Dissected (1)

I don't wake up till late in the afternoon. I guess my system really needed to recharge bateries. I haven't had a lot of sleep lately. I literaly have to peel myself off the couch. I've turned the heating on before I fell asleep and now the room is the total opposite of what it was this morning. I go upstairs to take a shower. When I've dressed and made myself another cup of coffee, I smoke for a while thinking how to kill the time. Finally I put on a coat and go outside.

It's been snowing all the time I was sleeping and even now the heavy snowflakes fall gently on my shoulders and my DC cap. It seems like God made up his mind to change covers all over heaven and then decided to dump the old feathers in his usual dump, the world. My shoes're already getting soaking wet and my fucking hands're turning red from the freeze. It's kind of nice though, everything's hidden behind the soft white curtain and even car's headlights're faded out. Dogs run around the corners with tails between their legs and kids're out building snowmen with tommy-guns. Even all the noises're muffled, as if something wanted to force us to change our daily routines just for once and leave the streets to the mysterious silence. I head over to the store I usually buy my paiting equipment in. I buy a few more oil paints and paintbrushes and head back home with my booty. Once inside, I take my gear over to my room and get some newspapers on the floor not to mess it up with paint. I fit a new canvas on the easel and sit back for a few moments to think.

Then I start painting this little dude lost in a blizzard who's drawn to a mysterious red light. Give it whatever meaning you want to, I haven't really thought about that. You can turn it into a Sir Galahad on the quest for the Holy Grail for all I care. The truth is we're all searching for something enigmatic just round the corner. And the more elusive it gets, the more we kill ourselves and those around us to get to it. The Holy Grail can be a love affair, a plastic ring or a red Porche, make your pick. And along the way we learn just how much stamina we really have. Abandon your search and you're lost in the blizzard forever. Go on with it and at least you'll have something to hold on to in this hectic place where we're all lost anyway. By the time I'm halfway finished, it's already dark and time to pack up. I'll finish this baby up another time.

Next day dawns as gray as the previous one has. I watch a little bit of tv until I figure out I can't stay in this haunted house for much longer. So I make a trip to Ryan's. He doesn't live far away from us, but the ends of my pants're soaking before I get to his house anyway. He's in his room with Natalie, his girlfriend. She's this really beautiful Japanese chick he's been dating forever and that he doesn't give a shit about. All he gets from her, and wants to get from her, is the fulfillment of his needs. And the sap thinks he really loves her. It's not like he's cheating her or like he's a bad guy or anything, he just isn't capable of any commitment. I've known that ever since we went to kindergarten together, when I was watching his behavior to his mom and dad. When they came every day to take him home, he wasn't happy to see them, he was just happy to go home to his playstation again.

"Hey," I greet them both and take a seat. They're browsing the internet for a holiday of your dreams on Hawaii. I hope it's okay if your friednships're all intermingled with envy cause if not, I've never really been a friend to anyone. Ryan takes out a dvd and we watch the Sin City. The two of them get bored somewhere in the middle, but I keep on watching. There's been a time when what I wanted most of all was to make comics. But I could never really think up a storyline, all I did was draw a few pictures. And so I just ended up canvas painting. In the meantime, the two of them're making out right next to me. You wouldn't believe it. I have a lot to do to block them out, and so when the movie's over I just leave them at it. Ryan's a friend, but he knows only too well how I feel about Natalie, and sometimes I think he loves nothing more than to remind me whose girl she is. I take a walk to the park, kicking the heaps of snow along the way. Sometimes I wish I could just take off and go somewhere else, away from this mess that I call my life, and start over. But I can't because I've got mom take take care of. I can't just leave her here, but she wouldn't go away with me either. So what I do is stay.

Once I'm in the park, I take a cold and wet seat and put my head in my hands. I try to picture the other life, the life I could have if I weren't already stuck here. I guess you wouldn't say it, but it takes a lot of energy to hate fulltime as I do and not to be able to forgive. You wouldn't say how hard it is to live without believing in some kind of savior who washes away your sins. Cause I've sinned, I've sinned every day of my life. And if there really is an afterlife I know I won't be enjoying it any more than I am this one. Mom, I wish one day I could tell you how much I hate you in between loving you. Cause it was you who sent me into this world and made it hard for me to live it. I lift myself off the bench and head back home. It's getting dark already anyway.

