Read I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1 for Free Online Page B

mutha, she was a bewtiful woman. Its’a shame, ya know, God bless her soul. May she rest in peace. Call me if you need anything,” Tommy offered after prayer and left.
    I accused my mother of being many things: frigid, indifferent, and detached. I accused her countless times of not giving a shit about us and not standing up to my father who would go ballistic and beat us.
    Nothing was ever good enough for my father. My mother’s cooking could’ve been better, grades could’ve been better, the way my brother and I did anything could’ve been better. The way we spoke to him could’ve been better because as long as we lived under his roof, things always needed to be “BETTER.”
    I still didn’t know what “better” meant in his eyes, and now I wonder how he felt about the empty seat at the dinner table because my mother didn’t get “better.”
    I don’t know how many nights I stood awake wondering why my father couldn’t die instead. He was the bad one—he was the monster.
    Anger is a funny emotion.
    I had to bury my mother and pack her personal belongings into boxes and into the attic on the day of the service…at my father’s request.
    My father didn’t curb his behavior one bit after my mother died. He mourned by hitting twice as hard and drinking more. My brother Stewart cried himself to sleep almost every night after the funeral service, and my father made no effort to comfort him.
    My brother cried for days when his hamsters died the year before. (I told him hamsters were not equipped to swim, especially not in the toilet when you flushed it. They have small arms.)
    “Mommy’s not coming back, Stewart,” I’d sadly remind him, rousing him into a tantrum and panic.
    “Momma’s, gon’ wake up, Chawwrlie! You see!” he’d shout, so certain and innocent. He couldn’t accept the reality of our mother’s death at his age and would wait day and night for her to come walking through that front door.
    “No, she isn’t coming back this time, Stewart. Not anymore.”
    The house became nothing but a soulless and dark tomb since Stewart and I left home —old, decrepit, and miserable, just like my old man.
     
     
     

CARPE DIEM
    Monday, January 5 th , 2014
     
    My therapist recommended keeping a journal of every little thing that crawled in or out of my head. She said it was like peeling back an onion. Yeah, the more you peeled back, the more it stunk.
    I despised writing, and my therapist accused me of making mountains out of molehills, so I got a new therapist who accused me of the same thing.
    I made fun of Morgan for keeping a diary in her dresser because I thought diaries were for little girls who liked to write about the boys they liked at school.
    If my dad had any idea I had a journal he would hang himself because crying is for pussies and diaries are for girls. I can hear him now: “Are you a faggy sissy boy? Are ya’ writing about your “feeeeeelings?”
    I had to keep logs once my memory started to slip after the accident.
    I had little yellow sticky notes systematically placed all over the house to remind me to do the simplest tasks: Take my medication, take the laundry out of the dryer while Morgan was at work, and pick Kate up from softball practice on Tuesdays at five…or was it Wednesdays?
    It began with a grocery list of self-improvement jargon that evolved into drawing little caricatures of the monumental assholes in my life with little blurbs above their heads and an occasional arrow through their faces.
    Morgan bought me this leather bound journal for Christmas last year. She had to prove to me keeping a journal didn’t have to mean you had a vagina, wore pink ribbons in your hair, and talked about boys.
    No, this was a man’s journal, a journal to be proud of—a thick black leather-bound book with a silver lock and key, and the words CARPE DIEM etched across the cover in bold letters. This journal is the single most important thing to me now in case I don’t survive this