Morning

The apartment was the filthiest she'd seen in fifty years of being a landlord, she told me. It'd need to be scrubbed, painted, top to bottom. It needed an entire interior overhaul, included stretching or possibly replacing the carpets. She wanted me to take care of it for her.

No problem, I could handle that. After all, she had reduced my rent to a hundred a month plus utilities on the stipulation that I do work around the complex. Easy things. Pick up trash, sweep off sidewalks, cut grass, and clean up the shitholes people left behind that were otherwise inhabitable dwellingspaces.

I had been putting in twelve hours a day, six to six every day for my uncle at his construction business. It wasn't a bad job. Nothing I was particularly adept at, but I was getting the hang of the things that actually took more than a day to finish quickly. At least I'd felt, and so he'd tell the family. He neglected to include the names and put-downs I got while I worked for him, but who would bother to include that?

After the first month, though, the pay-you-laters started catching up. Figuring out what he had paid me for the hours in comparison to the eight an hour he'd stated, it came out to only around five and a half dollars an hour only counting eight hours a day. I could make more than that scrubbing dishes, so I told him adios and went off to do just that.

There was the matter of that dirty apartment, though, which after twelve hours of work, I'd be in cleaning until two or four in the morning. She'd told me Friday that she wanted it done by Monday. I told her no way was that possible, and she said that was fine...no one was lined up to move in anyway, take your time.

Hardly a week later, I've started my new job, the same as I left behind in my old town. It's easy work to prep foods and clean up little messes. Fill up drinks, take orders. It's food work, but it was easy work for a steady six an hour and desperately needed food.

Hardly a week later, and my grandmother/landlady is saying how I'm costing her too much money, working too slow, and she's going to have to ask me to leave.

Evicted by my own family.

Owned.

Granted it was a dive, full of roaches and other ranom bugs, and smelled like old car chemicals when you turned on the ventilation, but it was a roof. She never called me, never said anything to me, just went to my roommate and sister to talk shit on me. It was a stab in the heart, but my heart doesn't feel that much anymore, anyway. I packed up my things, warned my roommate-for-a-month, Dunkel, that he should think about finding a new place, and got out.

Later, she'd claim to the very people that she told she was going to evict me that she didn't want that at all and had never said anything like that. Right. Multiple people with no contact with each other at all, all telling me the same thing. I can take a hint.

I haven't spoken to her since I left. I don't think I could say anything nice, so I'll do as I was told and not say anything at all.

Prior to my exodus, or return to my proper home, if you would, I had stopped my aunt as I saw her passing and asked her if she had any work around the apartments she wanted me to do. She gave me the 'you're stupid, use common sense' speech that I've gotten more than once while trying to please people.

She stops mid-speech and says, "Do you ever smile?" I'm not one to lie. I tell her that I don't very often have much to smile about. She tells me, "You look angry all the time," and asks, "Are you just unhappy, all the time?"

I stare at her blankly for a few seconds. It's not an I Care question, it's an accusation. Her manner is a degrading one. I look away, wishing I could just close my eyes and not exist anymore.

"Yeah," I tell her, "pretty much."

She comes in with a false hug. I don't return it. I try to breathe deeply, but fail. As I walked away from her, I realized that in all she had said, she'd torn me apart and said nothing constructive at all. She had done nothing but pointed out every flaw and misery that I despise. I walked away from this destroyer, determined that if anyone was going to destroy my worlds, it would be me alone.

Back in the home I'd left to be with them, I poke at a computer propped up on boxes and sleep on a futon. Most of my possessions are no longer mine. What I could fit into my car, I dropped into what was "my" bedroom at my mother's house. A house I've never lived in and never will.

I walk inside with some boxes. She's gone at work and it's early. The box of cereal I'd bought months ago is still unopened. Having had only beer and noodles in the past four days, I opened the box and put the milk in. I sat with my head in my hands for a bit, exercising what willpower I could to not devour like an animal and make myself sick.

"Did you open another box of cereal?!" my sister demands, scaring the shit out of me. "Yeah," I tell her, "It's my fucking cereal, it's not like I'm not going to eat it," I say, already filled with the oh-so-happy anger that constitutes my relation with her. "Goddamn," she says, and waddles back to her room, pregnant, swollen, fat.

"Hello to you, too," I say to myself. I eat, steal a couple bottles of water, and hit the road.

The words "unemployed," "drop-out," "useless," "starving," "dead," all tumble around inside my head.

I drive away from the family that's never wanted me or had any use for me. I can't convince myself that I never wanted it or had any use for it, only realize the fact that we have all failed each other terribly. We would all always fail each other. In my family, there would never be love.

I thought, not for the first time, about simply driving off the road. About the half-filled bottles of old medication in my kitchen. About the highrises in town. About the largish knives at home.

As I got home and began to unpack, I pulled out a small funeral card. I sat on my knees before the open box, eyes closed, card held to my forehead. I hated myself, then, more than ever. I have so much, but allow none of it to make me happy. I am so lucky compared to so many. So many that I have held in my own arms.

Options. There are always more than one. I just needed to get my head on straight, think.

What did I need? Food. Shelter. Income. Education. A job that I could do well and feel satisfied with. How could I go about getting so many huge things though?

Military.

The answer made my stomach turn. It wasn't the military, it was the military of America. Four years, minimum, active duty.

But I've wasted bigger portions of my life being dissatisfied with more than my job. Besides, if all I'm good for is destroying things, ruining lives, then so be it. I will cease to attempt being a creator and embrace my talents as a destroyer. Resisting the bloodthirst has never brought me any purpose. Heaven holds no welcome for me, and so perhaps, I hope, I can find some happiness in bringing those it does home at long last.

The problem, and there is always a problem, is that on probation I am not allowed to handle firearms. I could do one of two things about this: I could tell the recruiting officer that I'm on probation, or wait it out. Though recruiting officers have immense power in matters of this type and could likely get me taken off of probation, I have been in a status able to be removed from probation for over two months now. My officer has simply dropped the ball on my case.

I'm supposed to find out today if I am to be released or not. I'm confident that she'll simply push me aside yet again, having forgotten to contact the judge and telling me that he didn't get back to her. But at this point, stripped of both pride and possession, I have nothing else to hope for.

Someone asked me if I still pray. Yes, I told him. Yes, I pray every morning when I wake up, and beg of God that I not be forced to wake up again.

The easy way out, rarely is. It takes strength I don't have to open my eyes, to move my feet, to realize that I'm not dead, not yet, and that I still have the chance to do great deeds. If I fail...when I fail...at least I'll be able to say that I took the opportunities given to me.

If my worlds are to be destroyed, then I shall be the one to destroy them.

Alone.