Once upon a time there was a cause. There was a moment. I had passion. The world presented all her glory to me ready for me to dissect at will. Someone needed my help. Someone use to scream my name. Someone demanded I break the shackles. And someone hoped I would confide in them. Youth was the insatiable alcohol streaming down those who dared to drink, and I was heavily intoxicated. I could turn left. I could turn right. I didn’t have to walk straight, because you see, there was no straight. There was only momentum. As long as I burnt the fuel of momentum, every way was straight. Those were the days when my name was more than just a name. It was a statement of intent. It was a license to matter. It was a world full of sleeping guards and I was the prisoner breaking free. The ignorance of my limitation was balanced by the aggression of my desire. I loved. I truly, loved. I was a liberator of thoughts. I knew that all around me, people were slaves to their own conscience and that they would find vicarious satisfaction through the eyes of my world. While people dreamt, I was awake, and while people were awake, I was alive. There was nothing that I couldn’t do, even when I failed in doing it. The failures of my attempts only screamed out just how successful I was. I was a man that they envied. How could they not? The radiation of my glow would blind even the harshest critic. Have you ever been attacked by a critic? Have you ever been so lucky in your life and your actions to have mattered enough to be judged? I was all of this. Do you understand?
There was no drug that could harm me. There was no story that could intimidate me. I screamed ‘liar!’ to the artist after he finished his painting. I demanded answers from the politician who walked too straight. I lounged in the arms of the most glorious women while the trumpeter belted out piercing tunes in a cocktail of enigmatic jazz. I screamed ‘revolution!’ in the face of adversity at the turn of a new world order. I held her hand across the battle fields of discrimination and wouldn’t let go until they accepted it. I romanticized spending drunken evenings with Oscar Wilde and challenging him to a contest of madness. I painted the canvas boards with the sweat of my memories of her. I wrote poetry about the limitation of words. I did all of this and more. I did all of this my son. And then you arrived.
Upon first glimpse of you, I realized that I had in fact and despite everything, never truly lived before. I was, on discovery of your heartbeat, always just a man in a desert staring into a mirage through the eyes of a walking dead man. What was I doing all those years? How could I do so much and yet care so little? I was running for so long I had actually forgotten what I was running from or running to. You changed that my son. Instantly, I had an origin and a destination. It was only after I first held you that I realized that the critics were right about me after all. In fact, they were always right. I was screaming to the world but not living in it. This is what you gave me my son. The day we brought you into this world was also the day you brought me into it. And I started to live. But my beautiful son, my beautiful son, what have you done?
I am an old man now my son. I am old and insignificant. My name is for identification only. My thoughts are for survival only and my words are for communication only. Do you know how hard it is to get old without a cause? While I may have become old without a cause, I had not gotten old without satisfaction. I had witnessed what many call faith right in front of my own eyes. The very first time you said my name, was the day I knew that god was not the most powerful force in the world. Your smile turned me into a disbeliever. Surely, if god existed, it was through the eyes of you, my beautiful son. I didn’t need faith. I had you. But my beautiful son, my beautiful son, what have you done?
You grew up into a strong and curious boy. You were always punished for talking too much in class. You were always keeping me waiting while you were lost in a sea of friends. You broke everything I bought you. You never looked away. You always looked at me. You looked straight into my heart. There was nothing you could do that would taint my addiction of love for you. I would freeze up at the thought of you in pain. I would have to sit down and hold my stomach at the thought of you hurt somewhere on your own. I would laugh as much you would laugh. I would smile when you would sleep. I didn’t need to dream anymore because it was never as exciting as spending time with you. But my beautiful son, my beautiful son, what have you done?
As quickly as you brought meaning to my life, you went out and destroyed the foundations it was built on. Just when I was ready to start focusing on the satisfaction of my aging body, you broke into my mind and locked me away for good. Why did you do it my son? What made you do it?
They called me in the middle of the night. They told me I needed to come right away. They said there was too much blood and too many body parts to identify the corpse. They made me come and put you together like a puzzle. You didn’t have the right to do that to me. I never gave you such permission. You killed more than just those five poor people. You killed your father as well. You killed me and more importantly, you killed all the reasons of my being. You destroyed my proof of life and living it. My beautiful son, my beautiful son, what have you done?
There was so much blood. There were so many body parts. There was a severed hand. It was a child’s hand. I remember when your hand was that small. I didn’t want to look, but they made me. Do you understand when I tell you there was so much blood? Death was kind enough to take those people quickly but the stains of the residue have become permanently tattooed on all who witnessed it. I didn’t need to see your letter to know what you had done. I knew you had done it. You killed those people and that child, and you didn’t even have the guts to watch the results of your own actions. I cannot forgive you my son. I will never forgive you. How ironic, that the very person who showed the light to me also showed me the face of evil. Why did you do it? Answer your father you sick bastard, why did you do it?
I know now that the personification of heaven and hell lies within the corridors of our own mind. There is no force greater or more evil than the actions of a man who has lost his sanity. There is also no bigger verdict on a man than to be a prisoner of your own mind. You have turned me into a protagonist in my own horror film which does not end. When I am awake, I relive again and again each frame of your evil actions. When I am asleep, I have horrific dreams of killing you before the maturity of your diseased mind is reached. Can you fathom what it must take for a man to imagine killing his own son? I am a dead man now. Breathing, but completely dead. However, I am no killer. Nothing can be said of or to the people you killed and whose lives you destroyed, so we cannot disrespect them by even mentioning their names with yours. But you my son. You I have something to say to. I am glad you are dead. I am glad you are dead because you can no longer hurt anyone else. You have gone to your death a bastard child. Lay dead my son, because this is what you have done. The worst part is, I still love you. And for that, I will eternally hate you.
