Chapter 2 The First Midnight Chick Tale

Let me guess.You want to know why I killed myself. You want to know how I survived.Why did I disappear.Where have I been all this time.But most of all you want to know why I killed myself, right? It doesn't matter.Everyone is the same.They use me to measure themselves.It's like a line is drawn somewhere in the world, and if you never cross that line, you never want to jump off a tall building, swallow a whole bottle of pills, but if you do, You may want to do this.They felt like I crossed the line.They ask themselves: Will I ever get as close to the line as he is? Seriously, there is no such line.It's just your life, how you messed it up, and who's going to save you then.

Or who won't come to your rescue. Looking back, I began to unpack the day my mother died, bit by bit.I wasn't with her when she left, but I should be.Because I lied.It sucks to do that.A funeral is no place to keep secrets.I stood by her gravestone, trying to convince myself that it wasn't my fault.That's when my fourteen-year-old daughter took my hand and said softly, "Dad, I'm so sorry you didn't have a chance to say goodbye to her."That's all.I collapsed on the spot.I fell to my knees crying, the wet grass staining my trousers. After the funeral, I got so drunk I passed out on the couch at home.Then things changed.What happened one day was enough to turn your life around, and that day turned mine mercilessly.When I was a child, my mother took care of all kinds of suggestions and criticisms, a whole set of suffocating mother scriptures.Sometimes I wish she would leave me alone.

And now she doesn't care about me.she died.No more visiting each other, no phone calls.I didn't realize that I was drifting, as if my roots had been uprooted, as if I were drifting down a branch of a river.The mother sustains certain delusions about the child.One of my delusions was that I liked who I was then because she liked me then.As soon as she died, the concept disappeared with it. In fact, I don't like myself at all.In my heart, I still see myself as a promising young athlete.But I'm not young anymore, and I'm not an athlete anymore.I'm a middle-aged salesman.My future is long gone.

A year after my mother died, I made the dumbest financial decision of my life.I followed a saleswoman's advice and made an investment.She is young and beautiful, with a confident and lively attitude, and her jacket is unbuttoned and open to her chest.When this kind of girl walks by an elderly man, he will be full of resentment︱unless she talks to him.At this time, the man's brain will become stupid.We met three times to discuss the investment: twice in her office and once at a Greek restaurant. Nothing inappropriate happened, but by the time her perfume woke me up, I had put most of it away. of savings in a stock fund that is now worthless.Soon she was transferred to the West Coast of the United States.I had to explain to my wife, Catherine, where the money was going.

After this incident, I drank more. Baseball players of my era drank and drinking became my problem. I ended up getting fired twice and losing my job as a salesman.After being fired, I continued to drink.My sleeping situation is terrible.My three meals were terrible.I seem to be aging just by standing up straight.When I managed to find a job, I stashed mouthwash and eye drops in my pockets so I could rush to the bathroom to fix myself before meeting with clients.Money also became an issue.Catherine and I often fight over money.As time passed, our marriage gradually disintegrated.She's growing weary of my pain, and I don't blame her for it.When you hate yourself, you become annoying, and even the people you love start hating you.She found me one night in the basement with a cut lip and a baseball glove in my arms.

Soon I left my family or rather they left me. I'm too ashamed to say anything about this. I moved into an apartment.I became assertive and indifferent to people.If anyone doesn't drink with me, I won't associate with him.If my mother was still alive, she might have found a way to get close to me, she was always good at it.She'd take my arm and say, Charlie, ok ok, what's going on?But she is gone.After your parents die, things change like this: Every time you go to war, you no longer feel like you have a strength behind you, but every time you go to war, you feel that you are alone.

One night in early October, I decided to kill myself. Maybe you're surprised; maybe you think that a man like me, a man who played in the World Series, would never be reduced to suicide, because these guys have that thing called dream come true anyway .If you think so, you are wrong.After the dream is realized, you only slowly gain a gradual realization that the dream is not what you originally expected. And it's not going to save you. You'll think it was my daughter's wedding that gave me the final blow and pushed me over the edge.My daughter is twenty-two years old, has long, straight hair, is the same chestnut color as her mother, and has full lips like her mother.She married a nice man in an afternoon wedding.

That's all I know, because that's all she wrote in her letter: This brief letter, which arrived at my apartment a few weeks after the wedding. Apparently, my alcoholism, depression problems, and generally bad behavior made me a disgrace that could ruin a family ritual.So instead of an invite, I just got this text message and two photos of my daughter and her new husband standing under a tree with their fingers intertwined and the happy couple raising a glass of champagne cup to bless each other. The second photo broke me.This unscheduled snapshot captures a moment that can never be repeated, the two of them laughing and clinking glasses of wine as they talk.So innocent, so young, so past tense.The photo seemed to mock my absence.You are not here.This man, whom I have never met before, was known by my ex-wife and our former friends.It's just that you're not there.Once again I was absent from a major family event.This time, my little girl won't hold my hand and comfort me.Now she belongs to someone else.They didn't ask for my opinion.They just notify me.

I looked at the envelope, and in the sender's place there was her crowned surname (she is Maria Lane now, not Maria Bernato), but there was no address (why? Are they afraid of my visit?) .Something is sinking inside of me, so deep, so deep that I can never find it again.You are excluded from the life of your only child, and you feel like a door of steel is locked.You knock hard on the door, but they can't hear you anyway.Feeling that no one is listening to you is the first step to giving up; and giving up is the first step to suicide. Just like that, I wanted to kill myself. Not so much, what's the point of living?Rather, what is the difference between living and not living?

∮ He stumbled back to God, He wrote half a song, and the work was halfway through, Who knows what paths his scarred feet trod, What ups and downs of serenity or pain has he won? ∮ I wish God had smiled, shook his hand and said: You skipper, you stupid fool! The book of life is hard to comprehend: Why can't you stay in school? Charles Hanson Towne (This is a poem found in the notebook left by Chick Bernato)