With Friends Like These

We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.  In the still of the night it is the thoughts and prayers another says for your aching heart.  In the center of your joy it is the ones who bask in your light and share in your triumph.  In the chasm of time it is those who are ever present on your path.  Our lives, while perceived as short, are a series of moments that yawn out in the past and make up the intangible essence of our future, congealed together to form years, decades of existence.  It is not good for man to walk this earth alone; to help us endure this journey we have the rarest of gifts that can be given by another, friendship.

Each of our hearts will testify differently to what defines the value of a friendship.  Some will say it consists of the ever bubbling font of desire that wants nothing but the best for the other.  Some will claim it is lies in the capacity to feel sympathy and empathy for the other's lot in life or the compassion to make that lot theirs as well.  While others will assert it is the honesty that exists in that space; an honesty so bright and pure that it can even be spoken when the truth is the hardest to hear.  Surly all would agree that it consists of the mutual understanding of the scrubbed down essence of one's self and the trust that blossoms from it, enabling each the emotional support that can only be found therein.

While all can denote the generals, for the answer to what is the meaning of friendship, it lies within our hearts, because true friendship can only be felt, and not expressed.  The intimacy nurtured there is the fodder for our souls, allowing us to just love and be loved in return.  Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.  It is the acceptance that comes on a consistent basis that makes out lives rich of color and full of vigor.

Of late, I spent days in the company of my oldest friend.  He knew me before I knew myself.  Upon the cusp of adulthood, I was brash and unrefined.  Yet, when I was new and friendless, Tass brought me in to his fold and gave me a warm place to blossom.  I wonder what has made our friendship endure while so many others fell by the wayside.  Our longevity is beauty; our relationship is the very essence of friendship.  Although not immutable, our endurance has proved that we are able to be there for each other at all times, ebb or flow, ups or downs, light or dark.  Being each other's friend has required understanding, which has shown me how to be sensitive.  Being each other's friend has called us to always give the benefit of the doubt, which has helped to mold my ability to allow love to overcome my pride.  Being each other's friend has compelled us to share unconditional acceptance of the true base of our beings.

While Tass is my oldest friend, there are so many others who have come into my life like a star aglow.  Lustrous and luminescent, each one has changed me in enduring ways and ameliorated my character.  Ranger showed me the joy of letting go of judgments and allowing myself to be love unconditionally.  Her openness gave me the bravery to allow myself to be open with others.  The Preacher gave me the courage to rebuild when I though all was lost and the bliss honesty can bring.  He challenged me to be more than was expected of me and to give more than was required.  Red taught me the value of self-examination, self-discovery, and the immense value of self-control.  She allowed me to open myself to new wonders and the importance to love yourself first.  Frankie challenged me to be better at all that I do no matter how small the task, to let go of my neurosis, and to see every situation from the other person's perspective.  His ability to show me ways I can elevate myself is a skill now so precious to me, I scarcely can imagine my progress to this point with out it.  The Peacemaker showed me how the utter value in being nice, and inspired me to emulate her.  Princess drilled into my consciousness that self-pity was of no value and had no place in a happy life.  Flip has demonstrated that others can accept you for all that you are, even the parts of yourself that you fear sharing the most.  His ability to create a zone free of judgement and ridicule that allows me to be so honest, that I am able to discover things about myself that would have been lost otherwise.

The value I place on friendship, I can liken to no other.  Each friend gives to me something so pure and essential that while it is not visible to the eye, it is always felt by my heart.  Although some have been lost along the way, the values and lessons they all have left with me will not be forgotten.  All are the rocks and rill that direct the path my flow goes.  They are those that make my burden lighter, the ones with whom trust is more than a word, the ones with whom who loyalty is freely given, the ones who accept the shortcomings, the ones who stand by you during your darkest days, the ones who can listen without just waiting for their turn to talk.  To all my friends out there, I want to thank you for the part you played and all that you are.  Thank you to those who understand my past, believe in my future, and accepts me just the way I am.  Thank you for just being you.

When Is A House, A Home?

