ryanscottottney
05-18-2006, 09:35 PM
These are various writings I have done over the past few months, examing some inner demons and things I'm not particularly proud of.
NEVERMORE
November, 1996. I graduated high school only a few months ago, and finally I felt a little more in control of my own life. Nevermore bound by those petty high school cliques that made my life miserable.
My younger brother, Chris, on the other hand was my exact opposite. He was fifteen-years old, and he loved being involved with school activities and social events. I was never really jealous of his social life, but there were times that I wanted to do those things too.
I was always too afraid to put myself out there. I felt a darkness within me that frightened me, and I didn’t want anyone to see it. Instead I stayed hidden in my room – nose buried into my art tablet. My art was my escape. It was something that my grandfather had taught me as a small child, and I have carried it with me ever since.
On that cold November evening, Chris had asked me to drive him to pick up his friend, Josh, and take them both to the high school basketball game. I was good friends with Josh’s brother, Brandon, so it gave me a reason to go see my friend too, and I agreed to take them. Brandon was one of my oldest friends.
As we left Josh’s house that night, I could hear them talking in the car. Theirs was a story as old as high school itself, but it was one that I was never myself a part of. All I ever did was watch as everyone else had fun.
Why couldn’t I be like that? A part of me buried deep inside always wanted to break away and be as reckless and free as teenagers are supposed to be.
We drove toward the highway. Music too loud. They said something to me. I don’t remember what it was, but I responded by accelerating the car. Driving faster. I’m sure it was all in fun. Scare the kids a little! They were laughing. I drove faster. The music was loud. I was lost inside everything for a moment.
But it only takes a moment to miss a stop sign.
There was a noise – a chaotic choir of screeching tires, wrenching metal and screams.
And then nothing.
Eulogies play in my mind. I should be dead now. I think I am.
Memories carry me into the past, and I’m a child again. No more than three-years old. I’m at the kitchen table, listening to my parents arguing. I don’t know what they were arguing about, but the anger in the room consumes everything it touches like a gluttonous demon sent just for me.
I’m sitting on my mother’s lap as she and my father argue, but I can’t remember what they’re saying. Maybe I don’t want to.
I’m scared. Hiding beneath the table now as they argue back and forth, as if the physical shelter of the table could protect me from the emotional damage that surrounds me. Those four wooden legs become my shelter, and in many ways, I suppose, I’m still under that table today.
Violently then the image changed again, like a skipping record, randomly searching for a beat – or the musing of the damned made to know his chains. Everything was spinning.
It’s 1986. Chris is very sick and my parents have taken him to Children’s Hospital in Columbus to be checked out. I’m only eight-years old. Too young to know how worried I should be.
I can’t remember the exact moment when they told me what was wrong – that Chris had been diagnosed with Leukemia. I’m too young to know what it means anyway. But I did know that he’s very sick, and the older I get, the longer my parents stay away with Chris in the hospital. I begin to understand the seriousness of the situation.
Time passes slowly by my feet, and I start wondering why my parents couldn’t be there with me. I know Chris is sick, but when you’re eight-years old you just can’t see the world through those eyes.
Over time I begin to withdraw within myself. I feel like I’m on my own. Whether or not I am alone, really … it doesn’t matter. I feel it, and that makes it true to me.
Eventually this moment would pass like before. Made to see my life, but not to keep. Searching the archives of my brain for dusty records long forgotten.
It’s 1987. My parents have just picked me up from my friend’s house where I had spent the night. It was only across the street. I could have walked home. But as I get into the car, there was an eerie silence to loud not to hear. I ask where we were going, but there were no answers. They all look straight ahead, afraid to make eye contact with me. Afraid that whoever acknowledges my curiosity will have to be the one to answer me.
I keep asking, in that persistently annoying way that nine-year olds often do. Finally after several blocks, my father pulls over and looks into the backseat … and tells me that my grandfather has died.
