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[nosocialjaila-blog]

Grandpa’s Theory of Reality

[MONDAY] OCTOBER 7TH, 2012

I felt my teeth close to shattering inside my mouth. I tumbled on the floor, and my back slammed against the lockers, creating a rattling sound of how much force I was hit with. I looked through the crack of my hair that was covering my forehead. Eden stood tall to represent his dominance compared to mine. I’ve never talked to Eden before; he wasn’t relevant enough for me to remember. I don’t recall doing any mischievous acts this past week either. In seconds, a man with thick black glasses, ran to where every student had their attention on. His gray hair was falling out; I remembered him briefly saying it was because of the stress he dealt with back home. He glanced at me and collected his thoughts before sighing. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and then turned around to the spectating students. I continued to feel the neverending stinging sensation on my right cheek. It felt like little needles stabbing me when I tried to change my facial expressions. I raised my right hand that was trembling. I cupped my swollen, heated cheeks, and softly brushed my thumb across.

OCTOBER, 2012

“She can’t even buy me a new phone. Even after all the things I’ve done for her! My dad is the same. He always takes her side. If it’s not about me changing who I am, it’s about school, and my grades! There’s no support from them. I wish that they could just--”

“I find you pathetic, you know that? A joke. I see you as a selfish creature. That’s all,” I said to her, without my eyes wandering around.

“What?” she said in a nervous chuckle.

“Yeah,” I paused, “You keep blabbing about how much your parents keep pestering  you about your education. If they are so damn annoying, get a job, live alone, do something useful for once.”

She frowned. “Why are you talking like that?”

“Because I can’t stand people like you. People like you disgust me.” I placed my coat and beanie on. Without another word, I left her alone at the swingset, when it was freezing cold and midnight.

[TUESDAY] OCTOBER 8TH, 2012

I breathed into my hands to keep warm. I carried a plastic bag of Chinese food down a gravel path with trees surrounding the area. I walked down the rocky path where my grandfather was buried. It’s an old cemetery, and usually no one would be here, but today, I noticed a family sobbing in front of a gravestone. The mother had flowers wrapped around her arms; the father was holding his young daughter with pigtails.

The flowers and boxes I left before were still sitting on my grandfather’s grave.

“Hey, old man,” I said, before I sat down.

I unwrapped the plastic bag, and pulled out two boxes of rice and fried noodles. My grandfather used to buy Chinese food for me when I felt uninvited at my father’s house. For someone so old, he was quite adventurous and ready to go places. I snapped my two chopsticks apart, and I began tugging up the noodles out of the box. The two flavors mixed well with each other. A taste of overpowering salty fried food, and a plain taste of white rice to keep it balanced.

OCTOBER, 2002

“This game sucks!” I complained to grandpa.

He laughed at me and handed me my box of food. Grandpa and I were playing one of his old board games. It was complicated with numbers and names. It’s about stealing property and traveling back in time.

“It’s more a puzzle than a board game,” he told me, after taking a bite out of his food. “Time is an important thing. It gives us reality. That’s what this game is actually about.”

I looked down at the game once more. I saw no evidence of this game actually being educational and significant to my life. I shrugged my shoulders at him.

“With time, our lives are all connected. Humans are incredible creatures. We tend to overlook our differences, rather than looking at what we all share in common. The air we breathe, the water we need, the earth we share, the universe we conquered. We all strive for the same things in life.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Happiness, and the support to reach that happiness. Humans are selfish creatures.”

“I don’t really see life that way, old man,” I chuckled.

“You don’t?”

I shook my head at him, and touched my character piece for the board game. It was the shape of a bird that had its wings spread. I was only seven years young, but I felt mature enough to understand grandpa’s words.

“Tell you what,” grandpa paused, “Why don’t you tell me the five senses you learned so far?”

I tapped my finger on my lips. “There’s smell, touch, taste, sight… and hearing?”

He nodded with a smile. “There’s many more, but those five, you’ll experience reality in all shapes and forms. For example, let’s say you walk into a room, and it smells like cigarettes. What do you associate that smell with?”

I laughed, “Dad.”

“See? With the simplest things, lives can be connected with memories and sometimes, the future. Things like objects, music, food, color, numbers. Every human is significant to life and we all were born with values. The world syncs together with our senses and perception. Humans are connected with the universe, even what is invisible to the eye, we are still connected. You can experience the unreal if you finally start accepting reality.”

