I'll Be Right Back - A Narrative

“Fuck you!” my dad screamed,

“No, fuck you,” my mother replied as tears filled up her eyes, “I’m filing for a divorce!”

Then in one of the most sarcastic tones I’ve ever heard, my dad laughs & says, “We’ve all heard this one before haven’t we?”

I’ll never forget the way they looked at me whenever I was brought into the argument. It was like I was on a stage with a crowd & everyone was just staring at me waiting on me to do something. Situations like that are the reason I started questioning myself at such a young age and still have identity issues to this day. That kind of pressure at such a young age was unbearable. There’s this lovely thing that’s coded into every human being by nature called the fight or flight response, and a lot of the time back then, I would take flight.

I stared back with a blank face, “5…4…3…2…1…” a voice in my head said for me before I took off up the stairs.

“Where are you going?” both of my parents asked me in sync.

“I’ll be right back.”

Ever since I was young I’ve always been running from my problems no matter the severity. I could've simply been flipping my card back in elementary school & I would’ve come home & blamed it on someone else in the class, and if that didn’t work, then I would quite literally run from my problems straight to a safe space.

My bedroom was one of my few safe spaces. It was somewhere I could say anything I pleased with absolutely no one to say anything about it. Somewhere I could think & do whatever my heart desired with zero consequences. The other safe spaces I had were this little hideout in the woods & the laundry room in the basement. I remember spending hours in those places. I loved it. Looking back, I might as well have been meditating. Unintentionally exploring the depths of my mind by simply isolating myself & letting it wander.

There was something about the mind that I adored. I couldn’t seem to stop thinking. I had friends and I loved spending time with them, but with a lot of them I didn’t seem to share interests. I often found myself questioning myself over that too, asking myself things like, “Am I normal,” or “Why do I think about this stuff?” My unintentional meditation helped me mature very quickly. It forced me to question a lot of things that the typical kid or even average adult wouldn’t think about such as the self, life, death, religion, and other things of that nature.

Thankfully I wasn’t brought up around the church. I greatly appreciate my parents' minimal effort in contribution to my free thinking abilities. Most people don’t have a choice when it comes to their beliefs since it’s been shoved down their throat at such a young age. Praise this, repent that, love thy whatever… I would've hated it anyway. One thing the church does get right, in my eyes, is morality. It does actually teach you how to do things that people like, and coincidentally enough, that is one of the things I’ve always struggled with.

Morality regarding emotions has always been somewhat of a complicated topic for me because I learned to suppress mine & disassociate. Especially love due to the fact that it was never displayed in the correct way. Whenever my parents were together it seemed like they went through phases. They were either infatuated with or hated each other. There was no such thing as a happy medium. Love was not shown in the correct way either. Instead of someone expressing the fact they didn’t like something I did, I would get screamed at or spanked.

In those moments, I didn’t think about how whatever was going on was going to affect me in my future, I thought about how much I hated what was happening. My mind would race in circles after the fact thinking of ways I could get revenge or how I could prevent it from happening again, but still getting to do what I wanted.

One thing about me back then is I was going to do whatever I wanted to do and no one was stopping me. If there were consequences, it made the game that much more fun trying to avoid them. I never had anyone to tell me the difference between right and wrong until it was too late. I had already formed my own set of values based on logic and personal benefit. People told me that this was a problem and that I didn’t think about other people, but I beg to differ.

Personally I believe I thought too much. Unintentionally forcing myself to question reality at around the age of just seven or eight years old, calling myself the chosen one because I was unaware that other people were conscious beings and they had emotions. I learned at a young age that the only person you truly have is yourself and that’ll never change. No matter how much someone tells you something, they could always be thinking or doing something else. Why was I thinking like this? I was so young and had so many friends, but why did I feel so alone?

My parents guided me slightly throughout my childhood based on their beliefs, which were still in the process of improving, but for the most part it was just me and my mind. Dad wasn’t very in touch with his emotions and mom was always high, leaving me to do whatever younger me wanted to do. I’ve always felt like I had to find my own way. Never would I have asked for help unless I absolutely needed it, and I rarely needed it. I got my first computer when I was just 9 years old, unknowingly pushing myself further into my ways. Hours, days, even weeks I would spend on that thing either playing games, making friends in chat rooms, or just surfing the web for whatever piqued my interest. I spent a lot of time online developing connections with online personalities because in my eyes it posed less of a risk of judgment.

As you know, children tend to pick up on behaviors that are demonstrated or things that they observe from other people, and I became a liar at a young age, so you can only imagine what types of behaviors were demonstrated for me. Neither of my parents were perfect, nor did they have the best morals, so an outcome like this for me wasn’t too surprising. When I was just eleven years old I had to watch my mom find out that my dad had been cheating on her & that alone played a huge role as to why my head and heart worked the way they did. It showed me that internally questioning people wasn’t so bad after all and at the end of the day, it's quite necessary.

I couldn’t comprehend the severity of what my father had done to our family until years down the line. At that moment I was just seeing another one of their fights. It didn’t register with me that this could’ve been one of the moments that affect me more than anything else in my life. Sure enough, it was the moment that affected me the most.

Nowadays I struggle with finding love. Whether it’s with a friend or a partner. I often find myself in relationships without an actual emotional connection to the person and more of a business oriented kind of mindset where both parties can benefit from each other. I don’t know if I’ve ever truly loved anyone, for all of the ones that I thought I loved I ended up hurting. I’ve managed to convince myself that I’m undeserving of love in its true form and will always receive a half-assed interpretation, therefore, I keep it to myself.

Being alone has been a key factor in making me into the person I am today. All of the thinking I was doing forced me to consider where it was going to take me in life. I realized early on that my thoughts were very unique, but keeping them inside was damaging me, and even if people weren’t interested in hearing them, I had to find a way to get them out. Shortly after that revelation, I found my love for writing.

For everything I was scared to say, I could say it. Whenever, wherever, in whatever tone I wanted. For everything I was scared to do, I could make up a character and have them do it for me. On top of that, it allowed me to organize my thoughts in a form that other people would be interested in hearing. I had finally found my voice. The voice that was never there when I needed it most. The one that was always blocked by a lump in my throat because I had been trying to keep from crying.

Isolation can be such a beautiful thing, yet lots of people say they don’t want to be alone. I must admit that I have felt that way many times and I will continue to to feel like that on occasion throughout my lifetime, but through deep thinking and destruction of the ego, I realized it's true power.

My dad knocked on my bedroom door.

“What?” I answered, sounding annoyed.

“Dinners ready if you’re hungry, bro.” he said

“I’m not hungry right now,” I replied in a dull tone “I’ll eat in a little bit”

“James, you need to eat something,” he said, “you’ve been up here all day.”

I could tell he was just looking out for me, but it was getting annoying, plus I wasn’t even hungry.

“Fine.” I said to him audibly frustrated by the fact that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to remain in my room. I proceeded to unmute my microphone, as I said “I'll be right back guys.” before taking my headphones off.