0128

I feel "over" things most of the time. I rarely think about growing up anymore, once you work through everything in therapy it feels a little pointless to think about things anymore.

Still, every January I feel oddly anxious and a little less than motivated. A friend said to me, "January is a month of Mondays." And that could explain most of my January Malaise.

For a long time I kept 0128 as my PIN for all my accounts (not anymore, duh).

I was 13 and my sister was 9, Max's age.

My parents had been divorced for a little while, but even though the judge awarded the house to my mother, my father refused to leave. I suspect the eviction process took longer than necessary because my mother felt a little powerless and guilty, feelings I think have ruled her life.

He knew the end was coming and had started to lock himself in the back bedroom on the first floor. He installed a chain lock on the door and put a small refrigerator with a stock pile of terrible beer (Old Milwaukee, light).

My mother, sister and I were watching television in the front room. My father was, as usual, locked in the back bedroom.

It was almost bedtime and there was a loud bang from the back room and then terrible moaning. My mother ran to the back room but the chain lock was on the door.

My sister and I ran upstairs to hide but it quickly became clear to me we didnt want to be in the house. I didn't know my father had a gun but I quickly put it together. We got our clothes and shoes on and ran down the stairs, past the room where my mom was trying to get into my father and out the door to a neighbor's house. 

When I try to picture Maddie and Max in that scene, I start to shake. Maybe that's why I think about it every year. The further away I get from it, the more absurd it seems and in a lot of ways that makes it more upsetting. 

At my neighbors house we were sent upstairs to my friend's bedroom. There was a window that faced my house and I watched my father being carried out on a stretcher. He was covered in a sheet and there was blood everywhere.

I thought he was dead and my brain couldn't quite wrap around that.

That was not the first time in my life my brain couldn't handle the information coming at it. But it was the first time I was trying to keep it together in front of people who were not part of that madness.

Earlier that day I'd told my father I was going to tell. I wasn't going to, I knew I wouldn't but I liked him thinking I was going to. It made me feel powerful. He told me he would kill himself if I told. I didn't believe he'd do that.

But then I saw that stretcher and all the blood and remembered the sound of him moaning after the shot...

I didn't want my sister to freak out. I didn't want my school friend to be more freaked out (and tell the whole school) so I tried to keep it together but all the sudden I had this enormous truth in my lap: I had killed my father. 

A policewoman came in to talk to us, he wasn't dead.

He'd shot himself in the shoulder and was going to the hospital.

Another manipulation.