I'd Do it Again?

The timer on the wall showed a 25-hour stopwatch. I did not know why, but I could not think about it. They say we all have demons, dark thoughts that we fight or don’t. Some are more hellish than others, but today I would not leave any behind. There he was. The man responsible for all this. Walking in casually like he was going for a bathroom break. I held it together for two seconds. The two longest seconds of my entire life. The third found me on my feet, the fourth and fifth counted in my firsts, and on the sixth I punched him.

Before he could regain his balance, I held his collar with my left hand and just started my jabs. One, two, one, two as the stopwatch counted down, yeah, just like I practiced. Bloodied nose, broken lips, and my knuckles were starting to strain, but I could not bring myself to stop. Every time he tried to speak, a punch landed in his face and then another. When he couldn’t support himself anymore, I let go. He was kneeling on the floor, weakening. His vision blacked out, and his sense of self went back in the closet. Him; on the floor, looking so remorseful, like he was saying a silent prayer to God to forgive him. It’s not God he should have been begging to. All I saw was a man readying himself for my boot. Who was I to deny him his wish?

My sole found his face, and for one and a half miserable seconds it was ‘sura kiatu’ between me and him.

He went down. I know what you’re thinking: it’s not right to beat a man if he surrenders, but what did I ever do to him? I could not even string together a thought, let alone a sentence, to answer his pathetic question. “What did I do?” What did he mean? I wanted to tell him so badly that this was all for nothing, that I was beating him because he did nothing. My whole life, he was not dead. I did not need him to do anything for me; I just wanted him to be there, but he wasn’t. The bare minimum, and he still couldn’t deliver. The more I thought about it, the more I knew I had his blood. His and mine were the same. That is why we were not compatible. That is why this magnetic field of implied connection failed to bring us together. I continued to strike him like it was my last day on earth. He was now down on the floor, me on top of him, and still I didn’t stop. The more he tried to speak, the more I could see his now-distorted face distort more, looking for an excuse.

“Is it money you want?”

Did he really just ask me that? I would do this for free every day of my gaddamn life. My heart was racing like this was the most alive I had been. Hellish, I said. He could not look at me, but as my last fist landed, he asked: “Who are you?” Mid-air, I put all my strength into that one fist, and as it landed, his heart stopped.

Wait, wait, did I? Where am I? I am in the same coffee shop. On the same window seat. The only thing that had changed was the stopwatch time: 23 hrs 47 minutes and counting down. I saw my dad walking towards the coffee shop again. What just happened? Did I imagine all that? Right. I was waiting for him, since after 25 years of my life, he finally told me we needed to talk. Here I was, mad to the brim, but the same 8-year-old who used to ask my mother who my father was, sitting right next to me.

He walked in; this time I didn’t move. I just let him come to me. “Hey, son!” That was single-handedly the fakest smile I have ever seen. He sat down next to me, and for a while we just didn’t talk. None of us knew what to say. “Are they better than us?” “What?” Of course he was playing dumb. “Your new family, are they better than us?” He looked at me and was about to smile like I was joking, but the indifference in my face was enough to choke his malnourished sense of humour. He looked at his hands for a long time, like he could see something I could not, then he looked back at me.

“Is that what you want to talk about, after all these years?” This was not malnutrition; this guy’s humour was starving. Of course this is what I wanted to talk about, but again I didn’t even want to be here. My mom convinced me that the only way to move forward is to make sure you have no reason to go back.

“What do you want to talk about? I have a son now; did you know that?” I did not even need an answer; of course he didn’t. Who even made it natural for people to just qualify for titles even when they did nothing to earn them? He was a father and now a grandfather, and he was just unbothered. But again, my son had just been born; it didn’t matter. The next few minutes were just a heated argument. What made me angrier was that he was not even addressing the elephant in the room.

He was so good at being avoidant. Of course he was my father. This is what I get for facing my origin. The more he spoke, the less I heard. It’s like, to him, nothing happened; like this absence was one-sided. Like I was born yesterday. I lost control again.

I got up and grabbed him by his tweed suit. It was surprisingly comfortable, but now all I wanted was to wrinkle it out; maybe then he would know how it felt to lose something he valued.

I went for the punch again, but he pulled back and hit me. I fell back to my… Seat? Wait, wait, did it happen again? There he was, coming my way. The timer was on 22 hours and 17 minutes now. What was going on? Before I could piece the puzzle together, he was in front of me, and this time he said hi; it was not forced. He began by introducing himself.

Yeah, your father introduced himself to you at 25. Your age, not his. I hope my son doesn’t have to deal with this. My wife, too; I saw how my mother felt. I learnt to read the room before I got in a classroom.

