Noah

“You know it’s time for you to get back outside again? The longer you sit inside, the more you’ll be in your head. Take a walk and get some air. You need it.”  

“Go out and find yourself some friends! It’ll help you man. You need to find somebody to talk to.”  

“You can’t just sit here like this anymore. I can’t stand to see you waste away. It’s time you pick yourself up and get out there.”  

All of these words of encouragement from loved ones and friends though I still had no idea what to do with them. It had been years since I last saw my therapist. She had told me that we couldn’t continue our sessions since she was leaving to go on to greener pastures.  

I remember reading my journal to her and telling her about all about my reoccurring spill of thoughts. I had eventually told her that I was ready to take my life on our last session. She had been prepared to tell my mother after she swore to keep everything private between us.  

“I’m sorry. If you are considering acting on suicidal thoughts, it is required of me to tell your care provider. I have kept everything else confidential, but I must do this for your own safety.”  

“Never mind, never mind, never mind! I told you I write stories to get out of my head. It was all made up. I was telling you about my character and the issues he deals with.”  

“I’m not so convinced anymore that this character is just a work of fiction. That character is you.”  

It’s safe to say I never went to therapy again even when she gave me names of others certified to help me cope with the chemical imbalance I had been diagnosed with. So, I spent a lot of my days completely idle away from the world. I like to think that the moments I was in bed sleeping away the day or soaking my body under the cold water in my shower were still. Quite a few times I’ve attempted to get creative, though, in the past trying to find tasks to quiet those thoughts while at home.  

The hobbies I’ve tried go on like a grocery list.  

Reading.  

Learning a new language.  

Playing an instrument.  

Yoga.  

Painting.  

Baking.  

Gardening.  

And so, it goes on.  

And on.  

And on...  

I did them obsessively and somehow none of them worked. That’s when I continued on to the next thing. I applied for jobs because every teen my age has a job, right? I picked up work as a line cook at a family diner in town. I fell in love with the most beautiful girl there. She worked in dish and always wore her pretty long brown hair in a ponytail and a black apron she tied around herself in a perfect bow.  We would meet behind the restaurant after long evening shifts where we would sling garbage out and talk about one of our managers only two years older than us who wreaked of cigarette smoke and always came in late to his own shift.  

After three months of working there, we became practically the best of friends though everyone in the kitchen knew I was ready to sweep her up. A lot of the other guys I made friends with would make fun of me for the time I almost leaned over the fryers while getting a closer look at her talking with her fellow coworkers or another time she looked at me across the kitchen and I somehow charcoaled an entire order of burgers over an open grill.  

I knew two other things about the manager. He liked her too and that he was dangerous. He eyed me for the longest time, especially when I was leaving. However, I had never known while I was too busy listening and talking to her like usual at the dumpsters. The last night I had ever had at the job, he confronted me while I walked to my car.  

His eyes grew dark as he told me at least a dozen different ways in which he would effortlessly break my bones if I didn’t quit my job. I was vulnerable and far too weak physically to stand a chance against him, but I was brave with my words. I had told him my first thought about him and that I would show up tomorrow at work like I always did. He stepped back for only a moment before I took two blows to the stomach and nose. A classic move all the big bad bullies did in movies when they jumped fragile boys younger than them that never learned how to fight from their deadbeat fathers.  

What he didn’t know was that I lost a job that had helped me feel like I had a place in the world. I was like others my age who worked to earn their share. I was also helping my mother who could not raise me because my father was that deadbeat man who never raised me how to fight. Lastly, he never even knew that I finally had a distraction because I was maybe even more afraid of the things I wanted to do to myself than I was him.  

Again, I was young, and I was a boy full of rage from all those boys older than me like him who taught me violence. They taught me well enough that I wanted to become just like them even though they were hounding me. That grocery of hobbies that I thought would bring me peace turned into a list of things that I thought would actually help me grow to be rough around the edges. 

I took boxing and became stronger like them.  

I smoked cigarettes like them and like my manager two years older than me at my first restaurant job. 

I sneaked girls into my car and indulged in my lusts like them.  

