Digging A Grave

last chapter i have written for now, but everyone whos read it is making me want really buckle down on it.

    The average grave is roughly five feet deep, seven feet long, and four feet wide.  It takes two people to properly dig one, a backhoe operator and guy with a shovel to take out roots and rocks and smooth out the cut in the earth.  I was the guy with the shovel.  
    Not exactly a glamorous job but it paid the bills.  I was nineteen and wanted, actually needed, an apartment of my own, so I took the work.  My parents had separated that year and I really didn’t want to live with either of them.  Not to say they’re bad people, I love my parents very much, still do, I just didn’t want to take sides.  They would always ask me, “so, who would you rather live with? Don’t worry.  You won’t hurt anyone’s feelings.  We just want what’s best for you,” all that bullshit. 
Like I’m really going to believe that one wouldn’t feel hurt if I wanted to live with the other.  I had enough guilt of my own to deal with back then, I didn’t need someone else’s latching on top of it, especially one of my folks.  Unfortunately it wasn’t as easy as I thought and it took me a little longer to save up the money to get my own place.   I ended up moving in with my dad, my mom cried. Everyone’s a liar. 
       My sister Angie was already a junior in college and lived on campus so she didn’t have to deal with the living arrangement issues.  On her summer breaks she would split the time evenly between them so nobody could be mad at her.  Where as I always got the teary look from my mom every time I’d visit.  Like I betrayed her.  It was enough to make me want to kill someone.  I almost did, me.
       It was a day where I had just got back from my mothers house.  I was withstanding a massive dose of guilt and father bashing as if it wasn’t her fault the marriage ended.  Her boyfriend would try to act like I was his kid and that never flew with me.  Tony, he was all but 8 years older than me.
So I used to sit in my room all day and cut myself, mostly just scratches but sometimes I would get pretty deep.  I still have a few scars from particularly bad days when I just wanted to feel something else.  I didn’t own t-shirts anymore. I didn’t have that luxury.  My closet was filled with long sleeve shirts, even in the summer time, but I digress.
        I had just come home and my dad wasn’t there so I figured he was at work.  It didn’t matter. I was on a mission. I had so much pent up rage inside and no way to release it. Walking into the kitchen, I grabbed a knife and stormed off into my room.  I was going to make the hurt go away if it killed me.  It may have if my dad didn’t come home early that day.
        I must have snagged a vein or an artery when I was trying to add another life scar (that’s what I called them) to my arm.   All I remember is there was a lot of blood and I started feeling woozy and a little nauseous.  My head felt like it was underwater and everything started to fade away.  It was a hell of a rush.
       I woke up in an ambulance, my father next to me, pale as a ghost.  I tried to speak but couldn’t.  I was too weak.  I went back to sleep.  I don’t know if you know this, but almost dying is pretty exhausting.
       When I finally came to I was in the hospital.  My whole family was there, no one saw me open my eyes.  They were talking amongst themselves.  “This is your fault John!” Mom was saying, “You should have been home to watch him.”
       “My fault! He was coming home from your house!  I’m not surprised he tried to kill himself with all the guilt trips you give him for living with me, a boy needs his father Karen and that guinea you’ve got over your place all the time is not a substitution, the guy is twenty-six for Christ’s Sake!”
       “He’s twenty-seven! And if you’re such a great father than you should have seen the warning signs!”
       “Will you two stop it?” I hear my sisters voice, it sounds so choked. “He’s awake. Ben’s awake.”      
       In a flash everyone is crashing around each side of my bed.  It’s my mother who speaks first.  “Oh baby, you had us so worried.” She cries. 
       I tell her to f**k off.  Her face looks as though I just reached my hand into her chest and squeezed. “My head aches something fierce and I’m not in the mood to pretend I didn’t hear you guys fighting over who fault this is.”
       I was going to tell them it was just an accident but I wasn’t so sure it was anymore.  I could have tried bandaging myself up when I saw the blood spill out more than usual, but instead I just watched it pour from my arm like some kind of morbid fountain.  I decided it was best to stay quiet for a little while.  Besides, it hurt to talk.
       With my mom sobbing and my sister bawling I looked over at my dad and there he stood, long faced and pale.  His eyes were red and his cheeks wet.  I had never seen that man so much as shed a single tear and here he is, in my hospital room, crying because of me.  I finally broke down and as painful as it was I couldn’t hold back the tears.  
        “I’m sorry mom, I’m sorry dad, Angie, I’m so sorry!”