They knew that this would be hard for me. My grandfather and I were very close. He taught me how to draw and that sparked my creativity which later in life became the foundation for who I was. My art, his gift to me, was one of the only things I felt I had that was really mine, and I would use it to get through moments of pain in my life.
And the man who gave that to me was gone. I’m not sure who I’ll be now.
Ripped again from this time! Unclear why these images have been laid before me as a fearful feast, but this specter had more to show me.
I’m in high school again. I never really did much in school. I have friends in almost every clique, but I never really feel like I belong to any them myself. So when the weekends come, and most of my friends are out partying, getting drunk or whatever, I stay home.
Alone.
In later years I would come to discover that some of them believed that I thought I was too good to do any of that stuff – as if I felt somehow better than them. It bothers me a little to think that I might have come off that way, but it also makes me laugh when I realized how little my so-called friends knew me. I had a lot of problems in high school, but self-importance was never one of them.
None of them realized, and today still don’t realize, that I simply didn’t feel welcome at their parties. I don’t drink, smoke or do drugs. I don’t like dance music and I don’t trust crowds. I was always an outsider to them. I don’t fit in.
I can’t say that I don’t want to be with them. I think that I do. But something held me back. I just never felt comfortable around them. Like I didn’t belong there. Maybe I was too sheltered as child. Afraid to leave the table and see what exists outside.
Whatever it is, I just hate going to school. I hate their cliques, I hate the school work, and I hate being told what to do. I have no control over my life. I feel rejected and awkward. I am sick of feeling abandoned, enslaved, restricted, and alone. A teenager simply doesn’t have the ability to process these kind of feelings. He hasn’t been in the tunnel long enough to see the light at the other end.
But I’m done with it all!
There’s rarely a day goes by that I don’t consider suicide. Not one!
There were times I would think in great detail how I’d do it. What would be the most painless way to go? I remember thinking about the pills I could take. Twelve gel-capped sirens that would gently sing me to sleep.
Or maybe a gun. Do it right, and it might be quick enough. I can feel its handle gripped tightly in the palm of my hand, as what remains of my life rests in the nervous twitch of a finger. I could almost taste the barrel in my mouth. Bitter and stale, pressing into my palate, digging a hole into my brain.
But they’re all nothing more than the well laid out plans of a lost boy. It’s amazing how the insignificant troubles of a teenager can seem so hopeless that he’d wish to take his own life.
I’m tired now. Tired of being rejected and alone. Tired of feeling abandoned, even by my own God who can’t be bothered to answer my cries for help!
Tired of being ignored! Desperately seeking the answers to find my way through this, but still afraid to ask for help! Afraid of facing myself and what it means to stand teetering on the edge of existence. All I need are answers to get me through!
But nothing comes. God, I want to die!
Dark memories can twist a young mind. But it’s all over now. I’m back in the car with Chris and Josh on that dark highway buried between the hills of southern Ohio. Only seconds had passed – maybe less.
All of those painful memories - my entire life I had been numb to it all. But now, tonight, it was time to wake up. I could feel it all again, and I hurt more than I ever could have imagined. I missed being numb to the pains and the joys of life.
I could hear Josh in the backseat screaming in pain, but I wasn’t screaming. I hadn’t really noticed that until this moment. It was almost as if I had to be aware enough to see what was happening around me. To know it -- and to own it.
I looked over at Chris in the passenger seat. His head had crashed through the window and he sat lumped forward in his seat, unconscious; his innocent face peaking through the crimson curtain that covered him.
Staring at his lifeless body I had only one thought – I killed him.
I forced myself out of the car and somehow found the strength to get Josh out and lay him on the side of the road, and then I went back for Chris. I reached for him, but he fell limp in his seat as I bumped against him. I heard him mumbling words of nonsense. I knew he was still alive … for the moment. .
I had a cracked sternum, from the seatbelt, and a broken arm and leg. I still don’t quite know how, but I managed to run up a hill to call for help. I was afraid. The road had a stench of death and I knew it wouldn’t be long before it arrived for Chris.
