A Challenge

I feel like Jean Valjean.

I’m starting to question who I am. What I am. Where I am going. What it all means.

Of course, I’m not running from the law with a child that I took from a sleazy bar during the French revolution, but still, I feel like my life is that confusing.

I want you all to know clearly and truly (take your time, I don’t want you to misunderstand): I…AM…A…HYPOCRITE. That means “someone who is not who they seem to be.” “Someone who tries to deceive.” “A liar.” I lie everyday in the ways I communicate, in the ways that I appear. If you ask me how I am, don’t trust my answers. If you see me smile, have some doubt about my smiling heart.

My relationships are no longer like a sunny meadow. That’s how it was when I was a child. Every laugh bright and green. I turned into a teenager, and my life became overcast. My screaming can’t reach my mouth. I can no longer think straight and a heavy hand grasps my heart at every chance of happiness. Life like the many flashes from a Polaroid camera, I am blinded with hopeful insignificance.

I speak, but the fire of my thoughts burn my throat and nothing is heard.

I write and my pen runs dry before I can explain.

Who, no what, am I?

Am I dramatic, and this is just a farce?

Maybe I’m completely different and no one will understand.

What if I’m irrelevant and no one will care?

Or maybe I’m the most spoilt sinner, deserving of hell, eternal judgment, God’s wrath. Yes. This is truth finally.

I am selfish, proud, and arrogant. I am a perverse fire, I am an unwilling sacrifice. My heart is rotten, like a soured apple, and my soul causes my affliction. I can only weep and moan in my own waste looking to receive the light of God’s eye.

Why can’t we see each other? Why can’t we see each other! Look into a friend’s eyes. Look into your parent’s eyes. Look into your own eyes. I am an unworthy sinner.

BUT

God sent His Son to save you from utter destruction. From unending flame, and unceasing pain. He chose YOU.

Why?

Not of anything in you! Because He wanted to. That’s why.

Now?

Live. Just live. Obey His commands, and love. It is pretty simple. We don’t need to go around wondering who we are. We are redeemed. We are God’s children. Now live like it. Forgive, Love, Endure, Hope, Witness, and STOP! STOP! STOP! Being proud. Eradicate it! Take it out of your soul. Take it out of my soul, oh GOD!


Dear me,

You disgust my soul and everyday I will try to kill you. Take your residence elsewhere and make room for the Spirit of the Living God. Thanks.

Myself.


Now hear my challenge. This is not more fiction. This is me. This is your friend calling for help. Please comment, whether it be anonymous or not, just let me know, let everyone know that they are not in this by themselves. We seem to be caught up in a mess of jokes and sarcasms, we seem to be caught up in stolidness and unfeeling. Let everyone know that you are there, alive, for them. That you care, and that you need to be cared for. This is a cry, a plea, that we let each other know that we are hurting. We all are. Just communicate it.

Not many people will see this. Not many people will care. But I do. And I’m sure others do too.

So please, be a Godsend, and let others know that you exist. As a brother. As a sister. As a friend in Christ.

The Prodigal Effect

Day, heaped with day. Month, on month. A life souring in the black, a soul rotting. Light in the semi-darkness. Then tar returns. Cole lit up again.

Getting high was the only way he could escape life for a moment, a moment that has lasted almost two years.

It wasn't his fault that he is like this, though. His father sent him away from their suburban home after finding a stock of cough syrup hidden in the box springs of Cole's bed. It was lucky his dad didn't look in Cole's pillow cases and find the 100 dollars of dope hidden there.

His Dad just couldn't understand. He couldn't understand the pressure, the weight of teenage life. People like him didn't have TV's, and if they did they probably gathered around to watch Leave It to Beaver. They couldn't understand the burdens thrust upon kids here and now. The feeling of dirtiness that couldn't be wiped clean. He hated his father for not understanding. For not giving him a chance.

And drugs were so good, so capable of clearing away everything, everyone.

