This, of course, wasn’t possible, and resulted in me hurting everyone. That was the day, long before I had any interest in girls, that killed any possibility of healthy romantic relationships. I killed any relationship that came with genuine love. How can you love me if I’m not doing everything for you?
It got quiet, and then I heard the front door slam once. My dad was out. That was quickly followed by another. My mom was out. The second slam caused two pictures to fall off the wall. They were drawings my sister and I had made in school. Hers: a meticulously drawn, perfect picture of an angel at the beach. And mine: scribbles. They were both done during our respective year in kindergarten. The glass from the frames shattered upon impact with the hardwood floor, the blue ribbon my sister’s picture won at an art show now torn by the glass. The angel ripped in half.
Immediately following the second door slam, I carefully tiptoed through the entryway of the house and into my parents’ bathroom. Blood was smeared all over the walls like a crime scene. Big wet drops were on the floor, and I was careful not to step on any of them. The scale looked like it had been detonated, and hundreds of its pieces were scattered into the laundry area that separated the kitchen from the bathroom. That explained the breaking sounds. There was a huge hole in the wall just below the light switch. How did the mirror not get broken?
Depending upon who you later asked, the blood was the result of an accident, which was Dad’s story. Or a suicide attempt—my mom’s. Whether intentional or not, some sharp piece of metal from the now-detonated scale cut my mom’s wrist. My mom had thrown the scale at my dad. They both agreed on that.
I was in the bathroom for less than a minute. Maybe only a handful of seconds. It felt like forever. Everything slowed down. It’s funny how a few ticks can measure a lifetime.
Slow motion gave way to fast-forward, and I knew I had to get out of the bathroom quickly. To avoid the glass in the hallway, I ran back to the den through the kitchen, family room, living room, and my sister’s room. I didn’t care that she would kill me for even considering stepping into her room, much less doing it. I slid onto the couch in the den to watch the drama in the driveway. Approximately two years after this moment, I would watch from the very same spot, through the very same blinds, as my dad took Blondie away. On this day, I watched as he took my sister.
My mom pounded on the driver’s side window while screaming at my dad. It didn’t seem real. It was like watching a movie. Her hands were clenched into fists, and she worked the window like a speed bag. Ba-da-da. Ba-da-da. Ba-da-da. Ba-da-da. I hadn’t thought about it until just this minute, but in all the times I’ve replayed that scene in my head—and it’s probably been thousands of times—I never noticed any blood. Have I remembered this wrong?
My older sister looked terrified and confused in the passenger’s seat. Why me? Where are we going? She saw me in the window and gave me the most authentically honest, sad, scared, and empathetic look. Those few moments were the closest we had ever been. Without a word, it was the first time she ever told me that she loved me.
I was equally confused. Why am I left behind? Confusion quickly turned to action. I knew I didn’t want to be in the house with my mom after my dad left with my sister. I quickly ran to my room, narrowly avoiding the glass in the hallway, and frantically looked for my robe, which I found under the pile of dirty clothes that was always next to my bed. I pulled off the flimsy, terry cloth belt, tied it around Blondie’s collar, walked through my sister’s room for a second time, and snuck out the back door. As I quietly left the house, I heard the front door open and my mom gently calling me.
“Sweetie? Honey?” and then less gently, “Erik!”
I was running away and taking Blondie with me. After we watched the cars, Blondie and I snuck around the side of the house and back in through the same door. The house was eerily quiet. I needed to see my parents’ bathroom. I didn’t want to see the blood or the broken scale, but I wanted to look anyway. My mom’s door was closed. I assumed she was taking a nap. Perfect. I could sneak through the kitchen to get to her bathroom.
It was clean. No blood anywhere to be found. There was even a new scale. Same exact kind. How did she do that? After she woke up from her nap, my mom acted like nothing had happened. Fucking weird. Even at seven, I knew that was fucking weird. Had I imagined the entire thing? It wouldn’t be the last time I was certain of something but still doubted myself.
Over the years, and on the rare occasions when my parents would talk to me about this event, the story would change. It felt like psychological warfare. Mental torture. Gaslighting. My sister denied remembering it at all. For me, it was so real.
