300 – Page 6 – Picking Up Roots

Control

Let go of everything they said. Don’t worry about the positives and negatives; the good and the bad. Just be yourself. You’ll be able to relax if you let go. It’s not all yours. Let go of everything you can’t control.

What they didn’t understand – what they couldn’t hope to ever understand – was that he needed control. He hungered for it. It was what his brain turned over each day. When he was in control, he felt complete.

Because he understood his needs, he spread his arms wide in an effort to bring more within his reach. They said he was doing too much, that he had too much on his plate. They asked why he didn’t delegate tasks, or put his faith in others; didn’t he trust them?

It wasn’t about trust. It was the high from being in control. He wanted it. He needed it. He was desperate for it. He was addicted to it.

Their brains wouldn’t process it. In a world where everyone else was shirking responsibility, he was trying to take on more of it. Responsibility was his control. He’d watched them scratch their heads at his choices. It fueled him to take on more. He was determined to show the doubters you could always take on one more thing and shine.

It’s why he was here now, in total control over the variables of this situation. Where were the voices telling him he couldn’t handle it?

Below him, the world was chaos. There were flashing lights and people running here and there across the street. They were scrambling for control, but were out of practice.

He was calm as he looked down on them from his perch on the ledge. He felt the high as he prepared to let go. He was in control.

Running

In younger years he’d run to be alone. He only enjoyed it those days when he hit his high and felt invincible, as though no distance were too far. On those days he felt nothing. On the other days, he ran mile upon mile to find exhaustion so he might escape the chronic angers of the empty house and the dark corners of his mind through sleep.

Only now that everything was black did he see the irony of having found sleep an escape from the darkness encompassing his world and that he was always running away from the pain it held, in search of something more.

When the darkness of home overwhelmed, he’d left for the city; losing himself among its millions of lost souls. When Jenny left him there, he’d run for the bay, tearing across the country in search of it.

When life with Tomas flamed out, he’d moved north rather than share that huge city with him. He was laid off there, so he ran to the heart of the Midwest, his tires swallowing the road.

Midwest bridges torched he returned east where he met Syl. She stopped his searching. Her hazel eyes, flecked with green and gold, saw everything. They saw through him. When she looked at him, he felt full. He felt he’d found what he was running towards, peace.

She balanced his insecurities, made him feel safe, like he could explore who he might become, the shadow he saw in his dreams. He loved how she challenged him. When she asked what he wanted from life, he answered, “what I have, Syl.” With her, he meant it.

When they fizzled out, he was too tired to run. He felt old, the years too many to outrun, so he let the darkness catch him.

Interpretation

The sun shone through the window on the one red blot on the floor. The red spot where her heel now turned as though stamping out the cigarette she held in her hand. Its thin wisps of smoke trailed through the light up to the ceiling.

She’d come in hot. Angry about something I’d written, saying it was about her even though I had no idea what it was about; suffering, I think, I’d thought at the time.

Besides that, it wasn’t well written, so what did it matter? It would never see the light of day. It didn’t matter to her, because she’d seen it the one way, so no other way would it be.

I struggled for breath. I was anxious about my work under the best of circumstances, so I cowered in the face of her fury. I’d seen few others do the same and even fewer stand up to her. Either way, they ended up in puddles beneath her fiery green eyes.

I wasn’t others. I cared. I bled when I put words down, and I bled now where her nails had caught when she’d slapped my face, causing the blot on the floor. I was determined not to crumble.

I’d tried to tell her it was over between us and the words on the page didn’t matter, whether they were about her or not. That was after the slap.

She’d stood smoking, looking around the room. It was as though she was searching for some implement to impart further pain. She couldn’t hurt me any more. I already felt the words were garbage, and I had born the brunt of her physical rage.

In that moment I felt sad as I saw the anger throbbing in her forehead, and knew she had nowhere to release it. She too began to understand she couldn’t hurt me; that no pain would come from me to satisfy her hunger. Her eyes softened as she tossed the cigarette on the red blot on my floor and dug her heel into it.

“It was shit anyway,” she muttered as she walked out the door.