The Path
Portions of the following were written listening to Lovely Day by Bill Withers
He ran towards the clearing, crashing through the underbrush as footfalls boomed behind him. Here he would find the little girl. Tied up, but safe.
In his daze, Damon tripped over a tree root, hidden underneath the quickly-drying leaves. It was Fall and the little girl was the only remaining survivor who knew where the food stores were located. Her family, along with many other members of the clan, had all been killed several winters ago, but, luckily, her father, a man who had demonstrated natural leadership abilities and had quickly gained the approval of the clan, showed her the location of the food stores before he was killed. Finding these reserves would be the only way the remaining clan members would survive what was expected to be a brutal winter.
Damon had lost precious seconds. As he tried to loose his foot out from under the root, he noticed a shaft of light to his right, not too far from him. In the middle, a girl squirmed with her hands tied behind her back and her feet tied to one another. At the same time, he saw one of his pursuers to his left, about the same distance that he was to the girl. His pursuer seemed to have noticed him trying to disentangle himself, so, in a split-second decision, Damon untied and abandoned his shoe, got up and started running towards the girl once more. His pursuant, noticing his new trajectory, decided to run towards the clearing as well, probably thinking that he had a better chance at capturing the girl than he did Damon…
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.
The door to his room slowly opened. “Hey, Dad, I know it’s late, but I wanted to let you know that my Winter concert is next Thursday. It’s at 8p, so maybe you can go after work?”
“Sure honey, I’ll try to make it. But next time, try to tell me earlier in the day. You know I like to write in the evenings.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This job is mediocre. My dad thinks I’m a loser. I wasted my years in college playing video games. I can’t even say I went out too much… that would mean I had friends.
“Damien!”
And just like that, Damien flipped the switch, coming out of his head and into the outer world, painting a feigned smile on his lips as he did so.
“Hey, Susie. Came all the way down to the third floor to speak to me?”
“Your daughter is here to see you.”
I knew she couldn’t have come all the way just to speak to me. Figures.
Damien walked down the three flights of stairs to meet his daughter. He always did this when he had visitors. He thought it would make it seem like he was on important business immediately beforehand, preventing him from coming down right away. But what kind of guy makes his daughter wait?
“Hey sweetie, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you at school?”
“You didn’t take me, remember? I had all my stuff packed and had even finished breakfast by the time you came down to the kitchen, but you just walked past me. Didn’t even say ‘bye’ or look at me. I figured you were just in your head again, so I took the walk here.”
“What do you mean? I clearly remember leaving you at school today.”
“And I clearly remember walking here these past 10 minutes because you didn’t.”
Damien was about to reproach his daughter for her tone of voice, but he received a call from his mom, which could only mean one thing: his dad was experiencing complications at the hospital.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I have to take this.” And so he left his daughter again, preoccupied with the meaning of this call.
“Your dad underwent a series of seizures this morning as the nurse was feeding him his breakfast. It seems he started choking, but luckily the nurse was able to provide CPR in time. He’s okay, but, Damien, I’m worried about him and you’re never here. You always make some sort of excuse. If it’s not about work, then it’s about your daughter. Even your stories seem to take more priority. Does your dad have to die to get your attention?”
“No, mom. It’s not that. I want to visit him, but…
My dad hates me. He hates her, too. I don’t know why she can’t see that. We’ll never be good enough for him. Not after he got that job at LORE.
“But what? I can’t think of a good enough reason for you to never be here. He’s going to die one day and you’ll regret that you never came to see him. And then you’ll want to blame it on everybody else, but don’t say I didn’t tell you so.”
“Okay mom, thanks for the call, but I have to take my daughter to school now. She walked all the way here looking for me.”
“See? It’s always something.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The next day, Damien got up early to catch up on some writing. He found it helped him deal with his day-to-day. An escape from reality, if you will.
A snake slithered silently through the thicket of dried bushes, meandering as rivers meander in their quest to reunite with the Ocean, two marrying into one. The snake’s aim: to lay out in the sun.
Just some meters away, the sun shone more strongly than ever. The savannah’s grasses had dried faster than usual and several fires had burst out unexpectedly in the past weeks. The snake, however, found itself where the sun’s rays were obstructed, the heat they carried becoming pacified as it traveled through the thicket of bushes.
The cold slowly crept towards the snake, its tendrils threatening to choke it into lifelessness. Normally, the cold travelled at too slow a pace to catch up to a moving animal, but, having eaten days before, the snake had been rendered to a state of immobility, giving the cold a chance to close in. It would need to equilibrate its temperature if it was to survive.