Home is such an elusive concept.  Trying to define the word runs the gambit from your mother country to your adopted land, from the place you grew up to the place where you put down roots, from a mere place to store your belongings to a sacred, nearly mythical place.  What everyday magic occurs when you cross your own threshold?  Entering your home allows you to turn and to close the door on the chaos of the world, making a declaration that of all the miles upon the Earth, this tiny spot is completely unique, for unlike all other places, this one is yours.

Nowhere else can you lay claim, like the claim you can lay to your home.  While blueprints can show exact dimensions, carpet can cover carefully measured square footage, and feature listings can read of crown molding and granite countertops like a resume, these things do not make up the essence of home.  Your home is an extension of self, ego suffused into the smooth rills of the plaster, soaked into the porous chalk of the drywall, permeating down to the foundation beneath your feet.

This concept was not innate within me.  I do not know if I can say I knew what a home was before my father welcomed me into his.  Upon leaving his house, my first home, I have only lived in four places.  I lived in the same apartment my entire college career, my first apartment out of school was my sanctuary for ten years, the duplex might have been my last address because it suited me so well, had I not decided to change every line of my address label sans my name, and finally my current apartment.

Each place I was hesitant to leave because of how much I put of myself into them.  My mere presence in them deemed them to be safe, a place where I did not have to explain myself to the world.  My memories existed in ever door handle, paint scrape, and carpet stain.  Sentiments of the life I had lived while outside the walls and the safe haven they were inside those walls endeared each to my heart.  The love I gave, the heartache I endured, the mistakes I made all were inseparable from that space that each set of four walls provided me.

Leaving each was like closing a chapter on my life.  After all the boxes were gone, all the cabinets empty, and the place cleaned for the next one who will call it home, I would take a moment by myself to walk through, and recall all that had happened there.  Who I was when I came, and who I was when I left.  My footsteps would echo emptiness mirroring my feeling inside, like I was losing a friend.

Soon it will be this place that I walk alone through.  I have decided to buy a house and make myself a more permeant home than I perhaps have ever had.  I wonder what I will see through those eyes as I close this chapter of my life.  I hope I will see the bravery it took for me to take a leap of faith with a cross country move in hopes of making my life better.  I am sure I will see the amazing people who have come into my life and have given me more courage to just be myself than anyone ever has before.  I pray I will see all the love and acceptance I have given to those around me.  And above all, I hope I will see that I left a better person than the one who first walked through that door, into a place that I now call home.

New Scrubs!

I have been badly in need of new scrubs.  Don't get me wrong, I have a drawer full of them, they just all happen to be two or three times to large on me.  You may not remember this, but my camera sure does, but there used to be way more of me to love.  Right as I was starting to lose the weight, I left the hospital and went to work in a clinic that provided scrubs with the company logo on them.  Hence my own scrubs sat in a drawer for two years and were only pulled out recently when I started working at the hospital again.  I have needed to buy smaller ones for several months now, and tonight I finally did.  Check out what I got!

First Top - Alice In Wonderland.  Besides being cool and a big hit with the stoner crowd, I like them because you don't get many literary reference in scrub tops.  Plus we used to live on Lewis Carroll lane when I was younger so there you go.

Second Top - The Hulk.  How could I not get these?  I mean they are amazing right?  Plus if I get really pissed at work, I can just rip my top off and blame it on my inner monster.  I feel like that is a good plan.

Third Top - Iron Man - These might be my new favorites, dethroning my sushi scrubs.  It is a great color, a great character, and will surely make my key demographic turn their head in appreciation.  I mean if I have to wear shapeless smocks to work, I have to give the boys something to turn their heads at.

Fourth Top - Spiderman, spiderman, does what ever a spider can...  Now while I am excited about these, as you will see below, there were two other designs that I liked better but were special orders on ebay out of cotton material, which sucks in a scrub top.  I have several cotton tops that I never wear because they are constantly in a ball of wrinkly mess.  Cotton-Poly blend is the only way to go.

Here are some designs that I did not go with because as stated previously, they were all cotton.  I wish I could have each and everyone one of them.  Who does not love the Transformers?  I love cars.  I love robots.  Transformers are the best combo since chocolate met peanut butter, only they won't make me as big as I was in that first picture.

I loved this one because it was referring to a book, but also it was like I had a dirty word on me and no one could say anything about it.

