Quicklinks:
|
Great Writing - Home > Extended > The Day I Died, a continuation
| READING ROOM | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| COMMUNITY | |||
|---|---|---|---|
|
| ABOUT GREAT WRITING | ||
|---|---|---|
|
| WORK AWAITING REVIEW |
|---|
|
| GW IS... |
|---|
|
Great Writing creative writing community is designed to prompt ideas
and provide inspiration and motivation within aspiring and amateur
authors. Whatever your topic; from love poetry to Doctor Who or Harry
Potter fan fiction, Great Writing's online writing group is where you
can make new friends and improve your creative writing. |
| WHO'S ONLINE |
|---|
| We have 1683 guests online and 3 members online |
Extended Work
| print friendly version | |
| The Day I Died, a continuation | |
| By Emmuttmax | ||||||||
| 19 May 2008 | ||||||||
|
More of chapter one or my memoir, "The Lunatic." Relieved at Eric’s departure, I sank back down into the sofa. Way down. My weight seemed to triple, quadruple; movement seemed impossible. “Bullshit,” I told myself, “this is all bullshit. This is not really happening.” The really odd thing about all of this—if it wasn’t odd enough already—was the way I could see what was taking place in me, but the “I” that was seeing was not the “me” that was experiencing. Looking back, I believe I split in two. I had a body and a brain which was “me” and had somehow gained a disembodied mind that was hovering around me which was “I.” Weird I know, but not as weird as it would get. A new set of cosmic laws seemed to come into play. The hovering “I” would be allowed to calmly observe but could not interfere or offer succors to the tormented “me.” It was a duality I would live with for a long, long time. Frustrated at my inability to pull myself together, I got angry; I started yelling and slapping myself in the face. It was not exactly the picture of mental health. But, I had never died before, so I didn’t know what behavior was called for. Pausing for a moment, I noticed my bizarre behavior had attracted a crowd. Roxie, Max, Judy, Emmutt and Molly, the dogs who lived with me, had gathered on the cool, Satillo tile in front of the couch, quizzical canine expressions on their faces. How strange this must have seemed to them; their alpha dog of their pack was slapping the shit out of his wet face. Emmutt, the basset hound, snuffled, and then jumped up on the couch and nuzzled my hand with his prodigious snout. I laughed through the tears, “I know, I know boy, I’m acting like a fucking lunatic. Tell me what to do.” But, Emmutt kept silent, and I kept weeping. Time passed. Eventually, the dogs perked their ears and began their “somebody’s here” chorus of excited yaps and howls. Linda flowed in through the door from the garage to the kitchen, and when she rounded the corner and stepped into the family room, I could tell she was—to say the least—nonplussed, alarmed at the pathetic sight she found. “What’s wrong?” she asked. Although clearly alarmed, there was a reassuring tenderness in her voice. I smelled her tulip-and-lemon words before they struck my ears. “I don’t know. I honest to God don’t fucking know. I’m just so incredibly sad, I’m sad, and the inside of my head is broken. I can’t make it go away.” At this juncture in our lives, Linda and I had been married about 16 years, and we knew each other well; she had seen me cry before but never like this, never without a reason, never so pathetically. I was embarrassed at my loss of control, ashamed of my tears, and guilty that I was causing her worry. She sat by me on the couch and took me in her arms. Her action seemed to poke another hole in the dike, and the dam burst. She took my hand, pulling me off the couch, and said, “Come on, you need to lay down. I’ll get a washcloth for your head. You’re probably just feeling some stress.” I followed her into the bedroom like a senile old man. Linda helped me undress, and I stretched out on the oversized bed while she went to fetch the miracle washcloth that would cleanse me of the damp sadness. Joining me on the bed were Emmutt, Roxie, Judy and Max; Molly, the grumpy bitch, wandered off to another part of the house. Emmutt, felt Linda was taking too long retrieving the wash cloth, so he bounce-stepped across the bed and began to lick my face. Having your face dried with the salivating tongue of a basset hound is an exercise in futility, but I didn’t care; I barely noticed. Max laid his head on my leg, and Judy paced nervously like she did when she heard thunder. Linda returned, sat on the