The House I Am Buried In

There has to be a correlation between celebrations, the only time I ever see my family, and the reason to why I hate both so very much. It isn’t even particular celebrations, holidays or family members that I find myself developing an aversion to. It’s all of them, family and celebratory shit-festivals alike. I think that if I had to make a list of all the things I couldn’t stand, I would instead make a list of everything I liked with a footnote at the bottom that stated, “Everything that isn’t the above three is everything I hate.” Because fuck the hypothetical rules that I set for myself too.

    I can’t stand complaining this much and so I try to put things into perspective. Like, if depression had a bright side similar to how a swamp is able to support life in the form of insects, it would be that depression helps put the things you do like into perspective. Those things seem to shine so much brighter than they had ever before, but relative to everything else it’s still like looking at a flickering candle from a mile away. A positive is a positive though. The point isn’t to add logic to a condition that seems to defy it.

    When I think about it, depression isn’t about being “sad”, although that is the easiest emotion to pinpoint, as they are trick complicated. What a regular person experience as “sad” I feel in a number of ineffable emotional constructs that therapists have been trying to add names to for years. It really just doesn’t work the way people think it does. Simply doing things doesn’t really fix the problem. Like taking aspirin for a headache, it only dulls the pain. There is an actual chemical imbalance that just sodomizes your life into a submissive state of atrophy. I try my best to curb the issue. I exercise daily, I apply to numerous jobs, I keep a journal and, on rare occasions, go on dates when I find the energy to actually be around illogical women whom I find difficult to tolerate. Sometimes I think being gay would be so much easier. Why can’t it be a choice? I once watched gay porn thinking I may like it, as if homosexuality could be induced by the opposite of whatever psycho-aversion-therapy would be. It didn’t work.

This makes me think that there are two kinds of people with depression: those that do everything they can to try and get rid of it like an adrenaline junkie, and those that can’t find the strength to do a damn thing like a heroine junkie. Both are awful; so really do not think the former is the better of the two. It’s kind of like having a family that has these super high expectations of you, everyone making you out to be some sort of prodigious little shit yet everything you do just falls short. You can’t make anyone happy, you can’t prove yourself to a single person, and you are always just this milquetoast person who only succeeds at failing. I drown myself in a salt-water ocean of activities and experiences, taking in vampiric gulps of that toxin water.

    Speaking of family, I forget that it’s with them where I presently find myself. What are we celebrating today anyways? Aunt Lupe’s 3rd marriage or 15th kid? Maybe my mother’s rampant alcoholism that’s so obvious if I was to draw her from memory she would most certainly have a glass of some cheap red wine in hand? It’s hard seeing through my own escapist gaze.

    Noticing my sudden relapse back into this conscious reality, my older brother leans over to remind me that I’m here because our sister just graduated in some bullshit field that will have no affect on her actual career since she seems to only soar to success on her looks alone. Being a girl must be easy. Well an attractive girl at least.

    I wonder where I fucked up and I would have continued on this train of thought for the rest of the night if I was not interrupted by the sight of my aunt Lupe, the walking trimester, with her tacky dyed red hair pulled up high into a bun and her dress looking a little tight around the midsection.

“Esteban how are you? I feel like it’s been so long. Just look at you!” she says as she pokes at my stomach and squeezes my bicep. This form of familial flattery is feels awkward and does nothing but add to my discomfort.

“Well he might as well have looks if nothing else.” My mother interjects from out of nowhere. I swear that women must exist in the 4th dimension, slipping between time and space, finding holes in the fabric of this universe where her children are at their most vulnerable so she could strike with assassin like precision. I theorize that the wine is her real power. It amplifies her Hispanic wit and sharpens that tongue to an edge that could slice through steel.

“Linda, leave the boy alone! It takes some time for us to find our place in this world. I remember when my hijo Hector was still in col-“

“Hector? Which one is that one again? I don’t mean to be rude but I’m finding it hard to keep track these days.” She stops only to let out the most innocent of chuckles, “I imagine you keep their faces on the fridge with their names underneath just to remind yourself each morning.” My mother sharply cuts off Lupe while holding that pose where the hand that holds the wine is elevated near the face with the wrist bent back, glass resting between index and middle finger, and the other hand remains poised underneath the elbow as if propping it up. I like to think that pose is the staple of a professional alcoholic bitch anywhere.

    My aunt Lupe squints her eyes into a glare before huffing, walking off, and uttering a “puta” just loud enough for us to hear.

