Lucky Me

Sweaty, restless and tired, these are just a few words that describe how I have been feeling for almost a month now. If I believed in god, I would have sworn on him to tell you that I have not slept a single second for the past 30 nights. Now lying inside my bathtub, I try to replicate the feeling you get when you fall, but no wonder you don’t get it, no inside a closed space, not inside a bathtub. People say that you will fall in love with life, if you live it long enough. I have lived enough for the past 30 years, my age being 29, and still haven’t fallen in love with my life. The only one year of my life that I don’t regret happening is the first year, and that too because I don’t remember it. I have a pretty good memory, but still I don’t remember my first year, because if I had, I would have disliked it too. It has been over a month now since I have again started feeling pathetic about myself, yes, I wasn’t always my charming self. I don’t really rely on you to believe me, mainly because we have just met, but I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t want this life, not a single second more with the feeling that your brain is going to burst anytime now. Well, I apologize for being rude, but I forgot to introduce myself, my name is Lucky, the most ironical name of all times, I am 30 years of age, but I guess I already told you about it. I like reading books, and well, yeah, I kill people.

You know the feeling you get when you are not feeling your all time best, you are feeling that your world will never be happy again, I have had that feeling all my life. But I guess the life I had, has that effect on people, I am not blaming anybody, not my drunk father, or my runaway mother or anyone for that matter, but if I did, yeah, I would blame each and every person I have ever met.

For as early as I remember, I don’t have a memory of my father in a sober state, not that I don’t remember it, but he was never sober after all. Every time I saw my father, he was either drinking, or drunk, or for a change getting really drunk and beating my mother or just for the sake of it, me. The only thing I can’t remember about me it who the hell named me Lucky, or what were they thinking naming me like that, I think they should give the baby sometime to decide what he want his name to be, I would choose a name exactly opposite of Lucky, but not the exact “Unlucky”, I mean how lame would that be.

Till about the age of 10, I did nothing, and by nothing I mean nothing. My father left to work in the factory early in the morning and came in late at night, most of the time, my mother would make me go to sleep before he came home, just so I won’t see him in that state. But I always had one eye open when my father came home. My father would erupt in anger for the tiniest of things, and whoever came in front would face his wrath. Sometimes my mother, or sometimes when I unfortunately woke up, according to them, the victim would be me. He would often lift me up and throw me in the corner on my bed. It would hurt, sometimes I couldn’t even get up the next morning, my mother would apply medicine on my body and the soreness would fade away, eventually. But the scars on my mother’s body never faded, even if she tried rubbing medicine on it. I wished I could have helped my mother, but whenever I did, my father would stop hitting her and hit me. I did actually try to stop him sometimes, just so that he won’t kill my mother and instead kill me. But he never actually did. One evening, I think it was summer; I came home after playing when I saw nothing but darkness in our house. We didn’t have electricity but mother would always light up candles, but that day she didn’t. I went inside to see if everything was fine, but my mother was nowhere to be seen. I searched the whole house, not that it took time, and it was after all one single room along with kitchen, but couldn’t find her anywhere. I tried finding her in the neighbor’s houses but she wasn’t there either. I sat on the porch waiting for my father to come home and find my mother. But when he did, he went inside and went to sleep. I tried waking him up but he slapped me and told me to go to sleep. I couldn’t sleep that night, I was hungry. After a few days, I was told that my mother ran off somewhere because she was fed up from my father. I wanted her to come back, father never cooked well. About a month later, we got to know that my mother hanged herself, not because she was missing my father, but she was afraid what my father would have done to me. I think I was the cause of her death, just because she was attached to me.

After a few years of bad cooking by my father, I finally learnt to cook. I wasn’t as good as my mother, but I was way better then my father. He never tried sending me to school, because he was afraid I would find to time for the house then. I didn’t want to go to school; they had the big people with sticks in their hands.

One day, I was out of cooking oil, fortunately father was at home so I told him to go fetch some oil for the dinner, he would have normally slapped me and ordered me to go do it myself, but I was now taller than my father, so I think he was a little scared that I would slap him back. I wouldn’t, but I liked to think he thought that way. He got up and went to the market, which was about 10 minutes away from our house. About 10 minutes later, I heard a loud bang, I stopped what I was doing and ran outside to see what it was, all I could see were the flames in the market, and everyone was running to save themselves. I started running too, without knowing where I would go, but I ran, I ran with all I had. Next day people told me the fuse in the oil shop short circuited, whatever it meant, which caused the fire, everyone including my father was killed in it. I like to think it’s my fault because it would have been me in his place if he hadn’t gone to the market himself.

