Hopeless

It was inevitable; the natural decline of love and warmth in his heart has been apparent since he was young. I noticed his resolve falter and continue to fade when I took him under my wing after his parents’ death. It wasn’t murder or anything, nothing like that. They didn’t have their lives taken away from them. I wish I could say their deaths were due to old age or some lethal disease, no- their deaths weren’t the result natural causes. Imagine you were sitting on the floor in your living room that overlooked the kitchen, playing with your various toys just as you would any other day. But something is different. There’s no music playing over the speakers and there are no delicious smells floating throughout the house, causing your stomach to growl. And when you walk downstairs, your parents are crying and holding hands, which is weird because daddy rarely ever comes out of his office anymore. Watching the only family you know point pistols at each other and end everything would fuck anyone up, not to mention an eight year old kid. I was the one he ran to when he knew of nowhere else to go and now, ten years later, I’m nothing more than an object to him- one that he feels belongs to him, one he has no problem hurting.

            I knew his parents were going to do it, I just didn’t think they would do it in front of their only child. Did they even think about the repercussions? Did it even cross their minds that by committing a double suicide with their eight year old son present, they were planting in his mind the idea that he could end his life just as easily as they ended their own? Far too impressionable for his own good, I knew Dallas was always struggling with his parents’ death. I always had a feeling, ever since the beginning that he would one day do something he couldn’t take back. He was going to do something he regretted. I bet his parents didn’t think that by ending each other, they were also murdering their son. I wasn’t able to properly protect him from all the things I knew were tearing him apart and I was always at war with myself; I never knew whether I should give him space and let him forge his own path or give him some direction, something to believe in. I didn’t know, still don’t, how to give him something to believe in when I have no idea what I have left to believe in myself.

I’ve always known Dallas was different, always had a feeling he was special and in all honesty, he scares the hell out of me. He has these gray-violet eyes that seem to see right through you and you can tell by one glance in his direction that he is constantly thinking; always seeking out what he thinks is missing. I know he has some sort of notebook but he keeps it well hidden, like he keeps most things. It’s as if he believes if he reveals anything about himself he will lose grip on that which holds him together. 

If I could go back in time and right all the wrongs in his life, I would in an instant. I would sacrifice myself in the most literal sense of the word if that meant he would be happy and lead a normal life. I remember so vividly the night I asked him what he thought of himself. I can conjure up the whole conversation in my mind; I can picture his lips move as he told me that he thought, no, he knew he was nothing more than the product of savages who ended each other and left him behind. Such insightful and broken words coming from a ten year old. Too young to have gone through what he went through and too fragile to deal with it properly.

When he was younger, I used to go into his room and find these horrible drawings; on those pages I found guns and puddles of blood and blue, limp bodies laying in those puddles. I never confronted him about it; that’s how it was with us- we never shared anything with one another other than a casual conversation here and there. More than anything I wish I never let the space between us grow so big that it threatened to eat us up.  Sometimes the emptiness in his eyes is too much for me to take.

But tonight, that emptiness threatens to tear him apart. I can see it in the way he walks and in his facial expressions. I can hear it in every breath he takes and I can feel it with every fiber of my being. I know it’s a bad idea to ask him if anything is bothering him, but I’ve never been one to suppress my curiosity. I know he’s done something horrible, irreversible. And all I can do is convince him that everything will be okay. How could I instill such hope but be left with none of my own?