The Day My Heart Stopped Beating
That was years ago.
That was Yesterday.
I Can Only Say It No Longer Ticks
It’s Like a Broken Watch, Useless
One day I Hope the Blood Will Again Flow
But Hope Doesn’t Spring Eternal
Time Goes By and I can feel it Passing
Years Roll On and They Kept Going Faster
The Day My Heart Stopped Beating Was Like No Other
I Can Barely Recall The Pain For I feel almost Nothing
Excepting for a faint flicker of love still lives inside this dead heart
Hoping, waiting, dreaming
That someway, someday, somehow they’ll be a spark
So then that the heart, atrophied and broke, long since forgotten
Can beat again. can pump again. Can love again
But the scars to deep
Think we’ll need to operate
Maybe carve a little hole and get rid of that blackened piece of coal
Replace it something artificial
Better than nothing, right?
You won’t be needing it anymore
We’ll just dispose of it in a timely way
Forget about your thoughts forget about today
Tomorrow you’ll start anew, albeit with a fake ticker
But that’s what you wanted, correct?
To get rid of that flame, that hope, that flicker.
I hadn’t smiled in long time. Not since the day before that day. I decided after all was said and done to isolate myself. Whereas before I would go out to dinner at fine restaurants in Rittenhouse Square, now I just laid in bed, straing at the walls with tears in my eyes. Who would I go with anyway? Sleep didn’t come easy and when it did it wasn’t pleasant and was plagued by nightmares of times I couldn’t forget. Waking up screaming and not knowing where I was at was a common occurrence. The sheets from my bed lay wrinkled on the floor and I slept on the bare mattress cuddled up in my blanket trying to pretend it was her. This went on for awhile. I thought about seeking help, but I didn’t. I thought about killing myself. I didn’t, obviously, or I wouldn’t be recounting this chapter.
My only friend during this period was Jack Daniels, though I did hang out with Jim Beam. Yes, I drank—a lot. My recyclable bin overflowed like a flooding river of tears that were just empty bottles. It tipped over if it rained, leaving shattered glass all over the street. My one neighbor, this old bitch that never minded her own business and constantly gossiped to all the other neighbors about my problem, called the police one time. They knocked. I answered—drunk. They told me to buy another bin so they didn’t have to come back but were generally annoyed at her more than me since I told them I was just minding my own business and wanted to be left alone.
Life went on—if you could call it that. I bought movies after TV became monotonous, which happens quite fast. Somehow I managed to keep my job at the factory machining pieces of high stainless steel alloy with 7.5 percent Molybdenum into sheets for nuclear power plants. It sounds hard but after 10 years it becomes second nature. I could do it with my eyes closed; I did it with my head pounding.
Nobody said much to me at work. Why would they? The place is loud and no one wants to be there. They would hire many convicts for the positions. So, my drinking was hardly a matter of concern. These people stole snacks out of the fridge. They even stole my safety glasses. No one ever was told to leave. The boss wouldn’t even tell their parole officer. Hell, it was basically slave labor anyway so I can sort of understand. But at 29 years of age, it bothered me that I worked so hard for so long and these people just waltz in like pauper princes and do whatever.
It made me want to kill myself even more. But, after Brenda took that bottle of valium I couldn’t bring myself to join her, yet. I remember when I woke up and shook her. Her body felt like a warm burger left out for a husband who came home late. It felt like a stiffening Christmas tree left out on the curb. It felt like death. It felt like my heart had just stopped beating.
That was a year ago. You would think I’d be feeling better but I am not—how could I? Memories flash like lightening bolts through my head every waking moment: walks in the park, drives to nowhere, the trip to Paris, the pregnancy.
Well as you can imagine the isolation drove me to pace around the house, to punch holes in the wall just to see if I could still feel physical pain as I had gone quite numb emotionally. So, I picked up the phone book and found a bar in Bucks County where nobody knew me.
I started going there a lot. I wanted to drink with people and somehow that made me feel even more alone. The place was called EAT and DRINK, quite imaginative of the owners, correct? I hung out on a bar stool and didn’t talk to anyone. Cobwebs wove through the neon lights that gave the place a bit of atmosphere for me. The stool, wooden with a thin pad, was tall enough to let my legs dangle without hitting the floor. One particular night some punk called me a faggot since I was dressed in a suit jacket and wore a pink shirt underneath. In hindsight I wore the outfit on purpose. I wanted to fight. I wanted someone else to feel the pain that I felt, even if it was purely physical. I grabbed him by the throat and hauled him into the bathroom where I smashed his mouth against the sink, breaking one of his teeth. Blood splattered everywhere: the mirror, the floor, on my shirt. I smiled and told him if he fucks with me again, it wouldn’t be his mouth that I’d crack open—it would be his entire fucking head.