Staring at the perfectly planed ceiling, the charcoal colored encasement, Cole thought of Lee's face when they found his stashed Robitussin. Three years her senior, it wasn't easy for Cole to watch the disappointment color his little sister's face. They had always been close. Sharing each other's secrets, talking about what life had in store for them. She was so...real. So happy and joyful in her life. Comfortable. Now...now they both knew what lay in store for them. For one denial, refusal, bitterness. The other held pleading, and more disappointment.

A backhoe shattered his reverie. If there was an upside of living by a landfill, it was finding useful stuff among the refuse. Partly broken TV's and ragged clothing were a common find. But the ultimate discovery was the inconspicuous snowglobe.

Inside the globe a child puttered around a perfectly crafted snowman. The child's face bore an expression of joy, half hidden in a tightly wound red scarf.

Cole always saw himself as the little guy. Joyously wandering about, finding hidden happiness around him. Procuring glee from the gloom of the attic nooks. Loving the snow. At least, he used to.

Lee said he was changed. He was not joyful. Not exhilarated. Maybe she was right. Maybe years of sloth have paralyzed him, making the thought of happiness unbearable.

That couldn't be true though. He was happy when he watched the styrofoam snow fall onto the hardened snowman. He was happy when he looked into the child's gleaming face. He was happy in this cold hard room watching the cold hard winter through his cold hard window. He was happy when he lit up.

A knock at the door missing its hinges. "Cole?" and anxious voice called out. It was Lee on her daily mission of proffered deliverance. In the two years of Cole's absence, Lee never missed her weekly visit. Usually they would sit on his grubby sofa and endeavor to think of a few chatty words to communicate to each other. And they always failed. It consistently ended with Lee bursting into tears and begging for him to come home, to escape this sty, to find their love. "I know Dad misses you. Your breaking his heart slowly and torturously. Mom cries every night and Dad can't comfort her because he feels the same way. Your tearing us apart. Why won't you just come home?" And Cole just stared with a slate face at her misery. "Is this what you get from your drugs? Ignorance! How can you do this to us!" And with that Lee would leave.

She, of all people who could, didn't understand. She was like all the others. She didn't understand how much hurt he felt. How he couldn't show it. How he didn't want to.

Again, the persistent knocking, now more insistent. "Cole? Cole! Open up. I know you're there. Cole!"

Not today. Not again. He would let her beautiful voice be disappointed.

Cole curled up on the dirty sofa and cradled his snowglobe. He stared at the shiny snow, the shiny painted face, the shiny happiness. He couldn't stop the shaking. So he tried to flow through the spasms by rocking gently back and forth. And soon, he could not hear the knocking anymore. The joint was completing is purpose. Absolute indifference.

"Cole! Cole, if you can hear me, listen to what I am saying. I'm not coming back. Ever. You did what you set out to do. Mom left. Dad's not talking. I don't know what to do. Can't you help me? Comfort me?" Her voice was more frustrated. More saddened.

Silence.

"That's what i thought. I came to say goodbye. I can't forgive you anymore.

I can't wait for you to catch up. I can't wait for you to break my heart, too. If it already hasn't happened."

With that, Lee passed a note under the door, turned, and never came back.

Cole peered at the little boy's face. He was unhappy. The snow had stopped falling. It was piled around his feet.

Cole shook the sphere, but the snow wouldn't fly up like it always did. He shook it harder. Then harder. Finally, with a shout of frustration, he lobbed it at the closest stony wall. It shattered into a thousand little specks of snowy glass and water. The snowman didn't survive the fall, but the little boy did. He lay on the floor staring at Cole with the little black dots that were his eyes.

He was angry with Cole.

"What! WHAT!! What do you want from me! What can I do!"

He rolled off the couch and stumbled to the child.

"I hate you! I really do!"

He crushed it under his shoe. Then started sobbing.

He crossed to the note his sister left.

It was written in big neat letters:


Cole,


I hope you are happy.


Happiness was not what Cole felt.