I was convinced that all my mistakes, pains, depression, fears, and helplessness could be traced back to that fight. I was seven, and it changed the trajectory of my entire life. It changed me. I spent a lifetime trying to “get over it” and feeling like a total idiot asshole when I couldn’t just let it go. Or at least let go of the effect it had on me. But having to take care of my mom took away any permission I had to just be a kid. Losing permission to be a kid meant losing permission to follow my heart. And losing the ability to follow my heart meant losing everything. I lost the ability to trust myself. To love myself. To believe in myself. Or at least lost the ability to learn how to do these things. This was the genesis of fitting in. The start to my art of becoming invisible. Without permission to be myself, I could only become the reflection of what I thought others wanted me to be. I was good at that.
The memory froze me in my tracks. It was like an athlete developing the yips, a baseball player suddenly unable to make the most basic throw. All muscle memory is lost. When some wounds refuse to be ignored any longer, they become paralyzing.
Standing on the mound, I closed my eyes and prayed. I prayed for my own personal peace. Please, God, I don’t want to feel like this anymore. Please. Please grant me peace. This time, though, I wasn’t pretending, like my prayers on planes; this wasn’t about the kids or the women. I was praying for myself.
When I opened my eyes, a little old lady stood before me. She slowly walked to my side, gently took my arm, looked up at me, and smiled. I wasn’t very tall, but she was tiny. Four feet, maybe. And old. Like eighty-something, with the wrinkled, weathered, tan face of someone even well beyond those years. She looked like my old boots.
She introduced herself in what I think was Italian. Rosa. I understood that much. I told her that I was Erik. She nodded in a way that made me feel like she knew exactly who I was. And, in the limited Italian I had learned while Jess and I fantasized about Italy, I said what I thought was, “Nice to meet you.” Based on the incredibly confused and somewhat pained look on Rosa’s face, however, I may have asked her for sex.
Rosa put her hand on the back of my leg in the same way a physical therapist tries to teach a patient to relearn to walk. “Lika dis,” she said through her thick Italian accent. One step at a time. Slowly, I started to walk. I was nervous and really didn’t want to go inside. I could see everyone watching me and felt terribly self-conscious. I expected them all to have the same look on their faces as the girl in middle school when she saw my life-raft thighs flattened on the desk. But they weren’t staring with pity. They stared with hope. They stared with encouragement in their eyes. They felt my pain, and I could feel theirs. Step by step, Rosa guided me around the pool and into the house. I still felt stupid, but at least I could walk. These were the first steps toward learning to walk on my own.
CHAPTER TEN
There’s a small town square near a woman’s house where her mom met her father and her sister met her husband. One day, she accidentally bumps into and knocks over a man in the exact same place. They are now planning their wedding.
I was slightly confused by the fact that I didn’t remember this room from my time here as a kid, working the open houses for my girlfriend’s mom. I hadn’t even noticed walking through this room when we made our way outside just an hour before.
I started to ask the kid who I think worked there, “What happened to the wall that separated the . . . never mind.”
If this were indeed God’s house, the wall didn’t matter. Having allegedly created the world in six days, God was perhaps the world’s greatest contractor. Probably the last construction project that got done quickly and under budget.
Massive, ornate arches stretched up to the very top of what must have been fifty-foot ceilings. They were white, like the rest of the room, and carved with a hieroglyphic-looking design. Scenes from the Bible? I couldn’t tell. Not that I would know anyway. I wasn’t exactly a biblical scholar. In fact, I wasn’t an anything scholar. Another regret. I never studied enough. I never did anything enough. Except “good.” I was a fucking expert at “good enough.” I never excelled. I didn’t do the work. I didn’t have the discipline. Well, that’s not true. I was quite disciplined at complaining about the fact that my life wasn’t what I wanted it to be. I did that often. And with vigor. I once read a quote while doom-scrolling Instagram that was attributed to Tony Robbins. It mentioned that most people are unhappy; they’re just not unhappy enough to do anything about it. Talk about a knife through the heart and into the essence of who I was. That was me.
I took a deep breath and looked around the room.
About twenty of us found our seats at an enormous wood table. Like the arches, the table was also carved, but I knew these images. They were the natural wonders of the world. I sat before the Grand Canyon, which was so meticulously and expertly carved that I swear I could see the Colorado River running through it. I was tempted to spill my water just to see what would happen.
Timmy and I had once taken an ill-advised hike down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Ill-advised because climbing to the bottom meant we had to climb back to the top. We didn’t have any food or water. Our plan was to just walk halfway down to a lookout, but when that didn’t prove interesting enough, we decided to go all the way. It had been an undeniably amazing feeling to be at the bottom of the canyon looking up. It felt like perfection to put our feet in the river. Heaven. Or at least what I thought of heaven back then.