I am pretty sure I would be obligated to eat pizza every time I wore these and be able to get into deep philosophical debates about why Leonardo has so much angst.  

While ordering these might have meant I would have to bone up on my marine history, be ordered to do push-ups on the nasty hospital floor, or try to make devil dog jokes that I don't really get that miss their mark, they still are pretty freaking cool.  I think Flip would approve, and they would be a great conversation piece with the night security guard, who just so happens to be an ex-Marine.  

While I think I like the first Transformer design better, this one still deserved mention.  Optimus Prime looks kinda bad-a in this one.

I already have a pair of Simpson's scrubs, but these take the best of those scrubs and add the "Where's Waldo" effect.  The only thing I would be worried about is where Bart might end up on my scrubs.  Then I would never quite know if my patient was a dirty old man, or taking the Bart challenge seriously.

These were the Spiderman ones I really wanted, but what is the point of having the Amazing Spiderman if he never leaves my drawer?  It would just be cruel.

Same goes here.  Look at those moves.  I just realized how limber Spidey has to be.  Do you think he works out?

I would have ordered these in a minute, but they are sold out.  Please feel free to order them for me for my birthday.  February 17.  I like pink bows.

While the last comment was kind of a joke, this one is not.  They are totally sold out of these and I cannot find them anywhere.  I would do unspeakable things for anyone who found these for me.  Extra-small, don't worry about the matching bottoms, I can find them later.  

While I have four pairs ordered, I will need plenty more.  Please feel free to link me any scrubs you think I would like or seem oddly appropriate for my personality.  Before you check Red, I already searched for Diet Coke with Lime scrubs to no avail.  

This Is How I Roll

I make an effort not to repeat topics for posts.  No one wants to hear me blather on and on about the same thing.  If I have already blogged about it, there should not be that much more to say on the subject.  Tonight I made sushi for the first time, and although I recently posted a blog about how much I enjoy cooking, I decided to since I did not actual cook anything in the process, that the subject was safe to broach.

I have been told that my ideas can sometimes be a touch "outlandish". I see nothing wrong with driving four hours to L.A. to shop at Ikea, getting dressed up to go eat at On Top Of The World on a Tuesday night, or sitting in line for eight and a half hours just to pick up my new iPhone 4.  When I had mentioned that I wanted to learn how to make sushi, my idea was called outlandish and was predicted to be a pain in the rear.  Despite this, I still kept the idea alive like a glowing coal in the back of my mind.

Faced with an opportunity to cook for a party, I considered making my long talked about tarts.  I went to Williams and Sonoma and picked up the tart pans and everything.  While I am still excited about making tarts, I decided since I had already made a sweet dish this week (lemon raspberry cake) that I should do something savory instead.  With the idea of making sushi at the fraction of the cost of going out to sushi, a quick trip to Whole Foods to pick up the sushi mat and seaweed, and I was off to make my outlandish dreams come true.

With having eaten sushi only once, I was going to have to do a touch of research before I could embark upon this endeavorer.  While most of the recipes looked easy enough, I was unsure about using the raw fish without guidance.  Since the California roll uses crab meat that is ready to use, I figured this was a safe bet the first go around.  Shopping list in hand, I head back out to the store.  

Back in my kitchen, armed with my Mac, I got to work.  First, let me say, every last one of the "tips" I read on line was spot on.  If you decide to make sushi yourself, listen to them, they know what they are talking about.  The first tip was, "make more rice than you think you need, because you will need even more than that".  I made five cups of rice, which is as much as my rice maker would hold and still had enough supplies to make another two rolls had I not run out of rice.  

With all the veggies cut, the crab unwrapped, the rice rested and tossed with the vinager (which I am nervous about, and convinced if the rolls suck, it will be because of that), I was ready to roll.  Great tip number two, wear gloves.  I was not prepared for how much the rice would stick to EVERYTHING.  Turns out it is called "sticky rice" for a reason.  I pulled out a pair of gloves from my first aid kit and used Pam instead of mayo like suggested to keep them slick.  I cannot imagine making sushi without them.

