Years of Tragedy

WARNING: This piece contains mild language, viewers be warned.

Years of Tragedy


I remember it like it was yesterday. We arrived at my girlfriend's house in a rush, ambulances and police cars waited in the driveway. She had commited suicide, I watched as the paramedics brought her body out on a stretcher as we approached the house. We could hear her parents screaming inside the house. I stood in the doorway, an emotionless shell surrounded me. I had so many feelings coursing through my veins it was hard for me to feel at all. Her parents screamed because they had lost their daughter, a good kid really. My friend Jaimee cried because she had lost a best friend. And my friend Cory cried because he felt sorry for me. I felt nothing. As I stood in that doorway, I thought. I feared my Girlfriend's suicide above all, but.....expected it. Don't get me wrong, I loved her more than anything in the world, but she was a cutter. I know, I sound like an asshole, but you try it. Try having a relationship with someone who's addicted to cutting, be it to ease pain, or bring pain back to diminish other pain, deal with that for a year. You'll realize deep down inside, no matter how much you love that person, their suicide was expected, accident or not, it's expected.

I stood there in that doorway for what seemed like an eternity. When we left later that night the screaming had died down, but the crying still continued. I was stuck driving home, being the only one able at the time. It was probably a bad idea later, especially in the shocked state that I was in, but it worked at the time. When we arrived at the house everyone got out of the car, and took their seperate ways. Which now meant me being alone while Cory comforted Jaimee. I smoked three cigarettes that night, sitting outside my apartment in the cold wind. I hadn't smoked in 4 years, it was new again, but I didn't care. I fell asleep that way, sitting against my apartment, with a finished cigarette still burning in my fingers.

When I woke the next morning my fingers hurt, and I saw blood on the ground. I'd burnt my fingers with the cigarette. I went through the next month in the same fashion. I was a shell of no emotions, wandering around behind my friends. I was so anti social, what the hell was wrong with me? I had expected my feelings to come back now, but they didn't. Sure I felt empty, but that was about it. Then one day the expected happened. It was a rather sunny day, a light breeze picked up every once in a while. I had gone with Cory to pick Jaimee up from school. I stood on the sidewalk while we waited. She was usually one of the last ones out, so several hundred people walked by before her. That's when it happened. I had caught a whisper from a kid telling another how much he loved cutting. That set me off. Next thing I know I was going to jail for Battery. My sentence was shortened from three years to six months on a plea of mentally unstable. The judge was also familiar with me, I had known his son and daughter since they were Seven years old.

During my time in jail, I recieved several tattoos, all reflecting on my life and the recent tragedy. Being mentally unstable at the time I was said to have been the most fucked up person in the entire jail, which had a few perks. Such as free tattoos, a little respect, and free smokes. I also took a liking to Def Poetry while I was there. Often hearing some inmates batting it around at each other. I found it refreshing, poetry with feeling. None of that Shakespear lovey dovey shit, this was real. Def Poetry, like any other poetry, reflected on life, but it was understandable. Hardly anything Rhymed, and there were more feelings put into one sentence than there ever were with any other poetry that I'd read. My poetry, reflected everything I'd ever felt, everything I'd ever seen. It was dark, full of hatred, pain, rage, sadness, love, and most of all, lonliness. I swirled my words into analogies and twisted my feelings throughout the entirety of my words.

When I got out it was early summer. Cory had coped with everything quite well and had earned himself a job at the local music store. Jaimee was still emotional, but she had coped enough to at least get things done. As for me, I was still enshrouded in darkness. My visits to Church to ease my pain had failed. It only brought on more hatred. I prayed, I talked to the Pastors, even close friends, nothing worked. With each visit I lost my connection with God, or he gave up on me. I'm still not sure about which one it was. As I thought about it more, I realized that God didn't have as much control over our lives as people thought. Someone once told me that God had a plan for everything, that pissed me off above all. Not only were they saying that the suicide of my girlfriend was planned, but so was the destruction of the person I once was. It also made me think about other possibilities. Like maybe he didn't have control over her life because she wasn't Christian, which meant that because I was, I was fucked.

All I know now is that my past self is dead, I'm a different person now, I'm a monster. I didn't believe in Gods and Devils, I didn't believe in fate. My hatred for everything drove me into a dark room filled with nothing but me and my feelings. I had more outbreaks of rage that year than I'd had my entire life. But it didn't stop there. I had outbursts on people I didn't like, people that I loved, everyone. I resorted to brutally hitting solid objects to ease my pain, untill finally I shattered my wrist. Doctors said I'd heal up well enough, but if I hit something else I'd fuck my wrist completely. Which then drove me to find other ways of curing my rage, easing my pain, so I took up drinking.

So where am I now? I died of stomach cancer when I was thirty two. I now lay next to my loved one, wandering the earth for all eternity. But in my mind I'm still standing in that doorway, so many years back, where the tragedy began.