I didn’t believe him. I didn’t really want to see the world that way.

[WEDNESDAY] OCTOBER 9TH, 2012

With severe caution, I tried to focus on myself and my surroundings. I wanted to talk to my father for a change. I wasn’t planning to go too far and join him for dinner, but I wanted to remind him that I still exist. I dawdled down the main hallways of the school, and turned corners until I reached his classroom. My father’s been a teacher for officially six years now. It was two hours after school was over, so I didn’t see anyone here, except him. His door was slightly cracked open. Before I barged in, I heard him singing to himself in a hoarse voice. I leaned my body against the wall and chuckled with my hand over my mouth. I started to I listen intensely to the song he chose to sing. It sounded familiar with slow instrumental and beat.

OCTOBER, 2005

“The normal routine?” the pretty bartender asked, after she had wiped the table next to me.

I gave her a friendly nod. Seeing a therapist wasn’t helpful, and to be frank, I wasted a good amount of money on answers I could’ve found on the internet. The White Rabbit is where I drown myself to avoid my son at home. I guess on some level I wanted to blame him for tearing up the perfect family photo. I shouldn’t blame him, but subconsciously, I do. A waiter sent me a plate of oily french fries and drinks that I’d soon consume before midnight. Out of the blue, my wife and I’s anniversary song goes on the speakers. I slouched down in my chair, then proceeded to pick and play with my fries. Each lyric and each beat used to be my happiness and future, now, I felt sadness and sorrow.

“Tell me about it, Doc,” my co-worker demanded, after he sat down with a bottle of beer in his right hand. His white lab coat was stained with drinks from earlier.

I knew he’d follow me around until he was satisfied. “How’s your son?” I questioned.

“He told me to go to hell, so, I came here.”

I laughed at how sarcastic he could be, yet serious, too. “How do you not get angry at him for disrespecting you like that? How do you not get anxious that one day you’ll fail to save a patient's life?”

I changed the subject quite fast because I secretly didn’t want to know why he was so easy going, and I wasn’t. He raised a brow, and took a sip from his drink before he responded.

“My son isn’t a patient, Wes. I know that teenagers, they don’t think before they speak. Teenagers, they go through that change in high school where they deal with emotions and stress. I’m not the only person giving him a hard time at life. What he goes through, is the same things I go through. That’s what family is.”

I picked up my glass and began drinking to end the night with a positive feeling. I didn’t quite understand what he meant, but I should since I have a son too.

“I miss my wife,” I finally admitted, coming out of my shell.

“You’ll miss your son more if you keep this up.” He gave me a smile, and picked up one of my glasses before I did.

[THURSDAY] OCTOBER 10TH, 2012

I waited outside of the flower shop for it to open. In my right hand, I held a black umbrella to keep the rain from soaking the thin layers of clothing I wore. I figured that my grandfather should get more flowers if I’m going to visit him. I listened as the sound of raindrops trickled down off the building, onto my umbrella, and made a rumbling sound. The entrance door opened, and I saw a middle-aged woman looking at me with large eyes. She paused for a split second, and then moved to the side to invite me in. Once the owner walked off to the backroom, I began to explore the shop. It was spring, yet the flowers looked dead and sad. At the corner of the store, I noticed a bundle of purple vivid flowers in a small vase. I walked near them, and scanned at each pedal, whether they were dying or not. I smiled at the results and leaned forward to get a whiff of the smell. It smelt like the hospital.

OCTOBER, 2003

“Grandpa?” I asked, tugging on his shirt with my tiny hand.

My grandpa glanced down at me. “Yes, Benny?”

“Mom said she’d play hopscotch with me and dad. Does she feel better?”

Starting tomorrow, it’d be a week since the incident happened, and since mom’s been resting in the hospital. I trust in grandpa and the doctors with their words on mom going to be okay in the end.

“Hmm… not better, but she will eventually. How about we check on your father?” he suggested, and proceeded to grab my hand. “Do you know where he is?”

“Dad’s in the potty room. He said he had a stomachache. I didn’t want him to throw up on me.”

