see the edges of the tank, we think we’re free. The edges make us feel safe though. It’s a false sense of security. We live our lives in there, ya know? Not knowing that the world is bigger than that aquatic cell and nothing is worse than standing on the edge of the bank, watching life go by. Your sister wasn’t trapped by it; you were. She accepted her lot in life, but held onto you like a life preserver because you represented what she wished to be. And there is no shame in that. My cousin… my cousin was trapped by it – an overwhelming fear. A fear that kept him from reaching his full potential. But he was happy with his life, in spite of it. I was still to blame.
“I was known to not be scared of anything. Halloween, horror movies… scary scenes never made me jump or react much. But this? Sammie’s death? Scared the shit outta me. Our family pointed fingers at the boy who’d pushed him, railed at his parents and said he must’ve come from a terrible home. They pointed at the music of our youth, the video games. It was everyone’s fault but the river’s. No one looked at me, but I looked at me, Yasmine. I might as well have pushed him myself… drowned him… kept him under the current. I blamed myself over and over, and when I looked in the mirror, I saw a selfish bastard. A kid who wanted to be an adult, who thought I was cool when I was just some loser… A piece of shit whose father was a drunk and still cooler than he was, including when he was passed out cold. I was just a punk whose mother was at times complicated and problematic and a little crazy, yet deeply loving and had more pizazz and creativity in her baby finger than I had in my entire body. How could I look into a river and not see my reflection? I saw myself for who I was. A soulless whisper.”
He grabbed the bottle of wine and poured them both a fresh glass.
“I didn’t deserve happiness. I deserved abandonment. And that’s what I got. I learned to expect it. I forced abandonment to happen, extinguishing any chance of true closeness, connection. Whenever I began to feel deeply for someone, I shut it all down. Immediately. I deserved to be left on a bank and pushed into something that would kill me. I deserved to rot. I was never the same after that. Yeah,” he waved lazily about, “people die. Death is a part of life. I’d been to plenty of funerals and had lost loved ones before that day, but see, Sammie was like me. We even looked similar. We looked like brothers, not cousins. When they pulled his dead body outta that water, I threw up. It was like looking at myself. Dead. I was ashen and blue, not him. It was me. No heartbeat. I no longer cared. I still don’t care. Everything is turned off and shut down so I don’t go bonkers. Dead on the inside, now. By choice. Sammie and I would have to both be dead, together, because in death, there was safety. Like the edges of an aquarium…”
His chest tightened. “When stuff like that happens, after a while, you get to feel nothing. And when you want to feel something, it has to be emotions on steroids! You have to get high off your ass, Yasmine. You have to fuck the living shit outta beautiful woman… but be careful.” He placed his finger up to his lips in a shushing gesture. “You can’t fall in love too hard, because if you do, you just might die again. But I’m not a pussy. I’m nobody’s punk. I need more, now.” His heart raced as he told his truth, left his burden at her feet. “I want that crazy love that I know I’m going to get if I just get outta the gotdamn fish tank. I want that love my parents had when they were first together. I want that love that will accept me and all of my fucked-up ways, and see the beauty in my blackest holes and hardest, jagged edges. Sometimes I’m still that thirteen-year-old boy at the river, ya know? But most of the time, I’m a complicated man, like my mother, and a functional drunk like my father –not from alcohol though. I