A Story About Guilt - Part 1

At 15, Jason was not a bad kid but definitely angrier, more confused and more rebellious than most kids his age. It’s hard to say where it came from. He had a good family that was solidly in the upper middle class, so he wanted for very little. He lived in a very nice home in a good suburban neighborhood where he had his own room, his own computer and other luxuries that many of his friends did not.

But something had been eating at him since he hit puberty. The kind and gentle child his parents remembered had become a teen who never smiled, always seemed upset, argued with them at the drop of a hat, and made them worry until they were almost sick. Especially his mother.

When Jason was 12, his father got a big promotion at work that meant a lot more money for the family, but also robbed them of his time. Where father and son had spent a lot of time together when Jason was younger, now his father just didn’t have as much time for the family. And when his father was at home he seemed more stressed, less patient and had became more and more authoritarian.

Jason’s older sister by six years was not so affected by the changes that came about toward the end of her teens. When she started into her adolescent transformation she had more of her parents’ attention and support. And her personality was different: she had always been more self-assured than her little brother, a dominant force among her friends and classmates. It was always apparent that she was going places. Her father absolutely adored her, and although she and her mother quarreled at times, it was nowhere on the same scale as the bitter shouting matches that Jason started having with his mom.

How and why Jason had turned in this direction was a mystery to his mother and the saddest aspect of her life at the time. She was a woman ruled by emotion who took things deeply to heart. Jason knew this, and he used it to his cynical advantage. He would often say very hurtful things to her just to get her to back down and give him his way. He didn’t seem to care that his words were so painful; for him it had become about winning battles in some kind of personal emotional war.

Jason waged most of that war internally. Part of him still remembered and longed for the simplicity of his childhood: playing children’s games, imagining the wondrous things that only children can imagine, and basking in the warmth and security that comes from loving parents. Another part of him, a new and strange part, felt it necessary to push those “childish” thoughts and feelings away and forge a new path.

But he didn’t know where that path was, how to find it or where it would lead. It was more like he was wandering in a dark forest trying to find the right way. Still, he felt instinctively that he had to move away from his sunny childhood, no matter where it took him. And anything that tried to keep him mired in that sunny childhood, like the banal concerns of his mother, was something to battle against.

His father wasn’t around so much, but at least he didn’t treat Jason like a child. His mother, on the other hand, still called him, “Jaysie,” “Jayseroni,” “my baby,” “my little man,” and any number of other names that made Jason’s adolescent blood boil. While a part of him that was falling deeper and deeper away still wanted her to hold him and comfort him, the now-dominant part of him just desired to keep as far away from her – and from most of the world – as possible.

Jason’s refuge from the world in which he felt so out of place was his room. Like many teens, he sealed himself off in his room and took extreme indignation when anyone dared to even look through the partially open door. It was his inner sanctum – no one else allowed.

But this room was in his parents’ house, and although they gave him a lot of space and privacy, there was a point at which he had to conform to their rules. His father demanded that Jason keep his room tidy. “Orderly surroundings support an orderly mind,” he would say. But Jason generally ignored the orders, and his father almost never checked or followed up. For his mother, cleanliness was the issue. She felt that a clean room and bed were more comfortable, so she pleaded with Jason to keep his room clean. He seemed to take even greater pleasure in ignoring her requests.

One day, she had enough. She went into his room while he was out, stripped the bed and washed the filthy sheets and dirty clothes, cleaned up all the soda cans, empty packages that had once contained chips and other snacks, and removed the dried pieces of food that had fallen under the bed and in other places. She dusted, made his bed with fresh linen, and put all his clothes away neatly. She was taking care of “her baby,” and this made her feel good, motherly, needed. She was sure he would see how much nicer his room was after her efforts.

Of course, she was being far too optimistic, and she should have known better. “Nicer” was a concept that never entered his mind. He was absolutely livid that anyone – especially his mother – had dared to “violate” his sacred space, and he lashed out at her with a fury that even he had not displayed before. He exploded at her like a volcano. His face and neck flushed red, and his eyes bulged wide and penetrating as he tore into her with the intensity of a raging wildfire. And he let fly words he had never dared to utter in his parents’ presence before.

“You worthless cow!” he screamed. “You have no fucking respect for me, for my privacy. Why do you have to go snooping in my things? This is MY room, MY space. It’s the only place where I can be me, where I don’t have to put up with your bullshit and the bullshit from everyone else. Why do you still treat me like such a child? Can’t you see that I’m almost a grown man? I’m not your damned “little man” anymore. Why can’t you get that through your fat, ugly, shit-filled head? I hate you! I absolutely hate you for this. I wish I had never been born to a stupid pig like you. I wish I had never been born at all. I’d rather be dead than be your son!”

And with that, he grabbed his jacket and backpack and stormed out of the house.

His mother was too stunned to ask where he was going. She stood there for a moment in shock. Then she felt a growing weakness in her legs as she stumbled toward a chair. The weakness overcame her and she collapsed on the floor before she could make it.

It was at that point that her churning stomach heaved, her body convulsed, and she broke out into uncontrolled crying, her tears streaming sideways down her face to saturate the plush carpet that cushioned her head. She turned her face into the carpet and grabbed at it with her hands as if to pull herself into it. And she just wept with great sobs and enough water to float a small boat.

After a time, she managed to get herself up to her knees, and then with the help of the chair she had tried to reach initially, she pulled herself up, turned, and sat in the chair. She pulled her tear-dampened hair back from her face, wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, looked up toward the ceiling, and tried to gather her composure. Her heart was still beating a mile a minute, and her chest felt like a bear had been dancing on it. She needed a way to calm down.

As she thought about what had just happened. Every little hurt Jason had piled on her over the past few years came bubbling up and joined with the new trauma to completely overwhelm her with emotion far beyond sadness. She felt like her life was over. It was a complete emotional breakdown.

For a moment, she thought about having a shot of vodka, but she wasn’t much of a drinker. The last alcohol she had drunk was half a glass of champagne to celebrate New Year, almost four months ago. She decided to do the one thing that always seemed to calm her down: go out for a drive. It was evening, so there wouldn’t be much traffic on the interstate; a good time to just drive, think, and try to relax.

She pushed herself up out of her chair, found her purse, and fumbled through it for some Kleenex to clean her face a little better. She threw on a jacket, grabbed her keys, and went into the garage. After getting behind the wheel of her car and hitting the remote to open the garage door, she backed out into the driveway and headed off down her street.

It was raining. It had been raining for days, but it was coming down a little harder now. She wondered where Jason was, worried that he might be walking in the cold rain, and thought about looking for him. Motherly instinct. But then she figured that even if she did find him, he would just refuse a ride and probably hurl more epithets at her. She decided to head toward the coastal highway.

She never made it.

Between the water on the windshield and the water in her eyes, she had a hard time seeing clearly as she approached an intersection on a green light. It was dark, and she never saw the car hurtling through a red light from her left. The car smashed directly into the driver’s side door of her car. She was crushed by the impact and died almost instantly. Her final thought was that she loved her son and truly believed that in time he would snap out of his funk and everything would be all right. She was sure of it.

Her love for her son was the last thing she was ever sure of.

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Part two is coming soon (that's where the actual guilt comes in).