“You didn’t need to say that…” I trail off at the end, losing the conviction I was hoping would be delivered. People make me uncomfortable, but my family downright makes me feel insignificant. My brother had somehow disappeared before this exchange. I prayed for him to come back as he was the only one who ever really supported me, but even against my mother his will to fight diminishes. He must have inherited that dimensional travelling ability from her because he knows exactly where she is at all times just so he can avoid being there. The frightened son version of the Pauli exclusion principle.

    She starts to speak back to me, her tone rising but the volume staying low, if not lower. Her eyes look dead as the fog of five dollar Rex Goliath takes control of her head. I try to focus on what she is saying but my anxiety has been acting up as the days approached this family reunion of sorts. By now the feeling of a rumbling in my head and shaking of my arms has become too much. I push her aside, spilling some wine in equal parts on the ground and on her. I haven’t been to this home yet. My parents had moved recently and I hated that if only for the fact that all I wanted was to be surrounded by bathroom tile but had no idea where to locate any of it.

    I hear my brother say something as I pass by. I feel the eyes of my family just staring at me, and I know my mother is standing there not even uttering a sound as the wine soaks into the fabric of her calico dress. She must be so proud of herself that her every prediction about me has always been true. If in a parallel universe there exists another me with another mother, I would bet all she thinks about comes true as well. Except in there I am not the writhing shell of an unemployed drop out making an ass of himself in front of his entire family.

    I finally find the restroom after opening up just about every room in this bourgeois middle class wannabe mansion that exists an hour away from any civilization. I slam the door hard as I press my back against it. My eyes clench tightly together and my breathing becomes erratic. Calm down. Calm down. I repeat to myself my prophylactic mantra hoping to regain stability over my thoughts. I feel as if I am trapped in one of those tubes that blow air around you, scattering money or coupons in the air. I try and try to grab a hold of anything worthwhile. A happy moment, my first kiss, the time I had sex with Erika in her dad’s Porsche. I swing wildly reaching for a time in my life where I had stability, but it all feels as if it is just slipping away. I can’t even remember what my mother said.

    I feel my fingers clench at the sides of my head but have no recollection of committing to the action. There is pain, but I don’t feel it, I just know it is there, my brain consciously making me aware of what I’m doing but not giving me the pleasure of properly processing any of it. I feel something warm touch the edge of my cheek that brings me nostalgic comfort. I remember this feeling, this wet sticky warmth. My parents had a dog growing up. They named her Shakira, but I always called her Poopy. She always knew when I was sad and would come over just to lick me across the face. I loved that about dogs. They are so empathetic and loving to think that scuttling over and licking you serves as some magical cure-all.

I just have to open my eyes and I know she will be there looking at me with that big dopey face and those eyes that are somewhat off center that gave everyone an unsettling feeling if they were to look her dead on in the face.  

    It takes me a minute but when I finally do manage to pry myself out of my daze, I don’t see Poopy staring at me with canine ignorant concern. Just nothing. I suppose it makes sense. The dog was already in full maturity by the time I was eight.

    I reach for the side of my face where I felt warmth to find blood having trickled from where I had dug my nails. It hurts when you realize that the things that made you happy are things that are no longer around. My therapist said I should find happiness in memories but it always seems to be counterproductive when the moments that are so full of delight end up eclipsing themselves.

I arch myself forward, pulling my knees up into my chest and digging my face into them. The panic attack is gone, only the previous feelings remain. I weep helplessly, letting the tears permeate through the denim of my jeans and soak the leg underneath. I miss that dog.

I wasn’t sure how long I sat in fetal on that bathroom floor. Time tends to blur under those circumstances. You don’t know how long you spend crying, shaking, mentally trailing off, or muttering strings of incoherent words together. It must not have been very long considering the sun seemed high in the sky judging by the light that shone in through the bathroom window. It was casting odd shadows along the walls putting my mind under strenuous Rorschach tests. I tilted my head up feeling as if the prophesized knock of a concerned family member was soon to come. I couldn’t handle anything anticipatory without feeling some form of anxiety.

“Yo…” My brother calls from the other side of the door, his knuckles gently rapping against the wooden door making a soft tap sound. “Let me in. I can’t hold it in anymore.”

I responded with silence.

“I’m kidding… Seriously, E. Let me in, man.”
    “I’m fine. Go away. I’ll be fine.”
    “No you won’t. You know you won’t. Let me in. Talk to me.”

The sound of his voice was comforting through the dulling of the bathroom door. It didn’t hold the same “I know better than you” intensity that it normally holds when he speaks to you in person. Not that he ever talks down to anyone, really. His voice is more on the tonal level of assurance wherein he speaks almost factually and never through presumption or condescending knowhow. I knew he wouldn’t give up either.

