A Hard Look Within, Part Five

 

For about five months after I had broken up with Rich I drifted in this haze of aimless irresponsibility. After two months, Jessica moved back home with her parents. I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I could drink a twelve pack of Keystone beer and not get a buzz. Wow. What an accomplishment.

 I was exhausted. Unemployed. I couldn’t see any point to my life or any hope in it. I was miserably lonely. My sleep schedule was so messed up I was staying up until after sunrise and sleeping all day. I felt wrung out, hollow and empty. My landlords had let me slide behind on my rent, but that time would be drawing to a close if I didn’t do something. That was the problem. I was sunk so low emotionally that I couldn’t see a way out.

 I spent my time wandering the streets of Kalispell while the town slept. There is a sacred stillness that descends in the wee hours between midnight and dawn. The quiet peace of a dreaming town. I always felt like I was looking for something unseen and impossible to lay physical hands on. I found some consolation in the night winds blowing through the branches of the giant willow in that yard on 3^rd Street on the west side where I lived. I called her the Grandmother Tree because she is over a hundred years old if not older. I would stand a her base, staring up at the huge branches, wind whispering among the leaves, feeling somehow that if something as huge as that tree had stood the test of time and man, I should somehow, some way, be able to as well. I would sometimes go into the yard to lay my hands on her bark, a nameless yearning tugging in my belly. I just couldn’t figure it out.

 I met a few cool cats out for their nocturnal wanders and we would stop an chat, their temporary companionship easing for a moment the hollow echoes in my heart and mind. Sometimes I would go down to Woodland Park to listen to the sleepy rustling of the ducks and geese at roost in the night. Listening to the night sounds in this sleeping mid-sized city, I could hear the whisper of possibility for something more. At the same time, those night winds blew through the heart of me leaving an empty, nameless ache.

 On particularly lonely nights I would wander to Finnegan’s restaurant to have coffee, flirt with the cute waiter and hope maybe someone I know would come in. Party buddies were better company than silence. Still, bars were never my thing. I seem to hold an unapproachable air about me when I do wander in to them. On the rare occasions that I found some main street dive with a blues band I would take up a table by myself and it would stay that way. On one or two occasions much older men asked me to dance. I danced, but I never invited company or conversation and always left soon after. I had seen the type of people that inhabited bars on a regular basis, and that wasn’t my thing. I never wanted to go into heavier drug use, and I had already reached the bottom as far as I was concerned.

 It was some faceless night. I was in my living room listening to Depeche Mode, which isn’t very uplifting music for happy people, much less people in the state of mind I was in. It was 3 a.m. and I wanted to die. My life was going nowhere. I hadn’t eaten in two days and I couldn’t seem to bring myself up out of this hole of despair. To top it all off, I was out of cigarettes.

 I had a small pistol my sister had given me in case Rich ever came back. A .22 Jennings. I had shells for it. I couldn’t stop crying and I just wanted it done.

 Get out of this house.

 That voice again. Call it intuition or Divine Guidance. I think of it as the latter. At least I do now.

 “I want to die! I hate this fucked up life! I can’t do anything right!” I said aloud, tears on constant leak.

 Call your Mom.“It’s three o’clock in the goddamned morning! She doesn’t need me calling! She‘ll be pissed.”

 

 I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things I had done wrong. I couldn’t even keep a job! I was a failure. I shouldn’t be alive.

 Get out of the house. Call your Mom.I should be dead! It’s not worth living, living like this!

 

 It’s not your time. Get out of the house. Call your Mom.There is nothing worse than being nagged by the voice in your head telling you to live when you are trying to find a way to die.

 

 I felt I had to do something, anything, and the voice was winning.

I left the house and walked across town to Finnegan’s. I had enough change to use the payphone.

 “Hello?” her voice was groggy. And concerned.

“It’s me.”

“What’s wrong?” fully awake now as only a mother whose kid calls in the middle of the night could be. I started to cry. That was such a loaded question.

“I’m sorry. I can’t explain right now. Could you just please come and get me?” I couldn’t keep the tears out of my voice.

“Where are you? Are you in Kalispell?”

“Yeah. Finnegan’s.”

“See you in a bit.”

 I picked a seat at the counter. Lit up the half smoked butt I’d dredged out of the ashtray outside the door. The graveyard waiter I normally flirted with cast me a few odd glances. I tried to smile and pretend nothing was wrong but I know I must have looked like train wreak. I know the smile on my face looked like it didn’t’ belong. It felt like it didn’t belong and I’ve never been a very good liar. I must have presented a fairly odd picture, pale, eyes red and bloodshot from crying. I stared into my water glass and stole a glance down the counter at the balding fat man four seats down from me. He looked like someone who had just crawled out from under a rock. I had the discomforting impression that we could have shared the same rock just then. Inward, I cringed. Another voice in my head, one that wasn’t so nice told me;

 

Look. That’s you. Different face, same broken interior design.

 

Fuck you, I thought.

Soon, the door of the restaurant opened. I was quite amazed, actually. Beside my mother stood my father. The man whom I knew didn’t even like me. My stomach lurched.

We rode in silence which was a second shock to me. I expected him to launch into a tirade at any moment. He didn’t. What was more is, I caught him glancing at me once and I was stunned by the expression in his eyes. Concern. I had seen many expressions on my father’s face before in life, concern was not one I recognized.

But I was never one to ask for help either. How could I? If I did I was either told I wasn’t trying hard enough or I was a lazy user.

 They didn’t smoke, but bum that I was then I must have gotten a couple bucks for a pack somewhere along the way. The nicotine helped me feel a little better for a moment.

 For a moment.

 For a moment I was safe. For a moment I was small again under my parents protection. For a moment time could stop it’s downward spiral.

For a moment, the demons were held at bay.