A Sheep In Wolf's Clothing

    So I hid.  I roamed.  I flocked to the wild because safety, or so I thought, lay in the areas and people who knew me least.  There would be no reason to pry, get to know me, or get comfortable enough to ever realize that I was in fact, alone. 

                I donned the wolf’s clothing so I would fit in with the pack.  The environment was so foreign to me but it did not take long to form alliances.  To gravitate towards and cling to the people who were most like me.  Flawed.  Damaged.  Spiteful.  Searching.  Many became one and the pack was deadly.  We searched, roamed, scavenged, killed and rejoiced all in the name of ourselves.  Unabashed, unrelenting, unforgiving primitive vengeance.

                It was college and there were six of us.  Each bringing to the table out strengths and weaknesses (which we did our best to hide).  The pack leader who could organize the group flawlessly.  Damaged from parents divorce and lashing out in fits of rage at his now prey.  Another who was the life of the group.  All because his father had lost his when he was merely sixteen.  In the aftermath, he spent six years of his life wasted.  Only becoming a father himself saved him.  Then there was me.  I had always felt out of place.  Like a stranger in their midst who would one day be figured out.  The could even sense it at times but it never happened.  They never turned on me.  It made it increasingly easier to trust these individuals like equals.  Share drinks, stories, life, knowing one day fangs could be clamped at your throat.  But, it beat the alternative.  The fear of leaving and loneliness that crept deep inside of me.  My own weakness since my loss.

                I began to not just wear the wolf’s clothing, but to become one.  The pack progressively rubbed off on one another.  As we each unknowingly started to bear the burdens of the others weaknesses, we also began to learn and use their preferred methods of coping.  I became the worst kind of person.  Soaking up and spewing out all the negative I could handle.  Nights of rage only to wake up and find broken glass and fist holes punched through the wall.  Excessive intakes of alcohol; till the running joke became where would we wake up and what would be lost or broken?  Never did it register that the obvious answer was us.

                The girls who had the nerve to approach the  pack became victims of excuses and intertwined lies so seamlessly constructed we would have forgot its purpose if it wasn’t for the animal inside us all.  The packs success was based on its survival instincts, one another, and our ability to conceal our weakness.

                The day arrived when the pack was physically separated and we had to remember how to survive on our own again.  We clung to each other and fought to wrestle our demons but for me, it was ultimately a failure.  Some found new outlets for the same pain and weakness while others tried to geographically run away from what haunted them.  I suffered a fate far more searingly painful…realization.

                After three years of trying to do it all on my own, I finally realized that I could not.  For those three solitary years, my punishment was repeated and led me on unfruitful journeys into the same dark places where I had experienced the euphoric life with the pack.

                The day I sat in a misty morning reeling from the oncoming headache and dehydration at my grandfather’s grave, I knew something had to change.  I had to get in touch with my roots.  The lessons he taught me.  The man he knew I was capable of becoming.  I didn’t know exactly what it would mean for me or my lifestyle or the extenuating difficulties I would have, but I knew it had to happen.  Not just for him, but for those around me who cared and for myself.  So that the day I look at the lid, I do not look back in regret of a wasted life.  It was time to stop pulling the wool over my own eyes, to shed the wolf’s clothing and to openly come to terms with what I had been from the beginning…a sheep.

Communication Breakdown

For days I drove.  All roads of the neighboring communities all hours of the night.  Hundreds if not thousands of miles were logged in an attempt to distance myself yet stay close.  To escape yet be there if needed.  Most drives were taken alone.  I would stop and get the biggest coffee I could at Sheetz at 1 am.  I would go to Wal-Mart and play video games at midnight. (I hate video games)  I would sit on my girlfriends couch and stare, cry, or talk incessantly as a result of the nights coffee intake.  I was the scared and frantic prisoner of my own mind and circumstances.

At the viewing I shook countless hands as I stood in awe of the thousands of people who showed up to pay their respects.  People my Pap had installed carpet for, built shelves, lended a helping hand, or even simply showed respect.  They came to repay the favor as best they now could.  Family, friends, my friends parents all tied their ties, waited their turn, bowed their head, shook my hand, said a few words, and went on.  My dad sat in a wheelchair at the end of the line reeling in pain from his own injury.  My mom and her sisters split duty standing in line, getting glasses of water, consoling their mother, and tending to the handshakes of the crowd.  I was on my own.

The entire scene seemed ridiculous to me.  A dead body in a box.  A thousand people crammed in a room.  None of which want to actually be there.  My blood pressure would peak and valley.  I would scan the room looking for an escape other than the single door entrance and exit.  I sweat and angered at the thought of shaking one more damn hand and faking a smile when all I wanted to do was scream “get the fuck out of here, you don’t even know!”  I thought no one was suffering like I was.  That no one in the room lost what I did.  These feelings were obviously extreme and based directly to my emotional involvement and perspective but none the less I could not shake them.  I never swayed but this was the moment I snapped.

The night was filled with driving, coffee, and the looming thought of an unwritten eulogy that I was to deliver the following day.  I pulled my car along a crick side got out and stood and cried.  I stood there till my hands went numb from the winter cold.  I contemplated not moving but eventually found myself back in the car driving home and brainstorming.  I sat at my computer desk and scrawled out a sloppy, caffeine laced two page “letter” to my Pap which would serve as my final words to him in church the next morning.

I hated the church.  I hated carrying the casket.  I hated the car ride.  I hated the looks people gave.  I hated the letter I wrote.  Most of all I hated the fact that I knew before I even stood up to read, that I wouldn’t even shed a tear.  The letter, the day, the burial meant nothing but brokenness to me.  As we walked to the cemetery all I can remember thinking was “damn are my ears cold.”  In the stinging January wind the pain in my ears was all I had to remind me that I was still alive.  I could feel.  But all I could feel was pain. 

The green Astroturf that lay around the hole in the ground made me want to throw up as I thought about the irony of trying to use fake grass to dress up a January burial.  At this point someone probably prayed.  I think my grandma was holding my hand but honestly I have no idea.  I watched snow blow across a distant hillside, wished there were deer out, thought about how much my ears hurt, got angry that there was no grave marker, and fantasized of getting as far away as I could.

Let me tell you…I did.