But death wasn't the villain tonight. I was.
Our ride had ended, and everyone survived the wreck – even Chris. He doesn’t remember the accident, and I’m glad. I would not wish that memory on anyone … least of all my brother. This was not for him to know. This was my intervention.
They tell me it’s a miracle that nobody died. But I was never the same person again. I felt it deep inside of me. It hit me with all the force of a massive high-speed collision and twisted me into something else unrecognizable.
I know now that all those years … I never really wanted to die. You can’t kill what’s already dead inside. What I really wanted was to live. I wanted to escape my chains and my fears and my pain and be more than I was.
I wanted to be alive!
I was reborn on that day, and rarely a day goes by that I don’t think about the hard lesson I learned. I was given a chance to see myself: self-destructive and broken. It took a walk with death to see that.
And now I can never forget how quickly the ride could end, and what might lie at the end of the road.
Six Days
On the first day I saw light - awoken from the hollow.
On the second I drew first breath, within a sea of sorrow.
On the third I found the shore - firm to help me stand.
On the fourth my dark moon set, and now I stood a man.
On the fifth I knew her touch - two souls becoming one.
On the sixth day God gave us you - our first and cherished son.
But on the seventh he lay rest, and with him you must go.
Six days was all we had with you. Six days was all we'd know.
Six days of love to save us from the darkening of our souls,
Six days to hold a lifetime of a child left untold.
Tired
I'm so tired. Sitting in my room, alone in my silence. The soft hum of
my computer gently sings my mind into submission as I slowly fade away
into myself.
Thoughts pass through my head. Images of things that never were and
never should be paint the backdrop of my dreams and carry me away -- and I'm lost in its chaotic calm.
I quickly open my eyes, forgetting for a moment that I can't let myself
close them for even a moment because of the monsters that lie in wait
within. Every night I see them as they wait for me to bring them what
they need.
They wait for me to give myself over to them, and lose myself in the
recesses of my hollow soul where they can confine my will and sever my
spirit.
OPEN YOUR EYES! Don't let them find you, don't let them catch you.
Don't give into them, even for a moment, lest you lose yourself.
I'm so tired.
Duality
He's watching me from behind closed eyes,
Living in moments between stolen breaths.
I can feel him inside of me even now.
Infecting my essence and raping my will.
I cut myself and watch him spill on the floor,
Screaming as he runs from my body in crimson footprints.
I exorcize the demon that swims throughout my veins,
And wash him from my soul and laugh at the sight.
The room goes dark as my eyes begin to close.
It's okay now.
It's safe to close them.
He is no longer with me.
I have killed the beast that haunts my shadows.
I sleep.
Unhappily Ever After
Once upon a time there was a magic land of life,
where all who come will know its joys and never fear or strife.
And paupers told to work hard and someday they may feast there,
where all the world will greet them, and life is always fair.
Children chasing butterflies down the road to see -
just what lies ahead in wait of all the wonders that may be.
No hunger here, no fear, no worry, and no pains of life -
when you give away yourself and offer only sacrifice.
Hard work and studies and constant care is the only way to find,
the wonders and the mysteries within the human mind.
And on that day when your time has come and you reach your journeys
end,
you'll find a wasteland of swindled souls and junkyards of broken men.
Last Witness
What will you see when death has caught you in your last minutes time?
When you look down into your own eyes, will you find a lifetime of
love?
Will you find wisdom of the world you leave behind, or purpose in your
pain?
Will you know why the sun sets and why we exist, or why it's all so
brief?
Or will your answers only frighten you more than the life you leave
behind?
What I Never Said
I'm sorry that I never had a chance to say hello.
I never had a chance to teach you all I've come to know.
I never got to show you how to loop your shoelace tied.
I never got to help you up when you would fall and cry.
I may have never smiled while I play with your little feet,
and never held you in my arms, and never watched you sleep.
