Page 181 of Under Her Skin
My son wouldn’t be sleeping in his crib down the hall and my daughter wouldn’t be kicking her mother as we speak. Nope. None of this would be, without their passing and theirwishes.
The morning I found out my parents had died a piece of me did too. I knew life would never be the same for me. I never told a soul about how low I became in the weeks following theirdeath.
The fact wasthat I had sat in their bedroom one night a few weeks after their death, drinking a bottle of whisky and holding a pistol in my shaking hand. I was planning on ending it all. The pain had become too much, and I didn’t want to live anymore all alone in this big and cruelworld.
I wasn’t always the buff bodied man I am today or when I met Rachelle. Nope, I was a fat little boy who got beat up a hell of a lot. I grew into a pretty chubby man who had super low self-esteem. When they died, it took away the only people who loved me, the only ones who never made fun ofme.
That night as I sat there with that bottle and that gun something happened as I put the barrel of the gun in my mouth and put my finger on the trigger. Something slammed against the outside wall, making me nearly jump off the bed it was soloud.
For some reason, I stopped what I was doing and went outside to see what the hell had made the loud noise. It was dark, but I saw a large rock near the area I had heard the noise from. As I looked around I saw the mouth of the big bass mailbox hangingopen.
I went over and found one flyer inside and pulled it out, surprised to find I must’ve left it when I checked the mail earlier that morning. Taking it inside, I looked at it and found it was advertising this weight set, home gym thing. No money down and I could make low monthlypayments.
I didn’t go back into my parents’ room that night. I left the bottle and the gun on the bed in there and went to my own room and went to sleep. The next day I called the number on the flyer and by that afternoon the equipment was delivered and the guys set it all up in the living room forme.
The home gymcame with this pamphlet that told me how to eat right and within a couple of months I was well on my way to where I am today. I took every picture of the old me and burned them all. The new body gave me new confidence, and I finally did what my parents’ will asked meto.
I made the trip to New York and dropped Dad in the Pacific then went across the country, playing the lotteries in each state on my way to Los Angeles where I dropped off mymother.
That was the first step on my new life’s journey. I don’t know if I’ll ever tell my wife about the desperate man I was or not. That guy did die that fateful night after all. The old, fat, depressed, and insecure Blake was no more afterthat.
Happy go lucky Blake was born and apparently was being sent to find a young woman who needed him very badly. And I am happy to find out we get to have our happily ever after, afterall.
The End.
