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Non-fiction / When Life Matters: Chapter 1 -- Awakenings (Analysis)
“Most days I just want to eat the barrel of a gun.” I said to my therapist in our weekly session. With my head lowered into my hands as I sat in that office chair, I could not help but try to shield myself from revisiting that which I have spent years running from through a cacophony of drugs, alcohol, or lowered expectations in the relationships I kept. The heat upon my face from the tears streaming brought little comfort on this cold, autumn day. I always found the fall to be like bad foreplay. Through the football games, harvest festivals, or reunions with old acquaintanences, there is that innate desire for connection; a will of the seasons to provide hope, perhaps change to my daily regiment of vices to get from one hour to the next, one day to the next. It would inevitably be a false invitation to something greater than my own whims as a cold, dark, winter stood on the horizon patiently waiting, inevitably to set in.
“Nothing matters. No one is listening.” I muttered through fits of anguish. The demons had once again gripped their talon-like fingers around my soul. It was a familiar moment felt as I relived the years of abuse, the violence, and the confusion it caused. While some were dead and buried, and others crippled by the hardship of life, the dominance of my abusers was real. The pain was all consuming, their dismissive judgment the same.
“What are you feeling Trent?” the therapist asked with a sympathetic tone.
“I don’t know! … I just don’t know.” I cried out while trying to quantify the moment upon me. As a writer, the words were always there to establish the minutia of the moment; the scene and places of a piece as I further developed my narrative voice. Yet, there are such moments in life where words fail, and fail horribly. This moment would be but one example. Another would be the empty “I love you” shared with friends and family when the sentiment implied bore little fruit if any at all. A shroud of isolation blocked out the well wishes of others while trapping me in a life of hell. A vicious cycle born itself; one that was not easy to break.
My thoughts traveled back searching for a quantifiable moment to summarize what I was feeling. It was a bad acid trip through my memories as bits and pieces of unresolved pain hit my heart with precision; each one calculated, deadly. None proved to be complete in the magnitude or depth of my angst. This, however, did not lessen the sting that each moment brought. The distortion of my face as I relived each moment all but manifested the hells upon me. This moment was commonplace. This moment was my life.
“My name is Trent … and I fucking matter!” I would utter when backed into a corner. Beaten and broken as I might have been, there still existed some fight left me. I could compromise on much due to my low self-esteem, but to be completely dismissed was something I would not tolerate. My ‘worth’ as it were, though on a sliding scale of being bought and sold by those I allowed such a right, was still tangible, still real. That grain of self I would not offer to be robbed from me though life had robbed me of everything else.
“Trent … Where are you in your thoughts?” the therapist probingly asked. Her voice carried the weight of concern as I violently shuttered. Each memory revisited contorted the impressions on my otherwise expressionless face. The years grew if not created an inner chaos. In doing so, it provided a wealth of abuse that landed me with a stoic demeanor. ‘Smiles and cries …” I once entertained through a movie, “no one can control your smiles and cries.” This fact was evident as I seldom shared either. It was all I had left.
“Trent … Trent … Where are you?” Though the words and the kind inflection in which they were issued went heard on an immediate level, my hyperactive mind was lost to the self-conflagration of thirty-three years of hardship and denial. I could not help but notice the growing ironies of my life as I appreciated the sympathy the therapist shared in that moment. ‘Women are my ultimate vice … they are my ultimate bane.’ Such reflections did little to alter my pathology. ‘I am a creature of vice seeking virtue. I am forever to fail.’
Admittedly, I cannot remember the one that first preyed upon me as a child. Perhaps the walls built over the years shielding others out is greater than my own attempts to get at the source of my afflictions. I cannot be certain. What I can remember is a relative preying upon me after I was awakened to sexuality at an immature age of reason. Like pheromones, once awaken to the darker side of the human experience, perhaps I secreted that unknown agent that welcomed sexual advances from the malformed into my life. For my part, it was only natural to live in this realm of discovery. A right or wrong of it was never associated. After a relative molested me at that tender age, it was followed up by a female daycare worker holding me and caressing me on her lap while the other children began to lay down for their daily nap.