Obviously I was quite angry, as I learned that night. The next little step was bargaining. Then depression.
Brenda gave birth to my son Josh at Holy Redeemer. It happened so fast. His little head poked out as Brenda screamed “Oh, God. Fuck, come out already.” He was so precious with his little faced drenched with amniotic fluid. The nurse carried him away after letting Brenda hold him for a minute. She beamed and held my hand so tight.
My life rattled onwards down the tracks towards some life I didn’t know and never wanted. It zigzagged somewhere between suicide and acceptance. I guess I’ll just come right out and say it: I lied to you; I did try and commit suicide. It happened rather peculiarly, laying on the couch and watching golf.
I didn’t have a gun. I didn’t even have a sharp enough knife. What I did have was an orange extension cord. I tapped on the ceiling to find the wooden girder and then hammered in a steel nail. I wrapped the extension cord around the nail and made a knot, and then I made sure there wasn’t enough slack to reach the floor and tied the rest around my neck, causing me to choke and turn blue. The chair was wobbling and I thought of Jacob.
The day he lay in his crib facedown jumped into my head like so many unwanted gifts at Christmas from people you loved. I could feel my hands tingle as the memory of me turning him over to look into his dead eyes and breathless face shot through my mind. I cried. I could see Brenda run into the room and collapse on her knees. For days, she laid face down on the pillow. SIDS is what the doctors said.
We never really said much after that and I tried everything to console her and asked her to seek help. She did and the shrink gave her valium. The day after she came back from the doctor, I found her face down on the plush, red rug, clutching an empty orange bottle of pills when I came home from the factory. Rigamortis set in awhile ago as she must have took them right when I left for work.
That’s when the pain really started. I cursed God. I cursed him for taking Jacob. For taking Brenda. For taking everything. What did he want? My soul. It didn’t feel much like I had one. And I would’ve sold it to the devil to get back what I had before: the life I had planned out, the life where I was happy, the life where things were normal.
Anyway, the day I tied the extension cord around my neck was long ago. I couldn’t do it. I tried. I didn’t want to die; I just didn’t want to live, if that makes any sense. To those of you who may know intense pain, it will.
I didn’t go back to the EAT and DRINK for awhile. I figured it would be best to steer clear, lest the cops came. No one knew me there anyway and I paid with cash, so they couldn’t have my name. But, I doubt the kid snitched anyway.
Actions have consequences. What I realized was that I was still alive. When I smashed his head into the sink it proved to me I could still feel. It proved I wasn’t dead. It proved I could love again. And after I went home that’s what I set out to do—fall in love again and machine the pieces of my broken heart back together, not to forget but to move on. What choice did I have?
So I quit my job. I had saved a lot of money and I could always go back. I also had the money from the insurance. Even though there was some clause that prevented them from shelling out the money if the person commits suicide, the agent listed it as catastrophic given the circumstances of how everything went down.
I went to EAT and DRINK and applied. I wasn’t too much older than much of the staff so I didn’t feel out of place, though I didn’t tell anyone I had left a rather lucrative position to wait tables. But it wasn’t about money; it was about meeting people. A year spent in grief is a year lost and I desperately need to get out, to meet someone, to meet people. Otherwise I would’ve tied that extension cord around my neck eventually.
It was the strangest thing. All so surreal. I never thought I could move on. I don’t know if I did. But working there I slowly came out of my shell. I slowly started to open up and talk to people. I told them lies. I couldn’t tell them that I was married and my son died of SIDS and my wife ate a bottle of pills and I was on the verge of wrapping an extension cord around my neck. A tad dreary, don’t you think? Hey, Paul, did I tell you about the time I came home and found my wife’s lifeless body face down on the floor; it was quite a sight. I think not. It’s better to keep the past where it belongs. Dead.
The money wasn’t really good but I enjoyed the atmosphere. The bar, made of wood, had two sides and was quite cozy for mingling. The dining area bustled with people many nights. And then it came to me: I had to leave. I had nothing. And when you have nothing, you go where there might be something. The only thing here there were bad memories that needed to be erased.
But life isn’t a piece of paper that you can just erase the words to when they no longer fit into some story line. It isn’t a wall with pictures you can take down when you no longer feel like seeing them. Memories flash through synapses and neurons and hurt like hell and I thought that maybe, just maybe if I could leave it all maybe one day I’d be able to open up and not tell lies. For I was sick of the lies. And that’s what I did: I left. I know, I know, it’s a rather quick ending. I wish I could tell you more. But there’s not much to tell. You see, I woke up the next morning and booked the first flight to Phoenix. I pointed at a map and that’s where my finger touched. That was years ago. You see my heart did start beating again. And now when I go to sleep, it isn’t a blanket I hold to, it’s a person, my wife, Elaine.
No comments:
Post a Comment