From the base of the stairs, Gloria yelled, “Hey dad! I got up early and made us breakfast. Pancakes and eggs.”
Damien looked at the clock and saw that it was already 8:52a. He had just enough time to drive to work, so he quickly grabbed his stuff and made his way down to the kitchen.
“I already finished eating because you were taking a little longer than usual and I didn’t want to be late for school. I think these are the fluffiest pancakes I’ve ever made!”
But in the time that it took for her to say those two sentences, he was already down the stairs, out the door and getting into his car.
“I guess that means I’ll get 10 extra minutes of exercise today.”
And so Gloria walked the 10 minutes to her dad’s job, each step making the grip around her heart and lungs a little tighter. Pretty soon, tears were streaming down her face, yet it seemed no one noticed as she walked down the street. To them, she was probably just an irresponsible little girl who was skipping school. Either that or they were too busy thinking about their lives and what other people were thinking about them. But to Gloria, it felt like the world was ending. She had this mounting feeling, each time her dad did this to her, that no one would ever pay her any mind, that she would just be the side character in life.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It was a Thursday night years earlier and Damien had just closed a big deal. His biggest that year. So he decided to celebrate by going out with a few of his friends. At around 12:15a they were only a couple drinks in, having arrived there two hours earlier. One more and they’d call an Uber home.
But then he saw his dad. With another woman. And, instantly, everything his dad stood for shattered. The family ideals, the work ethic, the honest character: they meant nothing. It was all a lie. A lie he believed. And if he believed this, then what else had he fallen for in his life? And so, in the seconds it took him to register what was happening, his self-assuredness took a nose-dive and, suddenly, life seemed dull.
He quickly finished his drink and walked all the way home. Didn’t even tell his friends what happened. Them? They just stared as the distance, both physical and emotional, grew between them.
A small part of Damien wanted them to stop him. Ask him what was wrong. But the two were never shown how to comfort anyone, were never comforted themselves, and, as a result, they froze up whenever anyone showed any sort of emotion in front of them.
Thoughts started spinning in Damien’s head. He assumed his coworkers had seen his dad, too. Recognized him and realized that the woman he was with wasn’t his wife, Damien’s mom. To Damien, it seemed like their regard of him had shattered at the same time his own worldview and confidence had shattered.
There’s no way I can go back to work tomorrow. Everyone will be talking about how my dad was seen with another woman.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The next day, at 8:15a, when her dad still hadn’t come down, Gloria decided to see what was up.
Everyone’s going to be talking about it at work today. My dad, the Vice-President of LORE, with another woman. And what will they think of me? If my dad, with his status and legacy, a man who’s supposed to have impeccable tact, did this, then what will they think me capable of?
“Dad?”
And my mom. They’ve been together for 37 years now — how could she not know him well enough to prevent this? She should have tried harder. Shouldn’t have let herself go after having my sister. I almost can’t blame him.
“Hey, Dad?”
I can’t go back to work today. I won’t. I’ll just start looking for a new job. Should be easy enough, with my credentials, right?
“Dad!”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
And that’s how life continued for the next few years. Damien didn’t go back to work. Instead, he found a job that was obviously below his capabilities and immersed himself more and more in his writing. But at least his new job matched his lowered sense of self-worth.
Gloria continued to make breakfast every day, this being the only thing she had clung onto in the hopes that one day her dad would notice. But it seemed her efforts would always go unnoticed, no matter how extravagant she made the breakfasts. Poached eggs, breakfast burritos, fresh-baked muffins, quiche. Even went the healthy way, thinking maybe her dad didn’t want to feel weighed down by a heavy breakfast. Made him parfaits with all kinds of berries, oatmeal, fruit salad. Nothing seemed to work, though, and slowly, the lack of attention began to manifest itself as outbursts of anger. If he wouldn’t notice her for the good, then maybe she could still get him to acknowledge her existence by being rebellious and short-tempered.
Her grades began to drop, her teachers began to worry. But what can you expect? Her dad would walk past her every day now instead of taking her to school. There were only so many excuses she could make for him and soon she stopped going to school altogether. Would spend her days out on the stoop, watching the world go by, feeling herself apart from it. Alienated from a normal adolescence.
She had stopped trying to make friends at school because she figured they would all dismiss her, like her dad. Became more and more recluse. And yet her dad didn’t notice. She thought he was even actively avoiding her, feeling that she was too much to handle and growing worse every day.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Within years, things had deteriorated completely. The only communication between Gloria and her dad was in the form of shouting, as the two no longer held any common ground and made no effort to find any. Gloria couldn’t even manage to get to the stoop anymore, and instead chose to stay in her room: curtained dark with dark decorations. She, a denizen of the shadows, wouldn’t come out for days, but she knew her dad’s birthday was coming up soon. March 21st. So, even though she had stopped cooking breakfast for him months ago, she decided she would give it one more shot.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
She was nervous. Probably because she knew that this would be the last time daughter and father tried to do a decent thing for one another. But still, she had gotten up an hour earlier than usual to prepare breakfast.