    I pushed myself away from the door, dragging myself along the floor and up against the opposite side of the bathroom returning to that upright fetal position, knees hugged against chest and face dug low enough that only my eyes showed. I stared at the door as I waited for my brother to walk in. Its edges seemed to expand and contract as if breathing.

    I was shocked at how tactless he was as he walked in, pushing the door open as if it was standing in his way. He stood there just staring at me for a few seconds with a blank look on his face before sitting, cross legged, on the floor in front of me. He had this way of just staring at someone as if they were something to be examined and learned from. Maybe that’s where he got his confidence from. He just watches people sometimes, never speaking unless it was something worth saying, and hardly ever making a mistake that would be common for another person to make. I envied that about my older brother, how he took to time to assess every situation, every emotion he felt, and every possible outcome like some war time strategist. I just wish he didn’t do it so much with me.

    “What are you doing here?” his question through me off. I wanted to feel offended but I knew he never meant offense in his words, they just cut straight to a point that he forgot to let everyone else know about.

    “You mean like here as in this washroom? This stupid fucking party? Or here existentially?” Words are comfort when you hide behind sarcasm and empty humor.  

    “Adorable. Why do you come here? You don’t want to be here, you hate this family and I don’t particularly blame you, so why do you keep showing up? I love that I get to see you but you aren’t a kid anymore. We can actually just go out and have a drink, so don’t use me as an excuse for showing up.”
    “I don’t know.” I really didn’t. I tried to think of a clever answer but my shield of sarcasm was swatted away before it fully served the purpose of giving me a moment to collect myself. I sat there with dried tears on my cheeks and a running nose that was becoming obnoxious just trying to think of why I even bothered coming to these events. I wanted to chalk it up to obligations to my family, or to see relatives I haven’t seen in a long time, but I really didn’t care about any of that. So much emphasis is put on family, but seeing these people after so many years is the same as seeing someone from high school. I just don’t really care but I lie to myself under that pretense.

    “I’m not going to sit here and tell you to get help or stop being such a child because that isn’t going to make a difference. What I will tell you though is that you’re a damn masochist.” Whenever he spoke to me I had to let a silence fall before I spoke back. He valued thought in your words over feigned wit.

    “I don’t want to be here anymore.” Was all I could bring myself to say.

    “Do you mean in this bathroom? This party? Or are you talking existentially. Because it better not be the last one.”

    We kept talking for the next thirty minutes or so. We avoided the topic of my panic attack and of my depression. We reminisced on our childhood, the different girls we dated, the times mother was a mother. It felt good to have this talk with him. Time causes too many rifts between people and sometimes it becomes too much of an effort to keep those ties intact.

    At the end of the conversation I decided what I meant when I said I didn’t want to be here anymore. It was a much more physical revelation than it was mentally. I needed away from this place and these people that I constantly surrounded myself with. They did nothing but make me feel bad and, like a battered wife, I continued to come back to them. I made the decision at the end of that conversation that it was time for me to leave. I could see on my brother’s face that, while this is the epiphany he wanted me to have, he didn’t want to see me go. This rift wasn’t just experienced by me alone and yet now that he was finally mending a wound he felt he held responsibility for, I was ready to up and go.

    I didn’t need to waste much thought on what I would do, because it didn’t really matter. I knew this was the source of my problems and I needed time to sort through my own thoughts alone. Maybe I would go back to school, take up a student visa in another country, or maybe live in a totally different state.

    “What do you plan to do?” he asks under a heart-torn gaze.

    “Don’t know. Don’t care. I have quite a bit of money saved up from my disability checks and my lease has been up for the past six months. I might as well leave now. It doesn’t matter where to.”

    He lets out a sigh followed by a “hmm” as he gets to his feet and stretches his back out, stealing a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the mirror.

    “Well” he begins only to pause rather oddly. “Just remember you can’t run from your troubles. Your mind is the ghost of your problem and your body is the house it was murdered in.”

    He walks out before letting me speak back, purposely letting what he said hang in the air as if this were a soap opera. I realize I probably won’t see him again for a long time. It’s sad how the things that bring you so much joy are the same things that bring you the most pain or maybe I should just be speaking for myself. 

[This is a short story I wrote for my creative writing class. It has yet to go through the workshop phase but I wanted to put it up anyways as I kind of like it how it is now before being critiqued. As a side note: remember that as a reader you are never to connect the narrator of a story to the author. They are not one in the same and although my writing may seem moody or dark, that's just what I have an affinity for. The characters people create can sometimes be representations of themselves and other times can be complete fabrications of ideas they found interesting.]

--[R](M)