Blank Issues

David approaches, in his hands, a sort of fidget, I'm not too sure, and his gaze, seems to look not at me but beyond, perhaps to something only he can see. He finally says something, his first words of the day, 'You know, I've been thinking a lot about you, believe it or not.'

I can believe it alright, though I know he thinks of me not as his brother but as his little brother. David doesn't seem to realize, or care that much anyway. I catch his eyes, and reply, 'What is there to think about, we barely see each others?'

He sits down at last, sighing loudly, stretching and putting his hands up behind his head, making such a show of being comfortable. I'm just sitting there, at the kitchen table. In front of me, piles of notebooks and a few sheets filled with words, ideas, scribbles and nonsense. He looks at me once more, as if the mere fact of looking at me was a gift, a gesture of good will. He looks up to the ceiling, a smile on his face, as I wait for him. He sure is taking his time. He always liked to make me wait, for him. For Him. What a brother he has been.

He finally lets go, 'You know, Joe, You're stuck in the past, you gotta stop being so focused on our childhood.'

There it is. It seems we both know why we're seeing each others today, after so many years apart.

The ressentiment!

I can't help but laugh, very loudly, not really at the situation but at David. I look at him and I see my brother, with whom I've spend unending years of struggles. Now that I think about it, he's probably the only person in the world to know, to understand, what it is I've been through. And I laugh that thought away, so absurd it is. He can never understand, for he was part of the problem! Just like mother, he never cared all that much, and only busied himself for himself. For power, pleasure, distraction.

Meanwhile, David is talking, some empty words I hear but don't listen. About how life happens right now, and that the past is gone, irrelevent. That I'm wasting my life away, that I should do like him, be like him.

He shows me a picture of his family. He refers to them as his little monsters, and how happy they make him. Two little girls, maybe five or six years old, and an older boy, I'd say about nine. And with them is this girl, that I've actually met before. I remember back then, so long ago, she was the girlfriend of David's best friend. How, peculiar.

I kinda him for that. He stole his best friend's girlfriend, got her pregnant, and made her a mother for his bastard children. How charming. All I see, in this picture he shows me, are the faces of future unhappy people, of future failures, just like me and my brother here.

He sees just how unimpressed I am, or so I suppose, and he drops the act. He looks at me, so serious all of a sudden, and talks about her, as he always do. 'Do you know where mother is now?'

And I sigh, roll my eyes, for how little I care about her. I listen anyway, for I can guess, without a doubt. David continues, 'She's been moving from places to places, sometimes working and other times not. She always talks about you, you know. She can't understand why you won't talk to her anymore. It's been six years now...'

Sitting there I am a statue. I look at him occasionnaly, and listen very much. It's not the first time we've had this conversation, and the same feelings overpower me every time. A sort of maddening knot in my gut, an annoyance rarely matched, and as always I stop myself from just yelling at him nonsense that only I can really understand.

I sit back in my chair as he babbles on, and think back on the years we shared, so many years ago, and I suppose I can put a word to it.

Bitter.

That's just how it was. And how I feel now. I want to tell him, how can I just forgive and forget, when that awful past made me who I am today? I'm not a good, functionning adult, and it's all because of them. Their selfishness, their carelessness for me, for life. Like, how hard is it really to be a proper mother, to be a proper brother? To care, listen and love one's family? What drove them both to be so centered on themselves, to pursue so much vice and pleasures, over love?

But David doesn't see it that way. Mother neither. To them, they simply lived their lives as they saw fit, and the present becomes the past, irrelevent and forgotten. For what is there to think about really, since it is now gone and out of one's control? How conforting is that thought, and how absurd.

As if the past never really happened, and that the best thing one can do is simply bury it, simply let it vanish, disappear, wash away the years of idiocy, the ever present worship of the self. What nonsense.

I have had a bad, terrible, inhumane childhood, but hey, I should just pretend it never happened, and focus on the present. I should forgive my family, for all the shit they've done in the past, since after all, they are family, and we must love each others. God how I hate all of them, with such passion, fueled by all these years of abuse, all these years of burying one's head in the ground, all these years of crawling in the mud.