She had already served the eggs and placed them on the table. The waffles were in the toaster, seconds away from being perfectly golden brown, their sweet aroma wafting through the air. She had timed it so that everything would come together as her dad walked down the stairs and into the kitchen. It wasn’t fancy, but still better than nothing, which is what her dad usually had for breakfast. Hearing him shut his bedroom door, she started pouring him a glass of orange juice, but her hands were shaky and, just before he walked into the kitchen, she spilled the orange juice on the floor, having missed the mouth of the cup as she poured.
In more of a hurry than usual, Damien stepped on the spill and fell to the floor. She could see his face go red and was anticipating a bout of yelling, but just as he was about to barrage her, he heard the toaster’s ping and got a whiff of the waffles. It seemed that snapped enough presence into him for him to then also notice that the table was set and that Gloria was frantically cleaning up the mess, without any need for callous instruction from him.
And maybe it was the small amount of presence that was knocked into him by the fall or how fearfully and shakily Gloria was cleaning up the spill or something else entirely, but in that moment, Damien started to cry. Cry for all the time he had lost at his miserable jobs, for the bonding with his daughter that he had eschewed because them, for the crushing weight of expectation to become President of LORE he felt ever since he was a teenager. He realized, then, that Gloria had made countless of these breakfasts for him, but he had been too busy, too shut-down to ever notice. He realized that the lack of attention that plagued him as a kid growing up had putrefied the relationship he had with his daughter, or at least the one he should have had by now.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Gloria didn’t know whether she should finish cleaning the mess she had made and began regretting that she ever got out of bed that day. Maybe it was better that her dad didn’t notice her. At least then she wouldn’t be able to hurt him, disappoint him. She had started to slink away when she noticed her dad get up and pour two glasses of orange juice. She stopped, curious.
Setting both cups down on the table, Damien walked over to the toaster and grabbed the waffles that had just finished cooking.
So instead of retreating to her room, Gloria said “Happy Birthday.”
“What do you mean? Whose birthday?”
“Yours, Dad. It’s March 21st.”
“Oh, I didn’t even know. I thought you had just decided to make breakfast like you used to.”
“You mean, you had noticed?”
“Of course, honey. I was just always in too much of a hurry to appreciate it. In a hurry to get nowhere. Because that job is nowhere near as important as you are to me and I’m so sorry if I’ve made you think otherwise.”
And just like that, the cycle was broken, the karmic chains unlocked.
His heart, which he had bandaged together with a paste of fear and insecurity, finished breaking. But it wasn’t really his heart that broke, it was the armor he had built around it. And as it fell away, the cracks let in light and possibility rather than closing in darkness and apathy.
He had met his daughter half-way. Acknowledged her and, in so doing, acknowledged his own femininity. Balanced the toxic masculinity which had caused him to stay stuck in a cycle of chasing his dad’s approval, while also being too afraid to make the great strides it would take to win him over. Broken the cycle of running to a job that gave him no satisfaction, while also running away from his responsibilities as a father, which would give him immense satisfaction.
It was this overbearing sense of false masculinity that had commanded him to blame his mom for his dad’s cheating. This overbearing sense of masculinity that had prevented him from confronting any rumors there may have been at his job the next day and instead made him apply and work at a job for which he was undeniably overqualified — for years — because he was looking for approval from everyone else instead of finding it within.
But he had to fall before he could stop running. Had to let the pieces break before he could see through the walls he had built around himself.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
As his walls came crumbling down, he also saw that his own daughter had managed to build a castle and mote around herself. One he had unknowingly given her the motivation and resources to build.
In fact, after finishing his breakfast, while on his drive to work, he saw that most everyone had built their own version of a fortress around themselves, protecting them from insult and injury. He also noticed that these walls, instead of fortifying those who built them, crippled them. Like someone who nurtures a weak immune system through their dependence of medicine.
It was these same walls that kept them from seeing that the only way to break the cycle, the only way to escape the prison they had built for themselves, was to accept everything that they were trying to evade by building those very walls. Because what they were trying to avoid was the unavoidable. It was the path they’re meant to walk.
The only way out is…
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK
“Hey, Dad! Remember the concert is today. I hope you can make it.”