        This type of pain is the worst kind.  Everyone is in a pile on top of me, sobbing.  I feel like such a failure, a waste of life, how could these people love me.  My heart hurts worse than my head, like a thousand daggers stabbing at me repeatedly.
        It was then the doctor walked in requesting my parents to speak with him in private.  The pile broke, my chest and face wet with everyone’s sadness.  I watched them exit the room wiping at their eyes and Angie just stood there looking at me, hurt. 
        “Why?”  It was the only thing she could muster up enough courage to say. “Why did you do it?”
         “I don’t really know,” I tell her.  I really didn’t.
        I didn’t say anything more. I simply laid there in thought. I thought of how I felt when I realized that I had gone too deep with dads knife.  Oddly enough, I felt relief.  It didn’t have anything to do with the episode at mom’s house anymore.  It had to do with an overall anxiety towards life.  The constant burden that all the pressures this world puts on people was too much to deal with.  I was relieved because if I had let myself bleed to death I wouldn’t have to go through the struggles I have seen and dealt with on a daily basis.  Everything would just fade out of existence, and so would I.  It seemed however; mostly why I felt relieved was because I did accidently what I would have never had the courage (weakness) to do intentionally.  
        I never told Angie any of that.  Instead we remained in silence for what seemed like eternity.  It wasn’t either of us who broke it either.  It was a bird, a bird that flew straight into the closed window.  The two of us jumped out of our skin.  Neither of us said anything for the next few seconds.  Then simultaneously we both start laughing hysterically.  It hurt worse than the crying but I didn’t care.  It felt good in other ways.
       “What the hell was that?” Angie laughed.
        “I think a damn bird flew smack into that window!”
        “Well, at least we know they keep a clean house around here.”
         “Not so sure the bird is too pleased with it.” 
        We laughed till our parents came into the room with the doctor.  Dad smiled a little at the sight of us giggling the way you do at the end of a joke that’s run its course. Mom didn’t smile but I could see a slight look of increasing ease on her face as she looked at us.  It did make me feel a little better.
       I was discharged the next morning under order of supervision.  I was allowed to go to work but if I wanted to go out I couldn’t be alone, nor could I be at the house when no one was home.  My parents had to match their work schedules so that one of them could watch me at all times.  I was three years old again. 
      The doctor suggested that I be set up with a psychiatrist and no time was wasted.  By the next Tuesday I was in the waiting room of Dr. Richard Swan, mother was sitting right beside me.  Dad didn’t believe in the profession so mom agreed she’d take me every week.  I was a bit nervous because I had no idea what to expect.     
       The time had arrived for me to enter the office and I almost bolted the other way.  I didn’t, but I thought about it.  I think about a lot of things.  I hated the idea of going to a shrink.  Some person I don’t know telling me how I should feel and all that nonsense but I didn’t want to let my mother down.  So I walked into the office and sat down on Dr. Swan’s big comfy chair.
        “Hello Benjamin,” Dr. Swan began, “before we start would you like something to drink? Soda, tea, coffee, I got it all.”
         I ask him if he has any whiskey.  He asks if I drink a lot of whiskey.  This is how things go when you’re considered suicidal. 
        For the whole hour session I joked about every subject that came up.  According to Dr. Swan’s psychology books, this is what’s called a defense mechanism.  It’s a way to divert attention to humor to avoid the nervous or anxious feelings that appear to be consuming me.  If you ask me, I just like to tell jokes, even though I know I’m not all that funny. 
       In the end it really wasn’t that bad, Dr. Swan was all in all a pretty nice guy.  And after the first twenty minutes or so of the “get to know you” session he asked if had ever kept a journal.  “You mean like a diary?”  I asked, “No man, those are for girls.  Spewing out all their secret crushes into a fuzzy little notebook with a lock on it.  What do you think I am?”
       He laughs and tells me a journal is something different.  It’s a way to express all the emotions I feel but never speak of.  It’s a safety net he calls it.  If I ever feel depressed or any other distressing emotion all I have to do is write it down.  I agreed to give it a shot.  I’ve always liked writing anyway.




 

Reviews

[Shade]

I want to read more! I want to curl up on the couch with it and hold it in my hands, to feel the texture of the cover and the pages in between, it flowed so easily I couldnt help but drink it all in. I also found the part in chapter one where you said you had to go to work despite the chaos happening around you amusing as hell, I can relate to that line in so many ways lol.

[Jillian]

I hope you keep writing this. I check all the time to see if a new chapter is up. And I like the little realities (the bird in the window, I guess he bird wanted to die to, haha). I Love You!!!!