Too many things were left undone but this I know is true -
Of all the words I never said, none were "I love you."
NEVERMORE
November, 1996. I graduated high school only a few months ago, and finally I felt a little more in control of my own life. Nevermore bound by those petty high school cliques that made my life miserable.
My younger brother, Chris, on the other hand was my exact opposite. He was fifteen-years old, and he loved being involved with school activities and social events. I was never really jealous of his social life, but there were times that I wanted to do those things too.
I was always too afraid to put myself out there. I felt a darkness within me that frightened me, and I didn’t want anyone to see it. Instead I stayed hidden in my room – nose buried into my art tablet. My art was my escape. It was something that my grandfather had taught me as a small child, and I have carried it with me ever since.
On that cold November evening, Chris had asked me to drive him to pick up his friend, Josh, and take them both to the high school basketball game. I was good friends with Josh’s brother, Brandon, so it gave me a reason to go see my friend too, and I agreed to take them. Brandon was one of my oldest friends.
As we left Josh’s house that night, I could hear them talking in the car. Theirs was a story as old as high school itself, but it was one that I was never myself a part of. All I ever did was watch as everyone else had fun.
Why couldn’t I be like that? A part of me buried deep inside always wanted to break away and be as reckless and free as teenagers are supposed to be.
We drove toward the highway. Music too loud. They said something to me. I don’t remember what it was, but I responded by accelerating the car. Driving faster. I’m sure it was all in fun. Scare the kids a little! They were laughing. I drove faster. The music was loud. I was lost inside everything for a moment.
But it only takes a moment to miss a stop sign.
There was a noise – a chaotic choir of screeching tires, wrenching metal and screams.
And then nothing.
Eulogies play in my mind. I should be dead now. I think I am.
Memories carry me into the past, and I’m a child again. No more than three-years old. I’m at the kitchen table, listening to my parents arguing. I don’t know what they were arguing about, but the anger in the room consumes everything it touches like a gluttonous demon sent just for me.
I’m sitting on my mother’s lap as she and my father argue, but I can’t remember what they’re saying. Maybe I don’t want to.
I’m scared. Hiding beneath the table now as they argue back and forth, as if the physical shelter of the table could protect me from the emotional damage that surrounds me. Those four wooden legs become my shelter, and in many ways, I suppose, I’m still under that table today.
Violently then the image changed again, like a skipping record, randomly searching for a beat – or the musing of the damned made to know his chains. Everything was spinning.
It’s 1986. Chris is very sick and my parents have taken him to Children’s Hospital in Columbus to be checked out. I’m only eight-years old. Too young to know how worried I should be.
I can’t remember the exact moment when they told me what was wrong – that Chris had been diagnosed with Leukemia. I’m too young to know what it means anyway. But I did know that he’s very sick, and the older I get, the longer my parents stay away with Chris in the hospital. I begin to understand the seriousness of the situation.
Time passes slowly by my feet, and I start wondering why my parents couldn’t be there with me. I know Chris is sick, but when you’re eight-years old you just can’t see the world through those eyes.
Over time I begin to withdraw within myself. I feel like I’m on my own. Whether or not I am alone, really … it doesn’t matter. I feel it, and that makes it true to me.
Eventually this moment would pass like before. Made to see my life, but not to keep. Searching the archives of my brain for dusty records long forgotten.
It’s 1987. My parents have just picked me up from my friend’s house where I had spent the night. It was only across the street. I could have walked home. But as I get into the car, there was an eerie silence to loud not to hear. I ask where we were going, but there were no answers. They all look straight ahead, afraid to make eye contact with me. Afraid that whoever acknowledges my curiosity will have to be the one to answer me.
I keep asking, in that persistently annoying way that nine-year olds often do. Finally after several blocks, my father pulls over and looks into the backseat … and tells me that my grandfather has died.
