Apple

Chapter 17

Psyche

.  .  .

For me, it was never easy being a kid. To put it like that: it was eighteen years of trying to fit into the crowd and proving to my father that I'm something, it was only at the start of college that I realized that I did it all wrong.

I am something, just not to him, that is. I have done my fair share of bad things, to be honest.

But now, as I looked in the mirror in front of me, all the bad memories from the previous years came rushing back to me. A surge of sadness filled me waist deep. I was fine.

I was all fine, chill and collected until the moment I entered this arena today or at least I tried to convince myself that I'm fine, the challenge was called psyche. And I could describe it in the narrowest of words....simply mirrors.

Mirrors, a thousand of mirrors that I don't even know where I stand. In every direction there is a mirror, whether left or right, even the ceiling had some too. There were approximately a thousand Jonah Raymonds in this room and they all stared at me.

Suddenly, I didn't feel as collected, calm and chill as I used to. No, I felt sad.....I felt depressed; like I was in some Depeche Mood music video.

My insecurities hindered me; they rendered me speechless that all I could do is stare at my poor excuse of existence while he stared back at me. Taunting me with simply looking at me, but I didn't know where else to look, it was like I was drawn to my face like a moth to a flame.

And my father's speech yesterday was just gasoline to my fire. My psyche was on fire, maybe that's why he named the challenge like that, the melancholy in the air was thick.

The guy staring at me back was definitely not me, no. I am not that man with his middle age crisis issues, I'm not married to this Linda woman and I most definitely don't look like that. But the fellow behind the disguise was even worse. He was sick.

At least Jonah had a job, a wife and a life worth living.

All my life decisions have been nothing but bad. Law school, jeopardizing and ruining my future just to prove something to my father....I even started contemplating Maple, and that maybe to me, she was just something to fill the void. Because she felt what I felt, that my feeling for her blossomed only from mutual hatred to the same person. I mean, did I truly love her? Or do I only love the fact that I'm not lonely anymore, like I said, to fill a void. I felt something wet touch my cheek, as I raised my hand to touch it, I realized that it was my own tears, I was even trembling.

Why am I crying?

I didn't want to feel that way, that I'm a loser; I'm a jobless poor excuse of a human being in a fake identity, doing what? Spying on my father.

The single tear now turned into a river of teardrops escaping my eyes. I wept like a baby fresh out of labor, I wept like a toddler with a deep scar on his knee, as a kid on his first day of school, as a teenage boy on his first breakup and loosing his friends. I wept as someone who lost a person dear to them, and most importantly I wept as a man with pressure due to life.

If I could count every time I cried in it we would be standing here until tomorrow. But I recalled a few amongst the years. Years of pain....lack of the father figure when growing up sure had its effect on me. But he wasn't the only problem. He was affecting me, but I was affecting myself even more than he could ever.

Unlike all the other Male population, I never took it as a sign of weakness that degraded my masculinity. Sure I did it in my room alone as I stared at the ceiling in the dark gloomy room, but that's only because I know how other people think. Especially people like my father.