I distinctly remember kissing her on the lips, making out with her in full view of the children around us. With each of them, as they bedded down, she would motherly kiss them on the cheek. With me, I would be her lover as she held me, kissing passionately while the others slept. On the television hanging from the ceiling before us, a soap opera played out its melodrama. Meanwhile, I was living it. I was ten years of age. I was awaken to life and exposed.
‘What one does in the waking hours is cause for the judgment of man. What one does in the darkness of night, is between them and their Maker.’ No truer statement could be made as I assailed life with this awakening. I did so in the hidden places and darkened hours of my adolescents. From one empty relationship to the next, each of them offered little more than momentary connection. I was tainted, isolated, ultimately reaching out for understanding for something I did not even comprehend. It was not until a different therapist shared with me that I came into the light: ‘Trent, sex isn’t sex with you. You are hardwired different due to what you experienced. Sex translates into love. That is how you perceive it.”
Such an awakening hit me harder than most. For once, I had a degree of consciousness that drifted within the realm of right and wrong that made sense. Ultimately, I was human. Ultimately, I was a man seeking love. The parameters of life being shifted due to experience, I was adapting, trying to make my way accordingly. But how does one define the context of such a paradigm? Moreover, how does one do so with the courage and the strength to engage a life that has already jaded them on a real level? You do so absently if you are me.
As a writer, I have found that life carries a level of poetic randomness that must be adhered to if one is to capture the complexity and majesty of the moment surrounding them. Not all of these moments carry that feel-good vibe. Some are darker than the darkest night, mightier than one’s greatest foe. And yet, as I learn how to give up control to that which is beyond my comfort level, I find simple truths are to be had from the moment. ‘Even in my darkest hour, I somehow find strength.’ This is how I carried forward. It was a necessary survival tactic. It was all I knew.
The therapist moved from the seat behind her desk only to take the seat next to me. She kindly offered a tissue before I dismissed it. My defenses were up as I felt like a beaten animal. The hairs on my arms stood while my body tensed. The reaction of my body tightening was unconscious. I was raw and I was real in that moment. The expectation of violence to come flooded my thoughts of my father. ‘Why love has to come with the sting of a slap’ I didn’t understand. That impression lingered throughout my life from one relationship to the next though it didn’t have to be a physical slap nor punch in order to carry the same weight of past traumas. It could be the dismissing of my intentions at friendship or even romance to send me back into that original moment that love and violence blurred into one.
While sitting there grieving, the therapist gently rubbed her fingers through my hair to comfort me. It was a sensation that I have always enjoyed. It was calming, innocent, and honest. As she continued, I couldn’t help but be reminded of past lovers. Through the hells of one failed relationship after another, there were still fleeting moments of grandeur. ‘I am a better man in a relationship than I am on my own.’
“I know what tears at you Trent, but tell me,” she said, directing my face toward hers to engage eye contact. “What is it that makes you smile? What makes you happy? Do you know? It seems like you have spent the bulk of your life running from the pain without knowing anything else.” I quickly shifted my face to stare blankly out the window behind her desk. Contact of any kind, though I craved it from the frailest, most earnest part of my being, was that which I feared most of all.
In that moment, my senses were flooded with a mixture of emotions as the sweet smell of potpourri wafted up from her desk. That smell always reminded me of home … not my home but of the home I had constructed in my mind years ago. A home that was far away from the one I had lived in, the one that manifested such chains I continued to carry.
“Family …” I muttered quietly. The sky outside had merged itself into a hue of gray as a hard rain began to fall. “My own family.” I forced out. I wanted to say more but the words were not there. Regaining my composure, I wiped away the evidence of my tears.
I wanted the tedium of life, the nostalgia of a past not marred with abuse nor addictions to forget. I wanted rooms painted with inviting colors filled with the sounds of laughter and music. I wanted something more than the isolation of myself, an indifferent cat, and the memories I could not run from.
I wanted a loving wife to come home to; to honor, protect and to serve. I wanted children greeting me at the door expecting to tell me about their days with exhausting exuberance. I wanted friends that would come over for football on Saturdays, or poker nights on Wednesdays. I wanted to have that innocence in faith that there was a God watching over us, providing for us, tending to us as we took to church on Sundays to pray.