The next great tip is to make a log with the rice.  This helped to keep it from sticking to the gloves so much and it made it easier to spread with just my fingertips once it was on the seaweed.  When I ate sushi, I was not a huge fan of the seaweed and had the chefs spoke a word of English, I would have asked them to make it without it.  Now I see how impossible a request that would have been.  Maybe I will just have to invent a tastier thing for rice to stick to.  Then I can sell it and be a millionaire, and no you can't borrow a ten spot.

Once the rice was evenly coated across the seaweed, you lift it up and flip it over.  This step was surprisingly easy due to another tip; cover your sushi mat in clear plastic wrap.  Not only did it make the flip easier, but it was amazing for the clean up.  I stacked inside each wrapper three avocado slices (peeling those was a touch of a nightmare), a crab stick cut in half and an entire strip of cucumber.  This part was rather easy, but I cannot even imagine what a nightmare cream cheese must be to put in there.

Once all the ingredients are in there, and there is less than a pound of rice sticking to your gloves, you just use the mat to roll it up.  This picture is of my first roll which was quite a disaster because I did not follow two other tips, don't use to much rice, and don't overstuff.  It was huge and hence not very cohesive.  Another great tip that came in handy when I was working with the correct proportions was do not squeeze to hard or everything will come gushing out the ends.  How true that was, and only needed for it to happen once before I was more carful.

After each roll is completed you cut them into six slices.  You are supposed to trip the edges so they all look the same, but that felt like another cut and a waste of good product.  These are the overstuffed ones, and you can see how they are trying to come apart.  I made eight rolls total, and have tons of crab left over that I can use in another recipe because I counted on each roll using two sticks, instead of one.

Not including the rice, which I already had, or the sushi mat, which is a one time investment, I spent a total of eleven dollars on crab, cucumber, wrappers, avocado, and rice vinegar.  Taking into account I have one and a half packages of crab left, I say that I made 48 sushi for approximately $8 total.  I looked up how much a California Roll is at a local restaurant, and at $8 a roll, I saved $56 dollars by making them at home.  Not to mention, I got the enjoyment of making them myself.  Turns out, I love to cook.  Like I mentioned, my next project is tarts.  I will see if I can rationalize blogging about them too.

Newspaper Article Writing Exercise: Miranda v Arizona

Two weeks from now, your right to remain silent is not as secure as it once was.  This week in a 5-4 decision the U.S. Supreme Court made slight yet far reaching changes to the television popularized Miranda Rights.

Established after the 1966 monumental decision in the case Miranda v Arizona.  The original ruling emerged after a 1964 police questioning of Ernesto Miranda in relation to a kidnapping and rape in Phoenix, in which Miranda was not advised of his right to an attorney.  After the Court ruled that his rights were violated the mantra now read by police officers everywhere to criminal suspects bears his name.

The Miranda rights now read, "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense."

Tuesday, the Court modified your Miranda rights by saying that police no longer have to inform you that your attorney can be present during questioning, that in order to invoke your Miranda Rights you must verbally state that you wish to remain silent, and that the police have up to 14 days to re-question you without again advising you of your rights.

The minority opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor states the majority ruling created a kind of paradox.  She writes, “a suspect who wishes to guard his right to remain silent, must, counterintuitively, speak.”

While Justice Anthony M. Kennedy writing for the majority stated that while the new ruling may undercut the language of the Miranda Rights that the ruling now puts the burden on the suspect to invoke his rights and not on the police officers doing the questioning to ensure that the suspect has invoked them.

Critics say the new ruling will be confusing to suspects especially in determining whether the 14 day re-questioning restriction is still in place or not and that the will gain more confessions from those who truly wished to remain silent.

Derisively Deranged Dexter

Although not socially acceptable, I must admit I have a deep, dark divulgence that I must share; I love television.  While my true devotion will always lie with the written word, television never fails to provide a delicious distraction designed to root you in place for hours.  While several series have been held near and dear to my heart, my most recent dalliance has been derisively, deranged Dexter.  I had previously seen an episode of the show but it left me dreadfully disillusioned with the concept as a whole.  It was not until Flip practically double dog dared me into watching it and again delved into the dark and dangerous world of Dexter, that I discovered the brilliance within.