I cut my hair shorter and slicked it back like them.  

I even fought other boys who had been fragile after me.  

And so, it goes on.  

And on.  

And on...  

Soon enough, I was a monster. A big one after I came out of boxing. One with yellow, gnashing teeth after a few years of smoking. One who girls hated to like when they knew I had only one thing in mind anymore when we hung out. One who had a buzzcut because he couldn’t stand his hair anymore so much that he shaved it all off. One who wanted to watch boys I towered cower in fear because deep down inside they were me all over again.. And I despised that.  

The problem is that I didn’t stop doing those things and the fact that I even started in the first place. I was fueled with anger, and I wanted to watch the world burn even with me in it. Eventually, I grew exhausted, and the monster withered away.  

At 21 years old, I finally stopped waiting for another grocery list of things to pull me away from myself. I fell into a depression that swallowed me whole and it turns out that I am sitting at my kitchen window everyday like it’s a routine. I’m waiting for the day I won’t be so tired to go outside or to merely complete the tasks I should have been doing inside. Besides, what do you do when you are out of solutions that will force you to stay alive?  

I sat for a moment with my cigarette in my hand. There was a mug beside me that waited for steaming coffee to be brewed. There was a windowsill to be dusted. There was a dining table that needed to be wiped.  

Too many tasks... 

So, I sat some more in sedentary and in silence. It was the first time in my life where I had chosen to just sit with myself and all of my thoughts. In fact, it was the first time I had an epiphany. When was the last time I had written? It had surely been five years ago after I quit therapy and just before the grocery lists and even before I had realized if I knew myself, at all.  

I dragged myself out of the chair and went upstairs. My notebook was in my bedside drawer from where I last left it. I flipped through all the pages, remembering every single one I had read to my therapist about the character I had made up.  I spent hours reading through the pages.  

I recollected that his name had been Noah. His favorite thing was nature. He was a sheltered boy with no father and a single mother. He daydreamed about looking over billowing cliffs at clementine-colored sunrises when he would get older. He imagined getting a job at a restaurant because it was his dream to own his own diner. Then, he desired to fall in love with a girl and to have good friends. The story ends differently though.  

He still had all those things and more. He fought off those who hurt him growing up. He then cleaned himself up and became who he wanted to be. 

Himself.  

He had no anger because he learned peace from within. He didn’t worry about becoming physically stronger than his enemies because he cared for his mental well-being. He didn’t pick up hobbies and set them down because he needed a distraction. He did them simply because he enjoyed life for all that it offers even if the things he did weren’t for him. I even figured out that Noah had depression, but that the demons that came with it did not stop him.  

There was one last page in the notebook as I turned to it. It was entirely blank. The page beside it talked about Noah’s first sunrise. He was older, in his 20’s. He was so full of happiness and life to just be with himself and to do something he knew he had wanted to all his life.  

The page ends.  

I had scratched out all the parts throughout the story I would tell my therapist about where his story would abruptly end because of the fact that he ended his life. It made sense to me why I did it because it didn’t line up with the story. 

My therapist had been right all along... He was me, only in a different body with another name and an entirely different life than mine had been right now. He was also written differently, and the end was still promised.  

I set the notebook down on the bedside drawer. It was dark outside now and the full moon shined through the window of my bedroom. I envisioned its light wrapping around me like a tight hug. I began to feel tired, so I laid myself to rest for the night.  

- 

The next morning, I woke up and got out of bed. It was before dawn. I quickly pulled on a t-shirt, jeans, and a sturdy pair of boots. Then, I cooked a little breakfast. I pulled my backpack out of the closet that I used to bring to school when I was younger. It still had all the papers, pencils, and binders from the last time it was ever used. I dumped them out and raided the house for water, a nice blanket I would sit on, and a few other supplies I thought I might need since I had never done this before.  

I last grabbed my notebook. Noah had never talked about the scene of seeing the sunrise. He was just happy to have seen it. I decided that I would go on the hike, and I would show him what the sunrise was like on pages.  

After, I will go down to the store and I will get another notebook for him. I will continue the story because I am Noah. But I will change the name to my own.