Feelings were the language I spoke because nobody taught me how to speak up and own what I said. My conception was a deception, built on lies and implied trust, and it was this man who lied. This time I just let him talk. He spoke about how I had other siblings and how I should visit them. But the more he spoke, the more I understood that he would have added no value to my life.

That’s what broke me: understanding that I was the one emptying my cup of self. He never drank from it; I just poured it out all on my own, attached my worth to valueless currency in the form of a father-son relationship that never was. He just spoke, but eventually he would say something, and again my dark side got the better of me. The more I tried to fight him, the more I kept looping back in time. Like it was wrong of me to punch him.

Fifteen times, this was the fifth time he had walked into this room. The fifteenth time he asked me how my life was going. All fifteen times, he had said something that triggered my trauma, and I just wanted to punch him.

As if to tell him I had to be taught not to put my thumb inside my hand as I clenched my fists; if I didn’t, I would risk breaking them. This was said to me by a teacher, a stranger, someone who was there for me more than my father, and we only met a few hours weekly for Science. I knew how to punch now.

This time tho it was different. He did not walk in with his face intact; he had a black eye in the exact place I had punched him in the last loop. Before long, we were fighting again, and this time he landed one as well. I made sure to hit him in the other eye and waited for the loop to restart. There were 8 hours and 52 minutes on the clock as he walked in again. I did not want to know what was happening anymore, as long as he would walk in here and I could beat him up over and over, and he would walk in just fine the next time; I was okay with it.

But now, seeing scars on his face, I couldn’t help but see my reflection. On cue, he walked in again, and now he had two black eyes.

“What happened to you?” He asked me, and I pushed back the urge to tell him that I would ask him the same thing. It was not because I was not rude or I didn’t want to be; it was because I was confused. Why would he ask me that? As if noticing my confusion, he pointed to my eye, and as I touched it, I realised it was swollen. Upon realisation, it began to sting. What was this? So now I was carrying over injuries from my last loops? Why was it happening only now? I wanted to see if he would feel the same pain, so I brought up his eyes, and I realised that as soon as he learnt of them, they also began to hurt. Well, this was something. So I had to beat him so badly, and I could see him in the next loop hurt without having done anything? Somehow this brought an insane amount of joy in my heart. But did he know about the looping? What did I care? This was my story; it was my life he ruined. I could do this all day; all I had to do was make sure he did not hurt me. Twenty! It had been twenty loops, and we both looked like we’d been hit by a train. Well, so much for not letting him touch me. The sixteenth and seventeenth loops had been a bloodbath. For some reason, he had begun to fight back. Like he was also plagued by something. I had learnt that he did not know why he was showing up injured and had no memory of any of his previous loops. I could not blame him; he was good at forgetting.

But on the 20th loop I just could not. Like something in me just told me to stop. By now our wounds were completely identical. Two black eyes, two concussions, a broken lip, two broken ribs, and countless bruises. It was like I was looking at myself. As if by wanting to hurt him, I was only hurting myself. This realisation was heavy not because it hurt, but because the little time we had together I was spending on a fight. Going back over and over and over and I would do the same thing.

This was how broken I was, and it was not his fault. How could it be? He was never there. I was hurting myself. Was he just an illusion? Do I see myself in him? These demons in my mind, were they his or mine? I knew the answer to that, and it was crystal clear what my mom was telling me. “You cannot move forward if you have reason to go back.” My dad did not have reason to go back. That is why he was still clueless after all these loops. This was my life; I could control it; he was just a character I could recreate. Now I understood it; it took me twenty loops to understand it. Twenty years of my life spent thinking that if I was in pain, I would still have my dad because our connection was no longer in the blood we shared but the blood I wanted to shed.

I felt like I was evolving. The stopwatch was still on the wall; it now had just over three hours left. I still did not understand it, but I knew something was going to happen in 3 hours. Loops twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, and twenty-four were a blur. I could not help but feel like I was happy. It was the only explanation. I did not remember happy days not because I did not have any, but because my happy days were like a pebble in the face of the border that was my pain. Between those four loops, we had made a connection. I could feel it. I saw him smile; I heard myself laugh, but it was like the good parts were erased. Like I did not deserve to have good times with him. Maybe that is how I would feel if I was happy. Empty! I could see his lips move; I could see him say something like, “I am proud of you, son,” or was it, “I always believed in you.” Maybe my mind just refused to accept that my dad could voice those words. Maybe this had nothing to do with my pain, just my trauma erasing reality.