Dexter is a likable Miami police blood spatter analyst by day but is reveled to be deeply defective when he secretly moonlights as a serial killer.  His well meaning foster father recognizes his deliciously dark depravity early on and diverted dastardly deeds into a positive channel ruled by a strict moral code.  He taught Dexter to use his deadly, destructive impulses to rid the streets of miscreants who have otherwise slipped through the fingers of justice.   While killing does double duty of vigilant justice and quieting the Dark Passenger, Dexter is always sure to do his due diligence to ensure guilt before delivering death, doom, and destruction.

While the each week's plot is either Dexter dumbing down his keen insight into the mind of other serial killers or fixing the damage done by his healthy kill appetite, the show's brilliance lies within the character development of dear demented Dexter.  Dexter's internal monologues makes the show.  While showing the gulf between his everyday actions and his disturbing devious inner landscape, it is delightfully well written.  The monologues depict the profile of an actual sociopath, devoid of emotions except his obsession with death and dying.  The writer's weave words into a poetic picture perfectly painting the dramatic difference between keenly self-aware Dexter and those around him.  Here are examples of Dexter's sub-human thought processes:

• Dexter: Most people have a hard time dealing with death, but I'm not most people. It's the grief that makes me uncomfortable. Not because I'm a killer. Really, I just don't understand all that emotion, which makes it tough to fake. In those cases, shades come in handy.

• Debra: I'm real proud of you for coming, bro. I know you hate funerals. How are you holding up?  Dexter: I'm managing.  - No, I'm not. Keeping my face pinched in sorrow for two hours is a real chore. 

• Dexter: I like to pretend I'm alone. Completely alone. Maybe post-apocalypse or plague … whatever. No one left to act normal for. No need to hide who I really am. It would be … freeing.

• Dexter: Sometimes I wonder what it would be like for everything inside me that's denied and unknown to be revealed. But I'll never know. I live my life in hiding. My survival depends on it.

• Dexter: I remember when life was easy. When the only question I worried about was who's next. Now it's: How can I dodge my "protective detail"? What should I do with my "hostage"? These are not easy questions.

• Dexter: But if you play a role long enough, really commit, does it become real? Could I become real?

• Dexter: Here I am, paradox personified. Taking life, creating life.

• Dexter: Today I wake up, kiss the wife-to-be, feed the step-kids-to-be, dress myself in the usual pants, shirt … and pretense.

• Dexter: There are few milestones in life that evoke a stronger response than our final act: death. What was once moving, speaking, killing, and threatening becomes nothing but an empty vessel, which is not so different from how I've always felt.

• Dexter: We all have secrets. In that way, I'm just like everyone else – sorta.

• Dexter: Harry was right. I thought I could change what I am, keep my family safe. But it doesn't matter what I do, what I choose... I'm what's wrong. This is fate.

Despite dramatic content and a supporting cast that is never safe from dropping dead due to Dexter's playmates, Dexter is a quality show that one can become invested in.  Self-aware, self-effacing, and self-depricating Dexter will not only win your heart but will have you day dreaming your own dreary, dull, and drab life could be spiced up with a simple kill shirt, a roll of plastic wrap, and a hand-held 800 megahertz bone saw.  Happy viewing!

His Mother's Son

     He hated her. He hated her with all of the being that she had created in her womb. Was his birth really the last time he had been close to her? He would like to have thought so, but knew that is was the betrayal of his love and trust that he once gave her so freely that made his animosity burn bright within him; the furnace being fed by the constant parade of the vivid memories that still pervaded his sleeping hours and lurked on the edge of those spent awake.

     He sat down at his black clap-board desk and for a moment tried to gather the nerve that it would take to see his plan through. The entirty of it was to much for him to bear, and with a slight shift of his weight, he prepared to stand up and walk away from the entire scheme. 

     His sweaty palms slid across the ink blotter and came to a stop at the edge. If he was ever going to do this, it had to be now. The situation was ripe, and although his nerve faltered, it was the most he had been able to muster up to this point. Perhaps, if he just wrote the letter, then the entire situation would not seem so overwhelming. If, after he wrote the letter, he decided against it, he could file it away as a failed writing exercise that would make an interesting read years from now.