Nothing happens till Wednesday, except mom is sent home with a plaster on her hand and Ryan dumps Natalie for some superblonde chick. She takes it pretty bad, but she wouldn't let me talk to her. Shit, even it she did, I wouldn't know what to tell her except I've known what their relationship really was about all along. If you think I'm jumping for joy because the girl of my dreams is suddenly and unexpectedly free again, you don't really know me. I'm not a one to take advantage of someone's broken heart. All I want is to help her, and my mom, and neither of them fucking lets me to. I wonder if civilized samaritans have it this bad with tribes controlled by witch-doctors. As I walk home Wednesday night though, I can literally feel something is about to happen.

The lights flood our lawn again. The thaw has set in and it's raining outside. It's the sort of rain that gets directly on your skin no matter what you're wearing. Drops of water run down my face and down my neck. I look like someone's just dumped a bucket of water on my head and all I want right now is some shelter. I quicken my pace as I reach the lawn. I can just make out mom's silhouette behind the kitchen curtains. Suddenly, the door opens and she runs out to meet me. I can see something's wrong, but I don't know what it is right away.

"Shawn!" she yells at me while running toward me. "Shawn, you have to promise me! Promise me you won't do anything, Shawn, please!" Suddenly I get the whole thing.

"He's in the house, isn't he, mom?!" I push her away from me and stride inside the house. She's sobbing behind me, holding me by the arm and trying to stop me from going in. And then I see him. My beloved father. He's small but muscular and has the kind of face that'd make you puke right away. But what's worst about him besides the fact he makes mom's life a hell is that he's my fucking father. The blood of my blood. I hate him for that most cause at times I fear I'll turn into the same monster as him someday. The jerk even smirks as he sees me and starts walking down the stairs.

"Glad to see me, kiddo?" he drawls. "You look like somebody pushed you into a swimming pool. Won't you ever learn to win a fight, you wussy?" I try to break free of mom's arm and jump on the fucking bastard right away. I'd do anything, anything to make him shut up. But no, he goes on. "I've been up in your room. So you're an artist now, huh?" The way he says "artist" would make you kill him right then and there. I grind my teeth and try to get my arm free again. "Look at you, little baby boy, we wanna kill somebody right now, don't we? But we can't even fucking get across a woman! What kind of a son have I raised that only dissects his feelings and won't ever do anything about them?!" He reaches the bottom of the stairs and just stands there, the fucking smirk still on his face. That's too much for me to take. I use all my energy to get rid of mom and give him a close-up view of my fist. He staggers back a little. This is the first fucking time I've actually broken the barriers mom built around me and did him any harm. I guess that first victory not only over him, but also over myself, and mom, gives me the stamina to go on. Before I even now it we're both on the floor and I'm trying to get to every inch of his body, wanting to make him hurt as much as I did every time he beat mom up. All I hear is my breath and his breath, and mom's wailing. I don't even know how the glorious victory turns into a defeat, but it does. Suddenly my back hits the floor and whatever air's left in my lungs abandons them, leaving me gasping for breath on the floor. But the son-of-a-bitch is still there, right on top of me, beating me up the same way he used to do when I was still a kid. Memories flood me then and I feel the same helplessness, the same inability to defend myself, to change what's happening to me. And he keeps punching on and on for what feels like hours, long after I've doubled up in pain and blood has covered my vision. And he goes on even after mom gets hold of a neighbor and he tries to break up apart. He goes on even after I've acknowledged my defeat, long after I've found out that there isn't any winning in a righteous battle, that there is no fucking God to take care of us, that God really only helps those who help themselves. And then all I see, and feel, is dark, broken only by mom's crying.

Why does she fucking cry? Doesn't she see that pains me more than any physical damage? Someone please tell her to stop. Please.