side of the bed, and draped the damp cloth across my forehead. “You just need some rest, Mike. You’ve been through a lot recently. Your mom just died a little over a month ago, and you been trying to take care of all your father’s financial arrangements. Plus, you work long hours. You need some time off.” Although my mother’s death, after a long bout with cancer, had devastated me, and my father was a pain in the ass, it was no worse than what Linda had been through during the past year. Her father had died, her mother had come to live with us, and she worked a demanding job and long hours as a supervisor at a large insurance company. She seemed to handle all this relatively well; why shouldn’t I be able to do the same? “You may be right; maybe I’m just tired. I feel hollow, but I don’t know where all this water is coming from. I can’t stop crying. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.” “Don’t be sorry, just try and sleep.” Linda kissed me, and then called the dogs to come with her. “Let daddy rest,” she said. Emmutt glanced at her with his “I think I’ll stay right here” looked and cuddled up next to me. I closed my eyes and tried to go unconscious. As I waited for Morpheus to carry me away, my mother made an appearance. Stella, the woman who nurtured me through a troubled childhood, who protected me from the wrath of my father, the mother who, according to my siblings, “liked me best,” stood at the side of my bed. She didn’t speak; she didn’t look like a corpse, she simply smiled. I wanted her to hold me, but he wouldn’t, or couldn’t. I wanted to make her laugh like I had done thousands of times before, but I suppose there was nothing to laugh about. I wanted her to say “Mike” in that sweet, southern accent of hers, but she remained mute. My heart broke, and the tears washed away all the joy I had left. I closed my eyes, and when I re-opened them, she was gone, but I would see her again. I was holding on to Emmutt when sleep mugged me. When I awoke, 18 hours later, my nose was pressed against dog ass. Max the beagle had evidently relieved Emmutt as my sleep sentry, but had fallen asleep himself. Linda had already left for work. I finally got up and was immediately seized with the desire to go back to bed, but I pushed myself to face the day. As I was brushing my teeth, I looked in the mirror and saw a stranger. “Go away,” I said, “just go away.” He didn’t leave until I went to the kitchen to brew some coffee. While the coffee perked, I called Bob, the publisher and senior partner at the paper, and told him I needed to take some time off. Eric had evidently told him I was semi-fucked up, and Bob told me to take all the time I needed. I put the phone down, poured some coffee, lit a cigarette, and sat down to read the morning paper. After scanning the first few sentences on the newsprint, I got lost. Words became independent of each other, Icelandic haikus, indecipherable symbols, and unconscious chaos; my concentration was shattered by weapons of mass depression. I bled tears. Crying is not the catharsis many people claim. Crying, for me at least, is water and snot and facial expressions that resemble a monkey fucking a football. It was a weakness, an inability to suck it up and move on, a major character flaw, and because I couldn’t control the sobbing, my self-esteem, which was not high in the first place, nosedived. This weepy crap was unacceptable. But, I had to accept it; I couldn’t stop. The comfortable cushions of the couch beckoned, and I plodded over to it and collapsed in a wet, snotty heap. I sat there and searched for explanations, but nothing made sense. I sat there all day, moving only when the force of nature required me to empty my bladder. To pee or not to pee, it was the only decision of which I seemed capable. I ignored the telephone, didn’t bother to eat, just stared into space waiting for answers to show up. They never made it. After almost a week of this behavior, Linda and I realized there was much more going on than simply me needing rest. I was sleeping; I was sleeping a lot, but I got no rest. I was thinking, but I was thinking in loops, unable to escape from the mind search I had begun for reasons for what was happening to me. Simple decisions were difficult to make. Should I eat? Should I get dressed? I decided I had a brain aneurism and asked my wife to make me an appointment with our HMO-designated, primary-care physician.
Only registered users can rate and write comments. Powered by AkoComment 2.0! |
||||||||
Next item
|
|---|