A Gift

“Yea sure fine we can escape fate” the words leave my breath in a hot labored way. I am so sick of having this conversation with my wife who read the prompt on some writing website. I am not a writer and so for the life of me I just can’t bring myself to grapple with these ideas she brings to my attention at least weekly.

“But honey you don’t seem to be too convinced” she coos at me. I just don’t understand how she can see how worked up I am and still poke and prod me for a different answer than the one I just gave her. I mostly just answer what I think will get her to give me a few moments of peace and quiet, but she has decided for the both of us that today is not that kind of day.

“Yes, dear I agree with you we can escape fate. my life is in my own hands as we fly through the galaxies on a spinning rock” this comes out more harshly than I would have liked. She looks taken aback and I sigh as I try to calm myself down. “I’m sorry, I had a long day at work, and I am just tired.” She seems to appreciate the honesty and puts her small hand on my shoulder as I drive the last couple of minutes home.

I ponder to myself what I would change if I truly did play a hand in my own fate. As aggravating as my wife can be I doubt I would ever opt out of meeting her and having the life we built together. Maybe I would change my career path, I decided a little too late into my career as a counselor that I really hate talking to people. It takes a lot of my capacity to just be around others and makes me snappy with my wife. I hate that I chose this field and yet I doubt anyone would ever know. I excel at what I do, and I have a wait list miles long of those referred to me by word of mouth. “He’s great!” they say, “he really helped me figure it all out”.

The truth is that I hate all of them. I can put on a happy face and appear to be enthused in what they have to say but the reality is that I got into the wrong career and I have a very expensive mortgage to pay. I am trapped in a cage built off of my fate. Fated to marry the love of my life and not being able to see her as much as I would like due to work, fated to buy her the house of her dreams and thus locking myself away in the cycle of work and paying bills, fated to be deemed “a good listener” and having to be a house myself for all of my client’s problems. Fated to contemplate ending my life daily so I don’t have to hear another word.

If I had known, truly known how bleak and anguishing life is I would take on any challenge to have a chance at battling fate and coming out victorious. I would fight tooth and nail and not give in until the desired outcome was achieved, or I died trying.

My life no longer abides by fate, I know this to be fact. I will either lose my battle to my suicidal thoughts or I will continue to listen to people I hate day in and day out speak about their problems while I pretend to give a rat’s ass about them. I could never escape my fate and I am doomed to drive by the same fucking route home past the bridge and over the hill that I do daily with my wife in the car chatting away.

The next day I sit in my office. I am tired. The reason I am so tired is because I hate what I have to dedicate over 40 hours of my week to and well my wife’s question kept me up all night. She really did it with that question and now I am pissed. Escape fate, like I ever had a chance at escaping the hell that is my work life.

Now I understand that if I hate it so much I should maybe leave. I have tried. Ultimately a degree in counseling really only allows you to do just that. I have tried to break into marketing, advertising and teaching but Ill admit that it has not paid the bills as well as listening to the endless drone of crying clients. I would walk away and make less, much less but this damn economy has me by the balls. If I were to take even a small pay cut we could lose the house, end up living with our parents again and that will for sure be the nail in my coffin.

I turn the lights off in my office and push my couch across the room so that anyone who walk by can’t see me through the small window. I lie down with my hands over my face the warmth soothing my tired eyes until I hear the knocking of a client at my office door. You’d think that with the lights off they could contrive that no one is in today and yet here they are knocking over and over and over again. With every knock some of my remaining sanity is shaken loose. I want to stand up and scream at them to leave to not be so stupid as to think that someone would be in a locked and dark office but that would mean seeing them, their famished, needy faces that yearn for my approval. My whole-body quivers at the thought of making eye contact with the hungry even one more time. Finally, just when I was about to give up thinking that they would never leave, the quiet finds me yet again.

9 more times throughout the day this happens. Like always no one cancels, everyone shows, and they all are desperate to hold my audience as it is my fate.

I joke to myself that the last client almost found their fate when they knocked for 15 minutes straight, straining to peer through the window to catch even a glimpse of me. At this point I had sunken my body to the floor so I doubt they did, and if they did its even harsher that they would still try to grab my attention for their session as opposed to seeing if I was ok. I thought maybe my fate is to end their life, they hate it anyways for reasons that seems miniscule to me.

“Oh, I hate that my husband has a female secretary, I am sure they screw the whole workday away and laugh at me during” I can hear the last sentences of our last session playing over and over in my head. I hate that woman; she is a stay-at-home wife. No, not a home maker and not a stay-at-home mom she is a stay-at-home wife. Her fate allows her to stay home all day and spend her time as she pleases. She hears no one else’s complaints and the hardest part of her life is making up stories about her husband. She fears someone will steal him in the same way she stole him from his previous wife by screwing him the whole workday. 

No, fuck this. I stand and run out of my office. I see her almost at the exit.

“Oh my god, I am so glad you are here! I have so much to catch up on! We can go 15 min over to make up for the late start, right?” She states in the most pretentious voice I have ever heard. “So my husband took me out for dinner for our anniversary and he didn’t even make a reservation at the right….. why are you breathing so heavy?” She looks scared now.

I launch myself at her and grab her by the neck. My thumbs are pushing into the indents that line her neck and I can feel them pushing even deeper past muscle and vein.

I start screaming as tears and sweat pour down my face “You have all I have ever wanted, I hate having to work, I hate having to listen to you drone on and on about how bad your life is! You pay me for my pity, you drain my soul and all the enjoyment I have left in this life!”

Spit flies out of my mouth and lands on her eyes and in her mouth. Her eyes are bulging out of her face and blood shot. Her mouth is agape, and she is trying to tell me something.

“I don’t give a shit what you have to say, and I am glad that I have finally gotten you to shut the fuck up” I pant out. This is the best I have felt in years.

Finally, her twitching subsides, and she is lifeless in my hands. It takes several long minutes for me to let go. I don’t want to let go of this happiness, and I want to ride this high for as long as it will allow.

Fate spoke loudly today, louder than it ever has in my life. Fate made it so I ended the life of my most hated client, it made it, so I didn’t have to take my normal commute home with my wife every day, it made it so I didn’t have to see the home that imprisoned me to my work ever again. Fate changed my life that day. In prison I don’t have to listen to anyone complain to me, I get to stay inside my maximum-security cell and enjoy my time. I get to read, I get to watch TV and I got to write my story. The story of the question that brought me home that gave me the fate I most needed to not end my life.