They knew that this would be hard for me. My grandfather and I were very close. He taught me how to draw and that sparked my creativity which later in life became the foundation for who I was. My art, his gift to me, was one of the only things I felt I had that was really mine, and I would use it to get through moments of pain in my life.
And the man who gave that to me was gone. I’m not sure who I’ll be now.
Ripped again from this time! Unclear why these images have been laid before me as a fearful feast, but this specter had more to show me.
I’m in high school again. I never really did much in school. I have friends in almost every clique, but I never really feel like I belong to any them myself. So when the weekends come, and most of my friends are out partying, getting drunk or whatever, I stay home.
Alone.
In later years I would come to discover that some of them believed that I thought I was too good to do any of that stuff – as if I felt somehow better than them. It bothers me a little to think that I might have come off that way, but it also makes me laugh when I realized how little my so-called friends knew me. I had a lot of problems in high school, but self-importance was never one of them.
None of them realized, and today still don’t realize, that I simply didn’t feel welcome at their parties. I don’t drink, smoke or do drugs. I don’t like dance music and I don’t trust crowds. I was always an outsider to them. I don’t fit in.
I can’t say that I don’t want to be with them. I think that I do. But something held me back. I just never felt comfortable around them. Like I didn’t belong there. Maybe I was too sheltered as child. Afraid to leave the table and see what exists outside.
Whatever it is, I just hate going to school. I hate their cliques, I hate the school work, and I hate being told what to do. I have no control over my life. I feel rejected and awkward. I am sick of feeling abandoned, enslaved, restricted, and alone. A teenager simply doesn’t have the ability to process these kind of feelings. He hasn’t been in the tunnel long enough to see the light at the other end.
But I’m done with it all!
There’s rarely a day goes by that I don’t consider suicide. Not one!
There were times I would think in great detail how I’d do it. What would be the most painless way to go? I remember thinking about the pills I could take. Twelve gel-capped sirens that would gently sing me to sleep.
Or maybe a gun. Do it right, and it might be quick enough. I can feel its handle gripped tightly in the palm of my hand, as what remains of my life rests in the nervous twitch of a finger. I could almost taste the barrel in my mouth. Bitter and stale, pressing into my palate, digging a hole into my brain.
But they’re all nothing more than the well laid out plans of a lost boy. It’s amazing how the insignificant troubles of a teenager can seem so hopeless that he’d wish to take his own life.
I’m tired now. Tired of being rejected and alone. Tired of feeling abandoned, even by my own God who can’t be bothered to answer my cries for help!
Tired of being ignored! Desperately seeking the answers to find my way through this, but still afraid to ask for help! Afraid of facing myself and what it means to stand teetering on the edge of existence. All I need are answers to get me through!
But nothing comes. God, I want to die!
Dark memories can twist a young mind. But it’s all over now. I’m back in the car with Chris and Josh on that dark highway buried between the hills of southern Ohio. Only seconds had passed – maybe less.
All of those painful memories - my entire life I had been numb to it all. But now, tonight, it was time to wake up. I could feel it all again, and I hurt more than I ever could have imagined. I missed being numb to the pains and the joys of life.
I could hear Josh in the backseat screaming in pain, but I wasn’t screaming. I hadn’t really noticed that until this moment. It was almost as if I had to be aware enough to see what was happening around me. To know it -- and to own it.
I looked over at Chris in the passenger seat. His head had crashed through the window and he sat lumped forward in his seat, unconscious; his innocent face peaking through the crimson curtain that covered him.
Staring at his lifeless body I had only one thought – I killed him.
I forced myself out of the car and somehow found the strength to get Josh out and lay him on the side of the road, and then I went back for Chris. I reached for him, but he fell limp in his seat as I bumped against him. I heard him mumbling words of nonsense. I knew he was still alive … for the moment. .
I had a cracked sternum, from the seatbelt, and a broken arm and leg. I still don’t quite know how, but I managed to run up a hill to call for help. I was afraid. The road had a stench of death and I knew it wouldn’t be long before it arrived for Chris.
