Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

It was just blackness. Nothing came through me, or was in my head.

But it’s okay. You can’t force it.

I was aware of my diaphragm going in and out. I was aware of my straight spine. I thought of nothing. My mind was empty. I slowly inhaled and exhaled through my nose, my breath getting deeper. And then Dad’s face was before me. The blood was before me. And what I had done.

I shuffled on my bum.

No, don’t move. You have to see this through.

I allowed it, and went with it. Went back to that night.

Him in my room. Then me coming down, and grabbing the knife. Him on the couch. The feeling of the knife sinking into the flesh of his back. The shock in his eyes, when he turned to face me after the third wound, and the fear in them too. And so much blood.

But I didn’t feel guilty. Should I? I thought. He wasn’t a good man. Sometimes he did say sorry, but he carried on. And the way he acted every day, and stole those charity funds, and fucked around with people’s money, and everything else. It was his lack of regret, his lack of emotion, his lack of love. There was nothing in me that could make me think he didn’t deserve it. But who am I to judge that?

I went back, before that night, to the many other times he came into my room. And his breakup with mum. Her leaving me and never getting in touch. Embrace your emotions came into my head, and the key to happiness is the ability to let go. And it felt pertinent to me, the last phrase especially, my key to happiness is to let go, I decided. As I went through the many train wrecks of my past, I thought, I don’t want to be a victim. I don’t want to give him that power. I don’t want to carry around emotional baggage with me for the rest of my life, I want it gone. He isn’t going to win. I know he is dead now. I don’t know about that vision I had of him in the hospital, but I can’t hold on to those emotions anymore.

I am a superbeing. I am strong.

I went deeper. I felt secure enough in that forest, and at the side of that tree, to do that, and I knew that it was looking after me. The only thing I have to fear is my own mind, I thought.  I delved down. I felt things I hadn’t felt for a long time. Seen memories that I thought had gone. And I went back to the good times too. There was love there, sometimes. With Mum and Dad on the beach, building sandcastles. The love my mum showed me in the early days. It seemed she just wanted a doll though, I realised, she didn’t want me to grow up.

I cried so much my face and hands were soaked, but the more I cried, the more cleansed I felt. It felt good to do it, it felt human.

I absent-mindedly went to the vision I had had of him in the hospital, when I’d imagined myself floating over the forest, before I saw him. Then I suddenly thought, why floating above a forest? Did I prophesize myself coming here?

I still had some anger, but I didn’t want to hold onto that either. Especially in that sacred place, anger felt like a wasted emotion. A black emotion. Negativity. I was done with negativity, I was through with it. And he was a good person sometimes, even loving sometimes. But no, I don’t know, I thought, maybe deep down nobody is one hundred percent bad. Everyone has to have a little bit of good inside them.

And I thought about what Jesus would do, and I knew what Jesus would do. It was the hardest thing, but I’d did it before at Sleepyhillock, when I saw him in pain, and I wanted to really reinforce it. I forgave him. If I can forgive him for that, I thought, then I can forgive anyone for anything. I wanted to express that highest form of love that Jesus talked about, and just be at one in my soul.

I forgave him, totally and fully. And I didn’t know what that meant regarding the pacifism that Jesus preached, and Tolstoy talked about which he’d copied from Thoreau- that non-violent stance and never ever lifting a finger to someone who does you wrong, and not retaliating. I thought if I was there again, behind that sofa, with that knife, I would kill him again. But I didn’t know. All I knew is that I knew nothing. But I wanted to follow love, and I wanted to trust what I felt deep down.

I opened my eyes, and I said a little prayer. Then I went back to the tent and wrote in my notebook, and ripped the page out. It said that I forgive my dad, and my mum, and that I wanted to put it all behind me. And that I only want to act in love. I didn’t want to plant the page under the same oak tree, or even in my viewpoint, so I went for a walk until I found another tree to plant it under. I dug up the mud with my fingers, and buried it, and I said another prayer, then I came back and sat by the fire. I let all the memories swim back to me, and I knew it could and would take months and years for me to overcome them. But I also knew that I would overcome them. I just would.

I sat out most of the night, with the feather in my hand. I was grateful for the wind making it not too quiet,