I remember asking the doctor if he could help me forget. Could he tinker with my memory implant? Activate a clone with an old scan? A lobotomy perhaps? He told me that I couldn't wipe away my troubles so easily. It was the last conversation we had for a long time.
The clinic wasn't a terrible place. Not what I was accustomed to, but cozy in its own right. After the initial consultation with my doctor, I got used to the idea that perhaps I'd spend the rest of my days there. I honestly hoped there wouldn't be many days left to spend. Wasting away all alone seemed fitting--fitting in the sense that it was the hand I believed fate inevitably had in store for me, so I might as well play it quickly and be done with it.
I sat in silence for weeks. I woke up every morning and wept for my son, and I went to bed each night doing the same. I found myself thinking about my brother as much as anything else, consumed by the notion that I never had an opportunity to meet the people that might have mattered most to me. For all that I told myself that I was simply waiting to die, however, I couldn't help but ask myself why, if I really believed so, I hadn't simply let myself burn with the rest of the house.
As it happened, I couldn't even bear to watch it burn. My parents thought perhaps I'd gone mad, so they asked me to seek professional help. I remember thinking that it had all been an empty fantasy. All a lie. I didn't want to live in a dream anymore. I certainly didn't want to live in our dream, so I burnt it to the ground. I presumed that when the smoke cleared and the rubble was carted away, everything would seem pristine again.
I was wrong, of course. There I sat, the warmth of my burning home on my back, doodling their names in the sand--the family I loved. When it dawned on me that the smoke wouldn't clear and the rubble would always be there, I found that cynicism welcomed me with open arms. Perhaps I took my parents' advice precisely because I didn't like this new companion.
Because I had been unwilling to speak, the doctor gave me a notebook. He said that perhaps the first person I'd be ready to talk to would be myself. I look back at the first entry I made:
The doc says this book will help.
That was all I wrote for two weeks. In the meantime, I had found the squirrels outside my window to be a curious diversion from my usual contemplations--guilt, shame, loneliness, loss. They seemed quite busy. Darting to and fro, looking about in short, nervous little twitches. I wondered often if they were much like people, and that's when I started jotting down my thoughts.
I envied the simplicity of their lives, yet I realized that I wouldn't trade places with them. I think that's when the clouds parted and I started to see blue skies again. At the very least, that's when I began speaking to people again, and my doctor soon decided that I didn't need to be there anymore. Burning my house might have been drastic, but I was certainly not insane.
Returning to my regular life hasn't been easy. I still see the doctor every week to talk about the challenges of carrying on as normally as I can. New revelations have sparked a great deal of hostility, though. I've never really needed to consider anger management before, but then again, I've never really been an angry person. I miss being the happy fellow I used to be.
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Topic: Recovery (Read 1834 times)