Suicide Saved Me

Chapter 5

My father was the type of man who went through life expecting his only son to be exactly like him. In every single way possible. The only difference he wanted to acknowledge between us was our looks, and even those weren’t too far apart, to be honest. And though my love for him was naturally from bloodline, he had always tried to buy my affection and raised me rather materialistically. I never quite knew what it was with him. I guessed that perhaps he had been raised that way and found it the proper way to raise his own child.

The reason for me reacting negatively to his visit had nothing to do with how I felt for my father. It had to do with how I felt around him— dependent, irrelevant. Around my father I was a fraction of myself, a phony.

“Won’t this be wonderful?” My mother beamed at me from across the kitchen table, and although I tried, I felt like the only way I could return a smile was by carving one onto my face with a knife.

I avoided making direct eye contact and forced myself to speak anything but the truth— the truth being “hell, no” as the answer to her question— since I couldn’t bear to hurt her feelings anymore.

“Yeah,” I lied and stared down at my pancakes so she wouldn’t catch my bluff. “That’s great.”

“Good. We’ll meet him at the airport later this evening,” she casually proceeded with cutting her pancakes and as I watch the knife rip them apart, I wished I was lying on her plate. “Wear sunglasses until we get home. I don’t want you to scare him away with those bruises.”

I faked a laugh. “Yeah. Wouldn’t want that….”

We had the rest of our breakfast in silence.

Perhaps we weren’t used to sitting down at a table together in our own home as any ordinary family would. We were past the ordinary, neither of us were normal enough for the ordinary anymore. The idea of sharing breakfast had long come and gone. It was new and confusing— distant, that was it. We were too far apart.

I helped her put the dishes in the dishwasher. She went to the living room to watch her daily soap operas and I went up to my room to await the nerve-wracking night ahead. Two nail-biting events after one another: meeting up with the pink-haired girl, and welcoming my dad for his visit.

I knew from that moment on that it was going to be a very, very long day.

*     *     *

About six hours into the day, during which time I tried to learn a new song on my guitar, relentlessly played video games, and observed commercials on the television screen, it was almost five in the afternoon. Unfortunately, that meant it was approximately time to welcome my dad at the airport.

I was dismissing that fact, even though I could hear my mother frantically getting ready in her bedroom for the past two hours. She’d be at my door any minute, knocking for me to get ready as well. Get ready— as if. I wouldn’t be ready if I had spent a millennium preparing for it all.

I dismissed that too. I dismissed everything. If I ignored the reality of it all, we could learn that his flight had been mysteriously canceled hours ago with the failure of informing us. Then he would have to visit on Christmas. Or Christmas a few years later, at least.

I knew his flight wouldn’t get canceled. I knew I should have been getting ready to look my best for my father, and yet, there I was, lying down on my bed, facing the ceiling, and tossing a basketball up repeatedly. Tossing it, catching it, groaning from the pain in my knuckles; tossing it, catching it, trying not to groan from the pain in my knuckles— and again.

It’s no wonder solitary confinement makes men go crazy over time. Boredom is a hefty knife in the center of the brain where people frequently think of how much time passes, want not to waste it, but don’t know how to valuably spend it either.