I don’t know if this happens to everyone or it happened just to me, but instead of feeling sad that I was left alone in this world, I kind of liked it. You don’t have to get beaten, you cook whatever you like, you sleep whenever and however you can. That was the first night I remember in my life, which I slept peacefully, that and many more to come. It was a huge burden to be lifted off my shoulders that anyone no longer is going to wake me up in the middle of the night and beat the hell out of me, and go to sleep, just like that. It was fun, kind of at least. It was fun till one of my uncles landed in my house, he wanted to take control of the house, and he gave me work in a small mill located nearby as a composition. I took the deal because I thought it would be easier to live by myself then to live with someone who is carrying the same genes as my father, not that I am not, but it is my life after all. I can assume anything I want; I assumed I had no hereditary connection to my father. It made me feel a little good about myself.

A few years down the line, they said it was time for me to get married. I had by now a small house, which wasn’t a slice of heaven though, but still covered my head. I don’t understand people’s obsession with their houses, it is just a set of bricks after all. Coming back to the topic, they were forcing me to get married, I opposed, and they forced more. I finally gave in. a girl was found for me and I was married. My wife wasn’t the most beautiful women you will ever see, but she wasn’t bad. She was kind of what they will call cute. She had to eyes, a set of limbs and knew how to cook, which was enough for me. The silly thing about marriage is even if you are not excited about it, the people around you always are. People, who worked with me, men, kept on telling me what to expect on my first night. I didn’t give much thought about it. It was a night like any other night after all, the difference being that I won’t be able to sleep in my bed as comfortably as I did. After my marriage, I was really exhausted with all the meaningless ceremonies that when I entered my bedroom, I went to my bed, got undressed and went to sleep, never even looked at my wife, who was getting ready to please me, I sometimes feel bad about what I did that night, but I don’t think I could have done anything else, given the amount of energy the wedding ceremonies take.

It had been a couple of months since I got married, and we didn’t, what other people call sleeping together , even though ironically, no matter how uncomfortable it was, we always slept together, well, literally. My wife took care of me, made me food, washed my clothes, and gave me medicine when I was sick. She did all that without expecting much, or anything actually. I wished I had feelings, because if I did, I would have all of them for my wife. She was what can be called as a perfect example of housewife. One night, it was raining and we had no electricity at the house at that time, and well to be short one thing led to another and that night we did what people thought we did the first night of our marriage. It was good, kind of like eating ice cream, no matter how big a spoonful you take, you always want more. So that ‘thing’ continued every night for a week or so, at least I think it was at least a week, till the time my wife pronounced she was pregnant. She meant she was carrying my child, my offspring. Someone who was carrying my genes, my mother’s, and no matter how much I denied it, my father’s too. It was kind of a funny moment for me because normally people would be happy if their wife got pregnant, I was worried, not the normal worries about the money and all, but was worried about someone else like me walking the earth. My wife looked at me and held my hand and told me it was going to be alright. I faked a smile, something I was very good at since childhood, faking emotions and thought in my mind the possibility of my child being like me. Just thinking about it made me toes curl, still do actually.

It was about 9 months since my wife had announced she was pregnant, and we were approaching the due date. My wife had grown from a petite woman to a huge thing which looked like a mountain from behind. I liked the old version of my wife better, and was anxious to get it over with. I was certain I wanted a girl, because that would increase the chances of her turning out to be like her mother then me.

It was one fine evening, when I returned from my office, and was making dinner, since my wife wasn’t allowed to do anything, maybe because lately she ate so much doctors were worried she would all the food in the house. When I told her that she laughed and said that she was eating for two, I told her there must be more inside of her because there was no chance that two people, one of which is not even born yet, can eat so much. Coming back again, while I was cooking I heard my wife scream. I went inside the room to see her water had broken, which meant that the judgment day was finally here.

Hospital was about an hour away from our house, and I tried driving as fast as I could to reach there soon. Maybe it was night, maybe I was tired, but somehow I couldn’t keep my eyes open while I was driving. As a result accident happened. We were hit by a truck moving right towards us. One I regained consciousness in the same hospital I was taking my wife; I was told she was no more. She and my unborn boy died at the spot. I swear I didn’t expect it, but a small tear rolled down my eye. I realized I was crying.

It has been exactly 30 days ever since that happened. I don’t really like to visit the past, but since it is my last night on earth, I figured why not. Still lying in the bath tub, while recounting all the memories I had inside my little head, I realized one thing, life is as long as you want it to be. You can live just a single day and adjust your whole life into it, or you can breathe 30 years and still live none. So, for the 30^th time, and hopefully last, I take all the air I can fix inside my lungs and drop my head into the water.