‘That God doesn’t exist. If he did, he died years ago.’ my mind countered to such a foolish notion. I wanted life outside of an endless quest to take back what was robbed. ‘How can I share this with her without her thinking me naive’ I wondered. ‘How can I share this when in the end I know it doesn’t matter?’
The litany of women that I dated throughout my twenties and early thirties had brought me to a place that I could not fight, I could not run from. As the walls grew higher, ever stronger, blocking out most memories of my youth and the years leading up to the here and now, a different type of demon had manifested. This one my alcohol addiction couldn’t shield me from. It was realer than most, dominating my conscious thoughts in the waking hours while haunting my dreams at night. I was afraid that I had reach the point of no return -- that all my vices, the sum of my fears, the totality of my life, had thrust me into the moment where there was no change … merely consequence.
The consequences of my inaction or bad decisions over the past ten to fifteen years have melded a broken child with a bitter, contemptuous man. I wanted more but squandered the opportunities and relationships that could have forged a new, if not better life. What I was left with was my chains, my fears, and my regrets. There was no going back from there. And the future looked even bleaker than the past. ‘It is true what they say … you can never go home again’ I mused with an audible sigh. The wealth of frustration such a notion brought surged through my body.
‘As we go about our lives defining the parameters of our engagement with others, there are surreal moments that remind you of when love and violence blur; that these are the chains that truly bind.’ It was with this hard understanding that I focused the gaze of my hollow eyes upon the therapist stating with a broken voice born from thirty years of anguish “Most days I just want to eat the barrel of a gun … But I don‘t.”
“Why?” she responded.
“Because I still have hope even though I have no fucking reason why.”
“Trent” she said with encouragement “it’s a start.”
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raebethmcgee reviewed Version 1 -
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Deadsage reviewed Version 1 -
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I have experienced similar abuse.
I like the piece, I see potential in it, but I think it needs a little more work. I am very glad that you are on the road to recovery.
Currently everything in this piece is described as the darkest, realest, most painful, most terrible thing ever. I am not trying to diminish your pain, but as the reader I can’t relate if I’m not given some perspective.
Here are my notes, suggestions:
“gripped their talon-like fingers” – “talons” would be sufficient.
Mixed metaphor: “bad acid trip through my memories… ” – “unresolved pain hit my heart with precision” You are dealing with two concepts with no physical reality (memories and pain) two metaphors that don’t sync makes grasping those concepts harder.
redundant: “trapping me in a life of hell” – “manifested the hells upon me. This moment was commonplace. This moment was my life”
“still existed some fight left [in] me.”
“life had robbed me of everything else” – “life” is inserted in place of the actual responsible agents. You have similar statements throughout.
“probingly asked” – “probed” would be smoother.
“The years grew if not created an inner chaos.” -subject/verb confusion, the chaos is what grew not “the years” but “the years” could be what “created”. Rephrase this.
“immature age of reason” -I’d omit “of reason” it isn’t conveying any information.
“at that tender age” – no need, “molested” implies you were too young and “that…age” isn’t any more specific.
“Sex translates into love. That is how you perceive it.” – I know this was a profound breakthrough for you because you are telling me so, but I don’t know why. Reading the sentence, that is true for almost everyone in their teen years. Moreso with girls than boys, but in itself it is common.
“But how does one define the context of such a paradigm?” -this question is empty, it is already implied by your expressed confusion and angst. Writing it just forces the question into clunky words like “context” and “paradigm”.
“Some are darker than the darkest night, mightier than one’s greatest foe.” – weak similes, I advise you to define their strength and their darkness with something tangible.
“as I learn how to…” -past to present tense switch.
“Through the hells of one failed relationship ” -everything can’t be hell, it weakens the word.
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GeorgiaPoetry reviewed Version 1 -
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Wow… you have really hit the nail on the head. I too am a victim of abuse. This really hit home for me. My relatives were pretty much the same way and mother never believed me, still doesn’t.
You explained the way the mind works so well. The way we constantly berate ourselves and push people away yet at the same time, secretly, we’re trying to pull them closer. Sex is love. So true. So very true. Scary.
I didn’t see any spelling errors and the words flowed flawlessly. Good work.
and
Thank you.
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