The Innocent Love

Chapter four.

I WAS ANGRY

By Aarchi Advani.!

I was angrier than I could have ever remembered being. Sitting in the backseat of the family station wagon, I watched the city recede and give way to more rural surroundings, what I had always feared. The damage that I had caused seemed irreversible. My life – and everything I knew – was on the line. I felt condemned.

Just the week prior, I had walked into the gymnasium with my best friend Rumi after sneaking off for a quick smoke in a hall bathroom. Neither of us participated in Physical Education, and the coach never made us, leaving us to our own devices. His main focus was the football team, anyway, and P.E. was just a free hour for him. At least, that’s how I saw it.

Usually I would have been nervous about being caught smoking, but there were other stresses in my life that took precedence over my juvenile fears. Rumi seemed to understand that I was on a metaphorical ledge and was probably curious as to whether or not I would fall into the abyss or pull myself back from the brink.

“There’s something different about you lately. It makes me wonder what direction you’re heading in.” Rumi said.

I think he was waiting on me to say something but I remained silent.

“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.” Rumi said, finally.

Rumi’s morbid curiosity was not comforting. We’d been friends since the age of eight and sympathy was not an emotion, I had ever seen him display.

Recently, a sort of darkness had begun taking ahold of me. In my inexperienced life, I didn’t understand if this ‘darkness’ was an actual entity or just a state of mind. I believed it was more than mental and considered something sinister could be oppressing me. Each day, my hopelessness only grew.

In the family car, my parents remained stoic. I could feel their disappointment reverberate. My attention remained fixed on the back of their heads. I wondered what they might be thinking. But it didn’t matter now. The time to talk was over. I guess I had gone too far.

For two years, I had rebelled openly against my parents and anything else that represented conformity. I felt suffocated. I wanted to do things my way. Some of this rebellion I learned from my four older brothers, who had since moved out, or been kicked out, all of them having left home prematurely and under unfavorable circumstances. I always felt that this would be my fate, too. And, to make a bad situation more complicated, there was something markedly different about me: I was hyper-sensitive. The smallest of things could feel astronomic to me. In the right setting, this could be a beautiful thing, but more often than not it was disconcerting.

Rumi and I finished our cigarettes and snuck back into the gym and up the bleachers. The coach was talking with a female teacher and never noticed us slipping out, or back in. After a few minutes, Coach looked at his stopwatch and blew the whistle suspended from his neck, signaling that P.E. was over, never diverting his attention from the woman in front of him.

Most of the kids quickly complied with the coach’s whistle, but Rumi and I didn’t buy into his self-entitled nobility. P.E. was for rejects and everybody knew it. None of us were on the beloved football team. We were regarded as less than human. Coach had even told me once in front of all my peers that I would never amount to anything and that I’d probably be working for the local ‘Jiffy Lube’ once I finally dropped out of school. The snickering that came from the students was more of a burn.

As we walked towards the locker room, I was carrying so much aggression that Robert actually noticed and asked if I was all right. Before today he had never expressed this type of concern and it left me feeling a little suspicious.

“I’m fine.” I replied, trying to take the focus off of me as we continued on.

Stepping over the threshold of the locker room I was hit with the nauseating gym smells of sweat and body odor. Movement to the right of my peripheral caught my attention. A large musclebound bully was pressing a younger, weaker, obese kid into the lockers and taunting him about his weight, making him cry. Something inside snapped.

“Get your f*****g hands off him!” I yelled with hot, acidic anger.

‘Perplexity’ would be the best word to describe the look I received from the bully. The perceived puzzlement quickly abated as I became the victimizer’s focus. His face and chest were soon pressed into me. While grinding his forehead into mine his foul breath filled my nostrils. The anger I had been harboring suddenly blistered, and then exploded, creating a reaction from deep within. I struck out to the surprise of my adversary. My fists flew, blood was drawn, and I maintained the upper hand, which surprised me as much as the kids watching. To my astonishment the bully didn’t fight back as I punched, kneed, and kicked him.

The kids were all going nuts, yelling ‘fight, fight!’

The next thing I knew the coach came in blowing that damn whistle. He quickly collared both me and my opponent and forcefully escorted us to the Principal’s office. Soon after, my parents were called, and I was issued a week suspension from school. And once my dad had picked me up, he lectured me in that way that makes you confront your own shame.

“You know I forbid fighting of any kind.” My dad said as his eyes looked over the tops of his glasses and met mine in the rearview mirror.

“But I stood up for another kid that was getting picked on.” I responded, hoping that he would see my noble action.

“You do not fight under any circumstances. I will not accept that type of behavior from you. I am very disappointed. You can think about that while your mother and I figure what your punishment is going to be. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.” I replied as his piercing blue eyes bored into mine.

That night I lay in bed estranged from my father.

The next day after school, my friends came to my house to show me love and respect, all except for my girlfriend, who was acting withdrawn and avoiding me. Normally she would have been nuzzling into me, or holding my hand. Instead, she seemed to purposely engage in conversation with my other friends to avoid talking with me. The ‘darkness’ that had been ever so enveloping seemed to stir, and I swore I felt it feeding on my girlfriend’s contempt. My smiles and reactions toward my friends became nothing more than a masquerade and Robert seemed to notice this. He gave me a knowing look as I attempted to mask my emotions.

When the visit was over my friends said their goodbyes, and my girlfriend was the last one to the door. I tried to embrace her, but a cold shoulder was all I received. Whatever had been bothering her seemed to amalgamate with something new, hidden behind her eyes. I wouldn’t know what it fully was until the next day when she broke up with me using a payphone from school. My phone rang and I ran to the kitchen to answer it.

“Otis?” said a strange, male voice.

“Yeah?” I replied.