All my life, I had known only pain. I knew all the accents, I knew all the shades, and I knew all the shapes and sizes. Pain was my everything. A few moments of happiness would not erase that. I was floating, like taking opium for the very first time; my mind stopped. I no longer saw my thoughts embodied in 10-foot shadow monsters that told me there was no good in people. I was not thinking; it was the only way I could have felt at least five seconds of bliss. Except time had robbed me of this moment. Memory had conspired too, and I do not remember anything my dad and I talked about during those loops except his last words. “You were an accident!”

Maybe there was more to it, maybe he was leading to something, but just as the time hit 59 minutes 59 seconds, he looped back. I saw him fight it for the first time. But he had just confirmed something I had felt all my life. I was right! On the 25th, I snapped. I met him outside this time. He was weary, but I knew he didn’t know why he felt this much pain, and it bothered me. I wanted to make him understand that I was responsible for his wounds like he was for mine.

That it was not accidental, that I wanted him to feel this pain. I clenched my fists, and he just looked at me. This time I didn’t hold back; I convinced myself it was going to be my last time. That I would no longer fight him. I would no longer fight for him. I had to let him go. If I was an accident, nothing else he said mattered. So, one punch after the other, I let loose. With every last one, a monster in me was set free, and I knew I could not stop until they were all gone. Punch after punch. I do not know for how long we had been out there. I could not stop. I could feel people trying to pull me away, but I did not stop. As his blood ran, my tears fell.

It was beautiful, something so psychotically satisfying that even therapy could not convince me I was wrong. When I was done, I waited to loop back. I was finally ready to talk to him. To tell him that it was okay. That accidents happen, and they make you want to live more. I could not loop back. The timer in the coffee shop had hit zero; was that what it was? It was okay; then maybe I didn’t need to loop, maybe I didn’t need to talk to him after all. I had already said everything I could have wanted to say in my language of choice. As I knelt with my thoughts, I heard sirens. I looked around me and saw my dad’s body on the floor, my hands bloody. “He killed him.” It was the last sentence I heard; from then on, my world went dark- well, literally this time. Like I was floating, but this time I could not see color.

I opened my eyes for the first time in a long time. Why was I in the courtroom? The gavel banged, and the judge was reading something. Someone got a 25-year sentence. Why was I here? I tried to remember, but my head kept spinning. Smiling, that was all I could see. A face smiling, but not in a peaceful way. In a dark and twisted way. Then I looked back and saw my wife. I had not forgotten anything; I had just been detached from reality for a long time. Of course, of course I killed him. I always said I would. I was now condemned to spend the next 25 years in Prison. It didn’t hurt me; what did hurt me was that I was going to spend the next 25 years away from my son. It just had to be 25. I really am my father’s son. I spent 25 years saying I wouldn’t be like him. Now I was not like him, not because I was better, but because he was dead and I wasn’t.

But I was going to spend the next 25 years exactly like he did, absent. The legal proceedings had been going on for six months. My son was going to be a year old soon. I did not make it, not even to his first birthday. This had to be some sick joke. Would I ever see him again? His smile when he was born, his cries for the last five months were all I would ever get. I robbed myself of a childhood waiting on someone who never came. As if that was not selfish enough, I robbed my son of his father for someone who would never come. I really was an accident. My mother came to see me as I got into that bus. The bus that would take me somewhere I had never been. Some place I may never return to. Some place I earned. Why did I have to do it? She did not say anything to me. She just hugged me; my wife, too. In setting my monsters free, I had caged myself and imprisoned my loved ones. After three years, I saw my child. Could I even call him that? He still did not know what was happening. I do not think he even knew me, or the length of our bond. He cried for me, though; he wanted me to hold him, but I could not. This harmless action reminded me of how much I wanted to hit my father. But no. He had taken too much from me. I pushed the thought away, and I embraced him, and we just sat like that. My wife had excused herself, crying. Why did I not think of her? Why was she still here? How I wanted to apologise, but even in her watery eyes, I never saw blame in her eyes. I didn’t deserve her. God, I didn’t deserve to live. Why did I have to let my rage win? Did my dad ever feel this? If I was broken before, I was disintegrated now. My life force crumbled into tiny particles.

Before my son left, he left me a hand drawing he had made. It was our family. On it, there were two people holding hands. I thought it was cute until I turned it over and saw a sole character on it. A thousand words, they said. These stick drawings were enough to make a grown man cry. No son had to live like this. Every time I saw him, I was reminded that I failed to be better than my dad. I had nightmares all day, every day. I saw my dad when I slept and my son when I was awake. It has been happening over and over; it feels like I am in hell. I can’t keep living like this. This is all my fault. My son is innocent; he does not have to come to prison on weekends just to meet his father. And I am grateful for my wife because she kept my memory alive in him, but I just can’t anymore. I can only think of one way to end all this. I am not as strong anymore. This is my suici- “Baby! Get up; you are meeting your dad today.”