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.
No comments:
Post a Comment