David adds, almost pensively, 'Do you remember when we used to play video games, early in the morning?' I look at him, what a silly question. Of course I remember, since that was our one anchor amidst the constant instability of our lives. He adds, 'To start all over again, to free the princess and clear the dungeons, to explore the world, as you watched me play.'

I look at him, where is he going with this? And his eyes are muddled with tears, and he can't look at me. He keeps going, 'Do you remember when I used to scare you, with stories of ghosts in your room?'

I get up, as he continues, 'Do you remember, when we were kept awake at night, to mother's screams of pleasure, her incessant moaning, and how I distracted you with burps and whispered jokes.' I want to kick him out, for digging back up such memories. He stays there, sitting comfortably, crying. 'Do you remember, that day when all three of us were talking in the kitchen. How mother explained to us what dying was, and how hard I cried. How terrified I was. I don't want to die, I said, but you just stood there, looking at us. You didn't understand.'

I'm leaning on the wall, looking at nothing, listening to what he says. Of course I remember, though in a sort of blurry, burried way. I interrupt him, surprising myself, 'I still don't understand.' David looks at me, with a sort of horrified look on his face. I say, 'I can't understand what is there to life that is so interesting, so compelling to you, to mother, to anyone.'

He asks me, what do you mean?

I continue, almost shaking as I tell him so, 'Well, what is the point really? To live because I was born, and haven't died yet? To feast, to have sex, to drink and to bite more than I can chew? And for what? So that I can have children, that grow up to be as unhappy and troubled and fucked, just like I am?' He sits upright, his eyes open wide. Clearly he didn't expect me to be so blunt.

I tower over him, and add, 'What is the point, really, but to keep existing? I don't care about anything. I don't care about meeting people, making friends or finding love, for I know just how shallow everyone is. How empty everything is. There is no point to any of it. Even Love, Love that is at the core of any person, is corrupt, evil. Think back on mother, singing us to bed with a soft lullaby, only to go on and get fucked by yet another stranger, moaning for hours on end, as we couldn't help but hear it, unable to sleep. Think back on you, my older brother, tormenting me at all times with scary stories and pushing me away, when you wished to spend your days with your friends instead of me. Think back on how shitty everything was, and how it still is! We haven't changed, we haven't grown at all, despite all those years that passed. We're still these two brothers, stuck in this senseless world, unable even to love each others, much less be true to each others.'

'Do you remember, David, that day when you pushed me down in the cold waters of the pool, and as I got back up to breathe, confused, I heard you screaming to yourself, superior! To who were you talking to? Why are you acting that way? Why is my brother, the only person I really had my whole life, not even a real brother to me? Why is our mother insane, bipolar and unhinged? Why is my father neurotic and abusive? Why is my own stepmother so vicious, why is my little sister plagued with crisis after crisis, screaming in her bed in the dark, confused as ever, between kissing her dog on the mouth and insulting others. Why, oh why, is life that way?'

Almost out of breath I keep going, 'Tell me brother, for I wish to understand. I wish to understand how this world, its people, are all so flawed, crazy and shitty. Why can't anyone just love and be loved? Just care and be cared for? Why can't parents give a proper childhood, a proper upbringing to their children? Instead, they procreate, mindlessly live through the motions of their lives, and poof! Here comes another person, riddled with blank issues, buried insanities and no purpose in life, other than to keep the wheel rolling.'

My brother David gets up, packs up his few things, and extends his hand to me. On his face, no expression. I look at him deep down his eyes, and I see nothing. I grab his hand firmly, and finish with, 'I've decided, long ago, I'll break the wheel.'

And so he climbs up the stairs, stops halfway and gets back down, walks to the table and grabs the picture of his family. He says, finally, 'I almost forgot.'

He leaves me. I hear the door closing, very subtly, almost as if he didn't want me to notice he closed it. I sit back on my chair, alone again. As always. Not in silence, for I hear his car start outside, and roll out. Then the fridge rumbles on, so loudly. And alone again, I reflect on what I just said. I look at my piles and piles of notebooks and notes, and I can't help but think that I'm right.

I am right!

Why would I forget the past, and build for the future, if the present is and always will be shitty?