Love for Life (A Chapter from Endurance)
Samuel Marcotte
“Hey, you gotta listen to me, man…please,” he stammered. He paced around. I knew he wanted to keep arguing with me, he was the kind of person who liked to win arguments in a barrage.
“Can I at least tell you this story I have?”
He made a wide gesture, demonstrating to me that the floor was mine. He went back to pacing.
“I almost died last week….on my way to fencing, on the night you were sick that snow day. I fucking hate driving in the snow, like the night Mrs. Connors sent us out from the party. And I almost killed us then too. But this time was different, it was like…let me try to think of how to say this right… it's kinda like…when the universe is trying to tell you something. You know?”
He nodded, motioning me to continue, I was impressed with his patience.
“I told you about my grandfather, my real one. He died driving his new car during a snowstorm. And that scares the hell out of me, seeing how it hurt my mom so much, and how it still affects her and shit. When I passed the Lee circle I almost did a head-on with another car. With a blue Camaro, with a double white stripe down the center, and I found out it was the same fucking car that my grandfather died in; which he died on a snowstorm, to some asshole kid on the wrong side of the road like me. And you know, what freaks me out the most is that I didn’t even care that I could have died. I didn’t even realize that I was staring down those headlights until a plow truck that I was passing honked at me. After I squeaked through the Camaro and the plow truck I felt an overwhelming urge to both laugh and cry, and I couldn’t really choose either so I sat in the Home Depot parking lot until practice was over. Then, I drove slowly back home, not because I was scared I was going to die…you know…it got me thinking. All I could think about was my mother and sister, and how sad they would be. You too, if you were wondering. All I thought about was my funeral, but in like a third-person point of view. Because the most disturbing part of this was, I didn’t care at all that I almost died; in fact, I almost enjoyed the thought.” I looked into his eyes instead of the driveway. “I haven’t told anyone this.”
“Thank you for telling me,” he said. I could tell that I got to him.
I climbed up onto the bed of his father’s truck and started punching the air around me in a frantic, boxing way.
“You gotta fight off the demons that try to crawl up and eat you.” I looked at him. “If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for the people that will miss you if you kill yourself, that’s my code, that’s how I stay alive.”
He couldn’t stand not talking for so long, keeping all of the clamoring thoughts in his head; he burst out, “But that’s the whole problem, don’t you see?” He patted his right hand into his cupped left like he was a parent. He started talking like he was a narrator, or a protagonist in the second act break. “I don’t have the luxury of having someone who will miss me. I don’t have anyone…and I’m so tired, and angry, and disgusted with what I am. I’m just so tired, and I just want to be done with it. I just want rest.”
I took a few seconds to think, and said, “You have me…and if the code is so bad, then nothing is; if you're comparing it to the alternative. You’re not the only one who has darkness in them.”
We both stood in silence. The stars faintly illuminated his driveway, and I continued, “When you die; the earth still spins, everything stays the same as you left it, and your loved ones miss you. There is so much more to just dying when you kill yourself. The pain doesn’t stop, it moves, like a disease, to the people who have to stay and live with it. We’re like guardians in a fucked up way I guess. We fight the darkness, so others don’t have to. And it hurts…it hurts so fucking bad, but you gotta fight, fight like a motherfucker, then you ask for help, then you ask for meds, you do whatever it takes. Something isn’t beautiful and worthwhile because it’s easy, but because it took every fiber of your being to accomplish. I’m not saying it’s fair, I’m saying how it is. That’s why I follow my code… I think you need to make one of your own.”
He was silent, pondering. He chuckled a little. I swear he pretends that every action he does is being filmed for a movie.
Smugly, but mostly defeated, he said, “You win.”
“What the fuck do you mean ‘I win?’”
He responded, “You’re getting a lot better at debating.”