As Timmy chatted up a newlywed couple, I sat in silence. I first discovered this feeling in Joshua Tree. Back then, as I sat still on top of the majestic orange rocks watching the sun slowly start its descent, I felt a kind of awe. There was a message in the silence if you listened closely. In the years that followed, when I was on backpacking trips or paddling in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, I learned to love this feeling even more. Insignificance. I found peace in insignificance.
Anytime I was around vast mountains or endless water, anytime I flew over the Rockies, I felt insignificant. The hugeness of nature. The power of nature. It all just made me feel so small. It made me feel meaningless. If I were insignificant, well, it meant that whatever problems I had, whatever I was complaining about at the time, must also be insignificant. A mountain breeze could make my problems disappear. Gently swept away on a melody of leaves. It was why I always wanted to live in Colorado. I figured it would be impossible to forget my insignificance surrounded by the Rockies. The vastness of the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon gave me the same peaceful feeling of insignificance. Nature was the Universe’s canvas. A reminder that we were all part of something so much bigger. Somewhere, I imagined, some other being was looking at us the same way we gazed at the Mona Lisa.
I made my way back to Timmy and the newlyweds and found him writing their names and address in the sand. They had lost their camera and their pictures from the first few days of their honeymoon. Timmy had taken a handful of pictures for them, and with no way to write down where to send the pictures, he wrote the address in the sand and took a picture. When we returned home and had them developed, we promised to send them copies.
It was such a beautiful moment in its simplicity. I was so swept up by the beauty that I suggested that the couple—wow, I just remembered their names, Bethany and Chuck—not buy a new camera. Instead, maybe they should rely on the kindness of strangers to document the rest of their honeymoon. Doing so meant that the conversations they’d have would be as much a part of the pictures as anything else. As much a part of the memories. I told them . . . “Maybe you’ll make friends for life with someone you meet.” I remember feeling proud of myself for thinking of it.
It was a moment that wouldn’t work today. It would be blown up all over social media, and the simplicity would be lost. Our narcissistic need to showcase everything would kill the meaning. Too bad Timmy and I didn’t become their friends for life. I wondered where they were now. Would I see one or both here? I hoped not. I sometimes wondered if they were on Facebook. I never looked. Checking meant diluting the beauty of the simplicity. Not knowing let the memory remain pure.
Timmy and I said our goodbyes to the newlyweds and started back up the canyon. Slowly. Steadily. Painfully. Timmy puked multiple times on the way back, and when we finally arrived at our hotel, his six-foot-five muscular frame collapsed so forcefully onto the cheap bed that it broke off its frame and cracked multiple tiles on the floor. I couldn’t walk for days. My blisters didn’t heal for weeks. All we could do for the rest of the trip was sit on the rim of the canyon and smoke a joint. It was, without a doubt, one of the best memories of my life.
I was startled out of this memory by a server. “Excuse me, sir. Excuse me. Sir? Excuse me.”
I’m not sure how many times he had to ask me to move before I finally did. A kid, maybe sixteen years old, was serving me a gorgeous plate of ribs and fries with a side Caesar. My all-time favorite meal.
We describe amazing food as “heavenly,” but the truth is we have no idea what this means. This is what it means. Late in my life, I became something of a vegetarian. And while I loved eating clean and feeling increasingly healthy, I’m glad whatever chef prepared this meal didn’t serve me root vegetables and quinoa.
These ribs were the best I’d ever tasted. Not just the best ribs, but also the best food. I’m no foodie, and I couldn’t tell you a single spice that stood out, but I can say the BBQ sauce was unlike anything I had ever had. The meat was perfectly cooked and . . . I struggled a little with the idea of ribs. Are they really pork ribs? I mean, are pigs being slaughtered in heaven?
The other people at the table had meat, fish, and chicken. Cows. Lots of cows. I couldn’t imagine cows were being slaughtered too? Someone had venison. Another plate was filled with veal. Baby cows were being killed in heaven? Come on! Me and my questions.
This actually had to be the best-tasting tofu in the universe, right? Or maybe it wasn’t even real at all. Just some artificially manufactured concoction. Heavenly molecules pressed together in just the right way. Could have been rib-flavoring for all I knew. After all, couldn’t God just recreate the taste in some other form? I chose to believe the ribs weren’t real. Just like Dippin’ Dots weren’t really ice cream, but instead, were some magical creation. Like Impossible Burgers. Or how “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” tasted just like butter!
