A Life Realized

The Short Story of a man who realizes too little too late.

John wondered what it would feel like.  This was something he had wondered about off and on for most of his life, he was young intelligent and handsome, he'd felt happy for much of his shot life, but in 26 years, the majority of what he felt was a burning curiosity related to one simple question.  "why do the bad guys always seem to win?".  He had a beautiful wife, and they had an amazing little daughter a girl, named Maggie.  He had the support of the few really close friends he had made in his journey, and an amazing mentor, that cared for him, and taught him like a son.  All the same, he couldn't help but feel as though the deck was stacked against him, and it wasn't fair.  Not just for him, but for so many other bright young men who entire lives would be a trudge through the muck that was a crumbling infrastructure built and loosely maintained by those in a previous generation with no thought or care as to what their actions would lead to.   

 

He looked at the bottle of pills he had swallowed.  he was too broke to afford any real medication, and he didn't want his last act to be a criminal one, (stealing a bottle of ambien, or whatever else he might be able to get ahold of), this was a bottle of melatonin extract pills.  "At least I'll be asleep when I die, at least I'll be dead when I s**t myself..."  he sat an thought of everything he'd put his poor wife and daughter through already in his life time, "They'll miss me, but after a while, they'll move on, it's better to be remembered as a good man but selfish, than be known as a perfect example of human failure".  He thought of all the time he had spent with his little girl, everything he had seen her pick up, every bit of language she had learned, every motion, every skill, and his wife, supportive through everything, through his failed attempts at every job he tried his hand at, through every stupidly willful ambition, through every angry tempur tantrum he through, through the drinking, and the abandonment, even through the DUI process.   

 

He had been trying to change over the last several years, and to catch up with all of the wreckage and missed opportunities he had left in his wake (in such a short period of time), and he had changed a lot but now he could not deal with it any more.  He was tired of holding his wife back from her ambitions, of existing just to exist, of failing to live up to his own expectations, of always trying and very rarely succeeding in everything he tried.   

As he stepped onto the stool and stretched out the noose, he remembered the times he'd spent with his older brothers.  They never wanted to play with him when he was a boy, he was always too little, his father would ask him to come and play, then tell him, then corner him and scream, his mother often drank, and in her later years would become a drug addict and a drunk.  He remembered standing at the alter with his wife, with tears rolling down their cheeks together as they stood at the altar, (he was always upset with himself for not being able to hold in his tears, even a little),  he put the rope around his neck and remembered driving his wife to the hospital to induce labor.  and the first time he gazed at his daughters perfect flawless, clueless little face.  And the stool fell over, he felt a strange feeling, the lights were turning to black, his breathing was slowing and all he could think was that if he could turn back time, he would stop himself before his fall.  In his last moments, he realized everything that life had given him, and everything life had kept from him, and how much he could have done. 

Author's Note

let 'er rip!

Reviews

[sette]

i like the story it is actually dark in nature but that is what life is all about, we have to embrace darkness as it is. but maybe if given the choice to give an ending to the story the realization that killing oneself is not the perfect solution because at one point in time we were all failures but we manage to survive.