     His qualms quelled, he reached for a single sheet of creamy, lineless paper. This type of paper was not the kind one causally wrote upon, but was more suitable for resumes to be emblazoned upon it's front. He almost put the paper back and reached for the thin notebook paper that showed it's cheapness by revealing the lines on the opposite side of the page were not quite aligned. He hated the way the nib never really bit into that paper, instead merely scratching over the surface, never really changing it, merely only being a carrier of the ink on its surface. No, the weighty paper would be the repository for the words he would form tonight. The creamy surface would bend to his nib's will and drink in the ink, forever altering its nature. It would no longer be ink and paper, but would become his work of art. With a gusty exhale, he began.

Mother -

 

"It is with heavy heart that I set pen to paper. "

     He liked that start, it tapped into his previous ponderance on the paper's weighty quality befitting the weighty message he was about to carve into it, and it made him feel poetic. He felt if he started off a touch wistful that it would be more believable.

"I don't know how to tell you the things that I feel inside. It is like a swirling eddy of emotions that I thought dead and gone. Buried, their death ensured by the passage of time. Yet they are resurrected; alive and even more ghoulish than they previously were. "

     His nib hovered above the page. Oh, how true were the words on the page. They were more than melodramatic prose aimed to sting right to the center of her heart. They were the truth. Did she deserve the truth? To know how she had hurt him? He assumed that she knew, how could she not? How could a mother do that to her own child, or more correctly children, and not know the damage she had done?

     When he had seen her three months ago, it had been the first time in over eleven years. Her time in prison had reduced her to her most basic parts. It had stolen all the padding her flesh provided so that her face was hollowed to the point that her skull's shape was visible even at a distance. The absence of sunlight had sallowed her skin and dulled her hair so that it hung stringily around her face. Once strong limbs now reminded him of venison jerky encased in a loose sheaths.

     When he had agreed to finally meet with her, he expected many things, but what he did not expect was that horrible smile. Contracting her facial muscles pulled her mouth up into a pathetic pantomime of a human. It made him hate her even more for being so pitiful that he could not even feel justified in his utter loathing of her.

     How different she had looked the last time he saw from the witness box. Her eyes were so full of fire and cheeks ruddy with the blood that pulsed through her, that he could not look at her while he droned through the entire story. He did not even allow a flicker of emotion to touch his words when he told the tomb quite room how he held that tiny body until all warmth had leached out of it. The words deadpanned into the room, falling flatly on the linoleum, so heavy they did not even reverberate off the warm oak walls.

     Angry that she was causing the tears to form in his eyes, he pushed the thought aside and tried to focus on the task. He continued to write.

"These feelings invade my day and steal my sleep. Behind my eyes I see the scenes replay in vivid color. I can still feel the heat and taste the iron in the air from the hot sticky blood all around me. Ruby red and so very hot. I had never seen anything so red, and never have since."

     A tear splashed from the end of his nose on to the paper. It touched the ink and began to spread slightly, blurring the word "red". Staring down at it, it began to almost look like the pool of blood the word was to represent. The anger swelled in his chest. How dare the tear, the tear that she caused, mar his perfect specimen, the testament to his genius? He flexed his hand to crumple the page and sweep it from this view, but stopped. Wasn't this letter supposed to convince her that he was so racked with guilt, so overwhelmed by grief that he had no other choice but to take his own life? He enjoyed thinking about how he would be laying in bed, newly christened into his new life, with his new name and all the while she thought of him as a dead, putrid carcass, swept away by the rushing river. Jumping off a bridge seemed so cliche, but he could think of no other way to leave no body behind.
     Unclenching his fist, he told himself how the tear added a touch of authenticity to his creation. Perhaps she would read the note and her eye would return to the tiny mar and it would be the very stab to the heart that pushed her into overwhelming regret at losing a second son. Yes, he would let the tiny puddle stay, but wiped his nose with the back of his hand to make sure not to let her enjoy the feeling of having completely destroyed him. Carefully he chose his next words.