My grandpa let go of my hand. His face scrunched up, and he wiped his tears away with the palm of his hand. He left me alone in the waiting room. I figured he went to check on my dad to see if he was okay by himself. I quickly scurried off down the halls to find mom’s door, once the doctors had disappeared. She wasn’t feeling good, and the doctors and grandpa wouldn’t explain why. I saw her a few days ago. I entered room 342; that’s where mom was. She laid down on the bed with tubes and machines hooked up to her. Mom’s eyes were closed, and she seemed to be more in pain today than yesterday.

“Mom?” I sat next to her bed. “Mom? What happened to your fingers?”

Mom’s fingers were covered in cuts and purple bruises. I grabbed her hand gently, and rubbed my thumb across the large scar on her palm. I felt a strange pain in my stomach. The touch of her hand felt cold and weak. I felt like she wasn’t asleep any longer, nor was she awake. I didn’t hear her breathe in that loud snore she made when she’s asleep. I looked around the room for grandpa, but he was nowhere to be seen. The room was bland and gray. The only color that stood out was a purple bouquet of flowers by the doctor’s sink. I let go of the cold touch, and ran to the flowers. They smelt like the outside when our family would go camping in the spring, but also, they smelt like the hospital. I brought it back to the bed, and started to take each flower out of the bundle one-by-one. I placed them in her hand where I previously held with my hand. Just like that, my mother slowly curled up her fingers, and held the flowers with all the strength she had left with her.

[FRIDAY] OCTOBER 11TH, 2012

I stood in the living room with a blank expression on my face. I was locked in the corner with my two feet glued to the floor. This was a new house, and I was in a different state and city. Yet, this place gave me a clear image of what went down on a cold Friday afternoon. I felt it all tingling inside me. The touch of fire, the smell and taste of gas polluting the air, the sound of the crackling house, and the sight of fear in my mother’s eyes. This “experience” I had, it was threatening me; it was lurking behind me until I experienced it again.

OCTOBER, 2003

My parents were bickering back and forth, because dad kept losing money from playing card games. Mom told me to stay inside the house, and occupy myself since she wouldn’t be able to watch me. I played with my toys and listened to the TV in the background. I found my father’s pack of cigarettes tucked in between the wall and the back of the couch.

“You were just a kid,” I heard someone tell me.

I blinked three times and saw my father in the kitchen. He just finished mowing the lawn; it was my job, but I never followed his house instructions. He took off his cap, and wiped his forehead with the hem of his shirt.

“You see it, too? You see the horrific sight I see every night?”

I gulped at his brief description, and nodded. “Do you blame me?”

“I do,” he paused, “but I’m the one who smokes.”

I scratched the back of my head and finally took off my shoes. I walked in the living room and touched the walls. I remembered the walls peeling off and cracking, when the fire spread throughout the room.

“Benny!” she called out for me, “Benny! Come here!”

My mom searched the entire house for her only child, and I didn’t even attempt to move my legs. I cupped my ears and squatted in a ball. I was too afraid that she’d be mad at me for starting a fire in their new home. I could imagine my dad’s face if he found out I was playing with his matches and cigarettes. I ran, and ran, into the woods behind a small park near. I could still faintly hear her screams and cries. They echoed in my ears as I got further away from the visible black smoke behind me. I slipped on mud, and stumbled down a hill. My back slammed against a tree. I squeezed my body to hide. Too many scenarios had entered my head for me to relax. Tears streamed down my cheeks, to my chin, and splattered on my shirt. The sight of a burnt out campfire was the last picture in my mind.

“Do you think she blames me?” I hesitated to ask.

“No,” he said quickly, “Your mother is a far better person than I am. Your mother, she had burns from her head to toes. I left that house without a scratch.”

I started to become very nauseous from the overwhelming memories. I started to see mom’s face again; a pure face I erased from my memory to avoid the guilt and pain I caused. I understood why I am overly sensitive. I understood why I rejected Eden’s sister when she talked badly about her own parents.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, “I ruined your life. I’m sorry I stopped you from saving lives.”

He was surprised to know I was capable of apologizing. He walked towards me with his hat dangling in his hand. He couldn’t forgive me for killing the one person he loved entirely, but really, he couldn’t forgive himself. I could tell. The look in his eyes gave it away. Maybe it wasn’t his eyes. Perhaps, it’s the fact that humans really have no differences when it comes to reality. That reality is an illusion that can only be figured out if you accept it.