“I can’t do this. You tell him.” The male’s voice said. Whoever it was sounded like they were holding the phone away from their mouth.

As I continued to listen, I heard shuffling on the other end of the line and then recognized my girlfriend’s voice.

“Otis. I want to break up.” My girlfriend said.

“I know,” was all I could think to respond.

After my lame response I abruptly hung up, trying my best to counter her tactic. The reality was she probably didn’t care and was glad to have the phone call over with. I felt a weird sort of relief because I knew our time together had been expiring, but then my fractured heart finally cracked all the way through, and the ‘darkness’ strengthened.

From there my trouble at home only increased. My punishment consisted of sitting at the study desk in my room and only doing homework. I could not get up or use the bathroom unless I asked permission. I would be allowed to eat dinner only when told, but otherwise I had to remain at the desk. I was not to use the phone, listen to music, or do anything that deviated from school work. I would go to bed early and at my parent’s discretion.

Days into my sentence, I packed clothes, a few cassette tapes, my skateboard, and left home for good. Robert picked me up and dropped me off at another friend’s house, where I hid until his divorced mother returned home from out of town.

“Why did you run away from home?” she asked, dripping in concern for my situation

“I don’t know. My parents are being unreasonable. All they do is go to work, come home, watch the news, and go to bed.”

“What’s so bad about that?” My friend’s mother asked.

“It’s not about that. My dad tells me that he doesn’t like my friends and that he doesn’t want me hanging out with them. He doesn’t even know my friends! My mom wants me to dress like the preppy kids, but that’s not me! My friends are skaters and punkers, and my parents hate them! They leave me alone most of the time, but now they are telling me how to live my life minute by minute. All the sudden they’re interested in my life.” I replied, all worked up.

“That’s what parents are supposed to do.”

“It’s too little too late.” I scoffed.

She seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say and continued to ask questions. I’d poured my guts out to her and let her know things that I would never have said to any other adult, only to have her betray me. I didn’t expect it but the next day my parents picked me up from school and confronted me about all the things I said to my friend’s mom.

Second-hand smoke hung in the air as my parents held their cigarettes to slightly cracked windows of the family station wagon. The city had vanished entirely and now hayfields and cow pastures made up the scenery. I had been banished to stay with my cousin in the country because no one knew what else to do with me. Deep down, I always expected this would become my destiny. There was no reason that I should have turned out differently than my brothers. Not only had the ‘darkness’ fastened onto me, but found its way inside.

My dad pulled the car into the driveway of my cousin’s house. There was only one neighbor within an acre’s distance, and another half a mile away.

My cousin was quick to greet me outside as my parents made their way inside his house. I was too coiled up with rage and hurt to be indoors and asked my cousin if he wanted to go for a walk. After setting off I offered him a cigarette. He smoked with me as we made our way down the empty highway that stretched away from his house. My cousin tried to make small talk but my words felt empty as they left my mouth.

We took a side road and soon came to a break in a barbed wire fence that accessed a place my cousin liked to go when he wanted to be alone. The place was nothing more than a clearing among a grove of trees with a log big enough for both of us to sit on. We sat and pitched pecans at a rusted tin can as my mind reeled from the loss of everything that was familiar to me. My friends, my ex-girlfriend, and my life were suddenly gone. All my worries had finally come to fruition. Through my disconsolation the ‘darkness’ continued to expand, filling every crack and crevasse that remained.

After returning to my cousin’s, I saw my parents exiting the house and onto the drive. As they made their way to their car, they neither consoled me nor balked about their decision to cut me from their lives. I did, however, receive a warning from my father to behave, but nothing more. Then as they drove away I watched the taillights of their car fade into the distance.

As I began to adapt to my new surroundings, I became increasingly morose, withdrawn, and longed for solitude. My cousin – who thought that it would be cool to have me live with him – only grew to loathe being around me as the ‘darkness’ continually filled any space I inhabited. His mother watched and grew concerned, and swore that something sinister was at work. She had mentioned church to me and that maybe my cousin and I could go to the new youth group in town. I responded by expressing my doubts of God’s existence, hoping that she would give up trying to help me. I knew that my aunt was watching and praying for me.

As the days stretched from one to the next, the season became colder, the days shorter, and my hopelessness grew stronger. I became increasingly desperate and began to consider an irredeemable alternative. I knew the location of a .357 revolver, kept in my cousin’s house, which could easily accommodate what I was considering. I had held it a few times and was amazed by its weight. My cousin and I had also shot cans off of a fence post, and I felt that I could operate the gun easily enough. At one point, I sat in the cold, empty kitchen and decided to place the barrel into my mouth, tasting the oiled metal against my tongue. I thought about how I could manipulate the gun while holding it backwards. My teeth clattered against the steel as tears filled my eyes. Darkness closed in around me, seeming to snuff the light from the room. And at that moment, right before the hammer fell I stopped. Call it my aunt’s divine prayers. Blame it on cold feet. Or give credit to whatever higher power that you choose. I just couldn’t go through with it. Whatever entity that had laid claim to me was not going to win. Not then; not today.

There is so much more that contributed to that desperate moment on that cold winter’s day. But it’s not about putting blame on anybody. Believe me, I have played out the scenarios through my mind many times, but it really comes down to just one thing. Who I am; who anybody is. It’s the understanding that we are all vulnerable. If anything could come close to consolation, it would be to understand one’s self.

I am an empath and an introvert. I have been this way for as long as I can remember. And understanding that explains why I feel so intensely. And that fifteen-year-old that came close to ending everything was experiencing so much more than he could have ever understood. Adversity gives birth to defeat or perseverance. And as I sit here, years later, I am finally okay with it all. We have all faced our traumas in one way or another. And one might wish for a different outcome. But not me; I wouldn’t trade any of it for a different story. Because this is my story, this is who I am.