a different place. I loved him so much.
“I was twelve when he died. It was a cold and grey December morning. He had been at the hospital the night before. He had asked to come home after he had been given his last living rites. When I woke, my parents were already up. I knew. I buried my head in between two pillows. The din of silence caressing my throbbing heart. The cold air was thick and heavy. I did not know what to think, and still, I don’t. He is gone and nothing else. He rests.
“In his room, his things were all there, like he was just out for the day. His big green chair was still in front of the television, a section of the paper was draped over the right arm of the chair, ready to be picked up and read, started again right where he’d left off. In his room were the old wooden duck decoys that I liked that he once used for hunting. In his room the smell of day-old coffee and Mennen’s cologne lingered in the stitch of the fabric. I can still smell it there, and whenever he comes to mind.
“His death impacted me almost as much as his life did. After the funeral, after his casket of tan wood, stippled with dew drops of holy water was lowered back into the earth, I knew it was over. On any other day, the mass would have been normal. Normal had it not been for my grandfather in his box in the center of the aisle, and the pews of friends and loved ones who looked on with a sense of time and mortality. On any other day, the limousines and police escorts would have been a fantastic experience, fantastic had it not been for the hearse carrying my grandfather leading the procession. On any other day, the hours of silent prayer would have been too much. But this was not any other day. The mass was a cold and somber endeavor, the escort was a herald of death, and the prayer was not enough. I was struck by how many people were at the funeral service, by how many people this one death effected.”
Really going ham on that parallel structure.
“My life went downwards from there; I was in the sixth grade, and I had longed to be with my grandfather. It was as if I could wake up at any moment and life would just have been a dream, like that warm feeling as you wake up in the morning from the end of a real dream. A real dream. No one knew what it was like, and the tidbits of fake sympathy only made it worse. I had not lost my grandfather, but I had lost my best friend, my mentor. He was always supposed to be there, to guide me and to teach me like he always had.
“There is nothing I would not give to hug him one last time, to feel his warm embrace and his beating heart. To say goodbye.
“But now, when I walk in the places he stood and think of him and his words, I am warm. Warmed with the thoughts of him, and the sweet smell of coffee and milk.”
The class sat silently for a few seconds and then clapped unenthusiastically out of pure obligation.
Well, we got through that together, and that’s the important thing.
CHAPTER 4.
The Kids Aren’t Alright
MY ROOM WAS not my house. I spend the time I have at school, rowing, and then shutting the door to my room to do homework, to listen to music, and to sleep. And then I wake up again, and the cycle continues. Saturdays I have practice until about noon, and Sundays I sleep in until at least one in the afternoon. And I usually spend the afternoons doing the same, sitting in front of my computer, consuming Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, fucking BuzzFeed, and of course, porn. Thank god for Vice adding some substance into that mix. Then it’s on to my phone to do the same, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, porn again, all in an infinite scroll, passing posted photos and statuses of friends, acquaintances, strangers, and advertisements, each proclaiming without hesitation that they are each the hero of their own lives. Sometimes I’ll even pick up a book. I’m becoming seriously concerned about the state of my attention span.
Some afternoons Dan and I hang out, either here or there, but usually there. I never felt like I could get much privacy at home; whenever I’d have a friend over my mom would always be in the other room, pretending to read a magazine, listening. Sometimes she’d even interject. But my parents liked Dan, and he liked them, and the same went for me with his family; we only saw the best of each other’s families’ though.
My dad was rarely home anymore, between working late, going on runs, going to AA (or drinking); sometimes I thought he wanted to be home less than I did, he just had means and reasons to be gone. It was like my mom and I would be walking on eggshells anytime he was home, trying not to do anything to upset him, though I often got angry back at him, and that only made things worse. Either way though, the less they were together, the less they’d fight, and the less I’d be between them fighting, so it might’ve just been for the better. They used to be home together a lot more when I was growing up, but that still led to fighting more often than not as I remember. They were always so on my case about things, too, about grades and school, and even about their own problems.
I didn’t want to be between that anymore, I really didn’t want to have to choose sides anymore, and honestly, I don’t even know who to side with now. It used to be pretty clear cut for me, I defended my mom when my dad yelled at her, I consoled her when she cried about it, and I yelled at him when he yelled at her. Now I see that she would always put me between them, unintentionally or not, I was the one that’d have to take care of her. I never could bring anything that was bothering me to them, I didn’t want to burden my mother with my problems, and I knew my dad wouldn’t listen anyway. So instead, I took care of them. They made me the adult in those situations, something I was told near the end of my sophomore year was called Par
entification. Now, I know it wasn’t fair of them to make me chose or even put me between their problems. So now, I just try not to participate anymore. I know it’s selfish, or at least it feels selfish, but I feel like in this case I deserve to be selfish.
. . . . .
I’d been home for a half-hour when my dad got home, I walked out of my room, said hi and went back in. I could hear my parents talking as I did homework. It wasn’t long before I heard shouting. I could only make out some of what was being said, I didn’t know if I wanted to press my ear against my door or put on headphones. I heard more shouting, something, a drawer or door slamming, then heavy footsteps and my dad shouting then muttering, “Fuck, mutherfucker,” and my mom beginning to whimper.
My ear was pressed against my shut door, and I wanted to go out, but I just put in my earbuds and laid in bed until I was tired enough to fall asleep. They had stopped arguing by then, it was a Thursday night, and my dad had to be up early for work. Before I fell asleep I could still hear the leather of the couch crumple as my mom shifted her weight on it, the television droning on, that malignant American addiction.
It wasn’t like this every night though, I don’t know if I could ignore that much. Some nights were good; some nights, a lot of weekend nights actually, we’d sit down together and have dinner as a family, mostly silently though. Before high school this would be done at the dinner table, almost nightly; but as things changed, I didn’t get home most weeknights until after practice was over at seven, and we’d eat separately, and my dad would be in bed by eight. But some nights he’d stay up. What used to be the family table was now the couch in front of Netflix, which I’m not disparaging at all; we got to spend that hour or two together, sharing a common experience, and not needing to come up with conversation that could so easily lead to misunderstandings or argument. Those were good nights.