But death wasn't the villain tonight. I was.
Our ride had ended, and everyone survived the wreck – even Chris. He doesn’t remember the accident, and I’m glad. I would not wish that memory on anyone … least of all my brother. This was not for him to know. This was my intervention.
They tell me it’s a miracle that nobody died. But I was never the same person again. I felt it deep inside of me. It hit me with all the force of a massive high-speed collision and twisted me into something else unrecognizable.
I know now that all those years … I never really wanted to die. You can’t kill what’s already dead inside. What I really wanted was to live. I wanted to escape my chains and my fears and my pain and be more than I was.
I wanted to be alive!
I was reborn on that day, and rarely a day goes by that I don’t think about the hard lesson I learned. I was given a chance to see myself: self-destructive and broken. It took a walk with death to see that.
And now I can never forget how quickly the ride could end, and what might lie at the end of the road.
Six Days
On the first day I saw light - awoken from the hollow.
On the second I drew first breath, within a sea of sorrow.
On the third I found the shore - firm to help me stand.
On the fourth my dark moon set, and now I stood a man.
On the fifth I knew her touch - two souls becoming one.
On the sixth day God gave us you - our first and cherished son.
But on the seventh he lay rest, and with him you must go.
Six days was all we had with you. Six days was all we'd know.
Six days of love to save us from the darkening of our souls,
Six days to hold a lifetime of a child left untold.
Tired
I'm so tired. Sitting in my room, alone in my silence. The soft hum of
my computer gently sings my mind into submission as I slowly fade away
into myself.
Thoughts pass through my head. Images of things that never were and
never should be paint the backdrop of my dreams and carry me away -- and I'm lost in its chaotic calm.
I quickly open my eyes, forgetting for a moment that I can't let myself
close them for even a moment because of the monsters that lie in wait
within. Every night I see them as they wait for me to bring them what
they need.
They wait for me to give myself over to them, and lose myself in the
recesses of my hollow soul where they can confine my will and sever my
spirit.
OPEN YOUR EYES! Don't let them find you, don't let them catch you.
Don't give into them, even for a moment, lest you lose yourself.
I'm so tired.
Duality
He's watching me from behind closed eyes,
Living in moments between stolen breaths.
I can feel him inside of me even now.
Infecting my essence and raping my will.
I cut myself and watch him spill on the floor,
Screaming as he runs from my body in crimson footprints.
I exorcize the demon that swims throughout my veins,
And wash him from my soul and laugh at the sight.
The room goes dark as my eyes begin to close.
It's okay now.
It's safe to close them.
He is no longer with me.
I have killed the beast that haunts my shadows.
I sleep.
Unhappily Ever After
Once upon a time there was a magic land of life,
where all who come will know its joys and never fear or strife.
And paupers told to work hard and someday they may feast there,
where all the world will greet them, and life is always fair.
Children chasing butterflies down the road to see -
just what lies ahead in wait of all the wonders that may be.
No hunger here, no fear, no worry, and no pains of life -
when you give away yourself and offer only sacrifice.
Hard work and studies and constant care is the only way to find,
the wonders and the mysteries within the human mind.
And on that day when your time has come and you reach your journeys
end,
you'll find a wasteland of swindled souls and junkyards of broken men.
Last Witness
What will you see when death has caught you in your last minutes time?
When you look down into your own eyes, will you find a lifetime of
love?
Will you find wisdom of the world you leave behind, or purpose in your
pain?
Will you know why the sun sets and why we exist, or why it's all so
brief?
Or will your answers only frighten you more than the life you leave
behind?
What I Never Said
I'm sorry that I never had a chance to say hello.
I never had a chance to teach you all I've come to know.
I never got to show you how to loop your shoelace tied.
I never got to help you up when you would fall and cry.
I may have never smiled while I play with your little feet,
and never held you in my arms, and never watched you sleep.
Too many things were left undone but this I know is true -
Of all the words I never said, none were "I love you."