I've felt sorry for myself for two years.  Since my cat died, but even before.

What am I as a man?  Afraid of crickets.   Afraid of confrontation.  Afraid of death.  Afraid to kill and afraid to be killed.

I can blame Ness Falls.  She's the one who made me feel like my body wasn't good enough.  Or Karla.  So busy looking to the Heavens that she can't see someone groveling at her feet here on Earth.  Talking up the values of feminism and showing pictures of herself to everyone she meets online so she can validate how pretty she is.  She's anorexic.  She won't admit it.  She's had that scary moment in a dark closet.  She won't admit it.  She just closes her eyes, ignores the blessings she's given, and fellates the blessings she creates.

I can blame Kevin.  For making me hate.  For turning me into someone who can't control their emotions.  I beat his head into the concrete the same way I beat that freckled boy in Kernersville's head with a baseball bat.   I hurt them both.  They did it to me.  It's their fault.  They have no idea how to live and it rubs off on me.  I know how to live.  God has a plan for me, right?  So it involves brutal violence.

I can blame my Dad.  Blame him for laying on the couch when he should've been wrestling with me.  Sitting on his ass to watch baseball when he could've been reading comics with me.  Wasting his life and not noticing it.   Letting all of his moments go by casually as I sit and wait for him to speak up.   I can blame my Mom for being a high school drop out and giving me shit because of my grades.  I can blame them for making me into this confused little moral ball without any regard for how easy my life might've been without it all.

I can blame my cat.  Fuck you for dying.  You came and you took, and you left.  You came and went.  I hate you for that.

I finally reach the point where I can blame these people.  I can feel sorry for myself.  All by myself.  On the top or the bottom bunk.  They're both for me anyway.

On Saturday afternoon I'm getting ready to go out when my Mother calls me to tell me that my Father has had a heart attack.  She found him collapsed on the floor like she found me motionless before, the way I've lay in my own floor waiting for someone to come find me.  Eventually having to get up because nobody cares enough to pander to my charade.

And past it all, it's my Father.  In his forties.   He was twenty when I was born.  Younger than me.  My Father had a heart attack and is in the hospital.

I didn't cry.  I couldn't.  It wasn't my fault.

But maybe it was.  Maybe it was my fault that his heart gave out.  Maybe I asked him to wrestle with me too many times.  His body couldn't handle it after all the stress of work.  Maybe I should've let him nap when he needed a nap instead of demanding his time, and maybe he would've been well rested enough to make it through that clog, or that burst, or that hateful whatever.

I want to blame everyone but I'm too afraid that he'll die to take that time.

It's my Father.  God.  I give my Dad a capital F even if he isn't divine.

What else can I do?  I sat out on my balcony and stared into the sky for a few hours.  I looked at birds flying by.  Things Thrasher would've drawn.  The boring monotony of settled.  I start to hate myself for the thing I've done, and for the things I do, and the things I've let myself become.  Because it isn't "so bad."  I didn't end up "so bad."  Things are "pretty good."

And it's my Father.  His heart.  The one thing I thought would last him forever.

I'm afraid that my Father will make a full recovery, because when he does we'll have those wasted days and years.  Some great memories.   Times when we bond.  Times when we laugh together and cry together.  And one day he'll fall to the floor again.  And his heart will beat out of tune.   And he'll recover.  And more days.  And another attack.  And another.  And another heart attack.  And then my Father will die.

My Father will die.  I'm so afraid.  I'm afraid of the monster at the end of this book.  I'm afraid that he's going to take my Father away from me.  He's going to open his jaws and swallow it whole, and I will be left here to clean up the mess that splatters as mostly me across my balcony floor.   I started crying as the sun went down and my dog kept scratching the door to get out.

I pray that he won't turn this page.  Please, please don't turn this page.  Please.

I thought I had so much more time.

Next.