What dreams may come (redux)
I don't know what we fought about that day or if we were always just fighting. I don't know why I left him alone in my house but I did, returning shortly after to find him at the end of a rampage that had gouged and bloodied walls in almost every room. Hammers, pipes and bats had left welts and holes and cracks. Columns and rows of wounds were eerily aligned. Windows were alternately spiderwebbed and shattered. Oddly, though, rooms that already bore gaping wounds by my own lazily ambitious hand were left untouched. Perhaps only those that I had naively considered "done" were deemed fit for destruction.
I screeched at full-volume, following him as he fled through the back door. Suddenly fearing for my safety, I doubled back, ran out the front door and banged the door of the neighbor's house. A man answered, and I introduced myself as someone who'd lived next door for my entire life, realizing as I glanced around that I was in the cul-de-sac where I grew up, next door to the house I'd inhabited with my family until I was 15. And though I feared he'd never recognize me, feared my ignorance of these people who were obviously keenly aware of me had made me equally invisible in their eyes, this man knew me. This man from my past was kind. He offered to help, to shield. He knew restitution was in order (or at least relief) even though he didn't have a specific plan to pursue.
I found him again later, the destroyer, and confronted him: "You owe me $100,000 to fix all of this damage! You've ruined my house! You're responsible for this!" I knew he was capable of helping if he chose to. I cried. He was cold.
And I looked around me, at the holes in my walls and the shards of my windows, and thought that it didn't seem so bad after all. An opportunity, perhaps, for a new way of decorating. In truth there was no way to go back anyway, no way to replicate things to be exactly as they'd been before.
And I thought, "Well, I guess it's up to me."
I don't know what we fought about that day or if we were always just fighting. I don't know why I left him alone in my house but I did, returning shortly after to find him at the end of a rampage that had gouged and bloodied walls in almost every room. Hammers, pipes and bats had left welts and holes and cracks. Columns and rows of wounds were eerily aligned. Windows were alternately spiderwebbed and shattered. Oddly, though, rooms that already bore gaping wounds by my own lazily ambitious hand were left untouched. Perhaps only those that I had naively considered "done" were deemed fit for destruction.
I screeched at full-volume, following him as he fled through the back door. Suddenly fearing for my safety, I doubled back, ran out the front door and banged the door of the neighbor's house. A man answered, and I introduced myself as someone who'd lived next door for my entire life, realizing as I glanced around that I was in the cul-de-sac where I grew up, next door to the house I'd inhabited with my family until I was 15. And though I feared he'd never recognize me, feared my ignorance of these people who were obviously keenly aware of me had made me equally invisible in their eyes, this man knew me. This man from my past was kind. He offered to help, to shield. He knew restitution was in order (or at least relief) even though he didn't have a specific plan to pursue.
I found him again later, the destroyer, and confronted him: "You owe me $100,000 to fix all of this damage! You've ruined my house! You're responsible for this!" I knew he was capable of helping if he chose to. I cried. He was cold.
And I looked around me, at the holes in my walls and the shards of my windows, and thought that it didn't seem so bad after all. An opportunity, perhaps, for a new way of decorating. In truth there was no way to go back anyway, no way to replicate things to be exactly as they'd been before.
And I thought, "Well, I guess it's up to me."
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