"It is like, it is like living here and living there at the same time. I don't know how to escape. My previous crutch seems to have whittled to a twig to small to support my weight. I am burdened beneath the crushing force. I can see no way out of it. I open my mouth to scream, but fear no sound comes out for who will hearing me? "

     He liked that last passage and was impressed at how he had come up with something to aprope. He pondered how it would sound to other's ears. Would they hear the desperation? Would they be able to feel how much he was hurting in his words? Would they be able to know how much he just had needed someone to reach out and to check on him? No one, not a single friend who said they understood, or co-worker who knew of his mother's upcoming release had asked how he was holding up. With no family left, he thought of them as his family. He needed them, he needed them to act as proxy. But how could he expect those who had rosy Christmas card families, who's lives were filled with birthday cakes and baby pictures really understand what it was like to feel the abject terror of being alone? How could expect any of them to understand the empty hole that was his interior?

"Who can see me pass through the day as a walking corpse and not tell the light in my eyes is gone? How can I tell them that I am almost gone? That the essence of me is slowly shrinking away, being claimed by wave after wave of grief and remorse. How can I tell you these things and have you truly understand? Where is me? Where have I gone?"

     He had not meant to address anyone other than his mother with his words, but after thinking upon his so called friends and the lonely feeling they had left with him to be his constant companion, he could not help himself. Good, perhaps his mother would not be the only one who felt guilt for how he had been treated. Maybe now they would understand how they had abandoned him, left him in the cold, alone and isolated. His lip quivered, and before he would let is get further, he refocused on his faux suicide note.

"How can I get back what I once had? For the span of a few short years, I was happy, I was full, I was free. Where am I now? This degradation into a former self seems almost unthinkable. Work and progress that I have made, the infrastructure I have made in my own mind seems to have been washed out with one fantastic flood. Gone, with no trace of what it was. "

     Suddenly he hated the idea that they would all get off so free and clear after his supposed death. After he "jumped off a bridge", they would barely notice his absence. With no messy scene to clean up, with no bloated and blue corpse to blemish their lives, they would only notice that no one was filling the batch orders or that they were one person short at poker night. No one would really miss him if he just slunk into the night like some kind of coward.

     He suddenly thought of his mother again. If he really wanted to have hurt, he would set it up so that his death was an exact replica of his brother's. He would slice one side of this throat so the boiling fountain of crimson painted the walls of his small apartment, covering everything, nothing would escape. It would either be covered by the large sprays or coated with the infinitesimal mist or be slowly covered by the lava pool that grew larger and larger as his body grew cold. Every detail of that recurring nightmare, every element of that horrible day played back in his mind as he imagined how he really wanted to show his mother his hate. Only this time he would not be the one clutching the body, he would be the body, just like he should have been that first time. The nib found the paper.

"I need something, I need help, I need a rope, who will come to me? Who will help me? Who will rescue me? Dark, alone, desolate, how much further can I go by myself? How much further can I endure? Alone. I am so alone."

     A sob escaped his lips. His shoulders wracked forward as his raw emotion escaped from its confinement and expressed itself through his entire body. He finally let himself feel what he had been trying to deny since he saw that horribly pathetic smile; he was a quivering, slobbering mess. The words the prosecutor had made him repeat over and over again, his mantra for when he was scared, "It was not my fault, I was too small to stop her", echoed through his head again and again, and every time he said them, he believed them less.

     It was his fault. It was. He knew how angry she was. He knew that he was older and should have protected him. He was his brother, he was his responsibility. He should have known that that time was different. The taste of the iron was in his mouth again.

"I just want to close my eyes and sleep. Sleep forever, to drift in a world where no rules, no gravity, no reality to weigh me down. Free. I wish to be free."

     As soon as he wrote the words, he knew it was true. It had been in the back of his mind the entire time he had been contemplating his escape from his own life. He now realized that his plan was nothing more than a way to fantasize about suicide without actual having to face the demon. It had only been his mother's incarceration that had ebbed back the pain inside. A pain that while denied and ignored was always there. The pain that stared back at him through the image of his brother's glossed, inert eyes. Frozen open in terror after death, frozen forever in his mind.

     It was not the artful arterial spray he ensured streaked across the large white wall of the office, or dark stained handle of the kitchen knife he had used or the tacky pool that began to form around his face as he lay on the cool, slated floor; it was those eyes. Those eyes that had burned into his soul with accusation for so long, now relaxed and finally closed.