The Deliverance of Comfort

I wasn’t supposed to write this, but for some reason I felt compelled to. I felt you needed to know the truth so I gathered enough courage and decide to write. The truth is I wasn’t really writing for you, but for me. I needed to write this more than you needed to read it, though reading it will give you more peace than writing it did me.

There is a noise, faint and continuous, coming from the wall. It sounds like a metronome, marking the time to life’s heartbeat, slowly, like it will soon stop. So I write faster, to you, but for me.

Hope you can read my writing. I tried to change it, but his hand is strong on mine, and every few words remind me of him. Of course you know I’m talking about Mark; and no I will not call him by any other name. A man should earn his title, and mark was never a father, at least not to me. So my life has been about being as different from him as possible, but all I have learnt is in life we become what we run to and what we run from. So I’m sorry if my writing reminds you of him, and if I remind you of him.

I should write him, but I won’t. Peace is given those who deserve it.

I won’t take much of your time. Remember that red tie you bought me? The one…. Forget it. He came to love it. He ruined everything I loved, including you. I am sorry I couldn’t be there for you, I could only watch as he called you into his room, and as he shut the door, his face blank, void of any emotion. I would hear your muffled cry and his grunting, and I would watch you leave his room, doing nothing, not even sharing in your pain, but what could I do? After all, I was and still am, my father’s son.

When I left, knew I had damned you to his hell, but what could I do? I had dreams to run to, nightmares to run away from, and I could not be the one he loved, I could not be the one he didn’t hate. I had to leave on that cold April morning. I felt your warm gaze on my back, I felt its weight on me, but I could do nothing, I was nothing, I was everything to him and therefore I was nothing, so I had to leave, I had to leave you, and be something, by being nothing to you.

I am sorry.

I’m done going though. I am done running. After a while you realize dreams and nightmares all share one thing in common, they both stand on the other side of reality. When you wake up they are no more, and all you are left is with choice. So I’ve decided to wake up. To wake up from a dream that is made up of my running from my nightmares; and nightmares made up of not running towards my dreams. I am waking up.

I hope as you read this you will get to share my freedom. I hope in my disappearance you will feel my presence more than ever, and I hope in the land of the living, I will not meet him. I will have nothing to tell him when he asks why, unlike you, I didn’t go for his funeral.

I wasn’t supposed to write this, but for some reason I felt compelled to. The room is filled with silence. The wall is silent, my mind is silent, my heart is silent.