Undying

Undying

A Tragedy

Violence and mild language.

 
Perfection, if there ever was such a reality. The first thing I notice when I open my eyes every morning. It's not the light piercing through the orange drapes, nor our cat, half asleep with his claws wrapped tightly around my leg. It's always her scent. Even first thing in the morning, she smells like something similar to a bed of flowers, but better. I think of it as the smell of beauty. If a general concept could have a scent. Then I notice her eyes. A mixture of longing and innocence that fills me with warmth and, for a time, puts the cares of the world aside. Penelope, my soon to be wife. She has the face of an angel. Though we approach thirty years of age, I can't go a day without wanting to tell her how adorable she is while pinching her cheeks.

  It's been five years since we moved into her parents old house together. At first, things were tough. It's not easy being a lower class aspiring architect from a community college. When you care about something, you do whatever it takes. So, that's what I do. Whatever it takes. Between every dead end job you can think of, and constantly submitting my designs to corporations that wouldn't know a quality structure if it fell on them, I almost went crazy a couple times. I was very close to throwing in the towel until just last week. A project I had long forgot about got picked up by a tycoon in Las Vegas. When I had heard how much I was going to get paid, I came close to making a scene similar to the one my fiancé made when I popped the question. Needless to say, things are looking up and it has been one hell of a week.

  After whatever drug your brain produces when you've finally succeeded in something after many long years starts to wear off, you come to realize something. You're not any different. Though you have accomplished your goal, you're still that slow runner back in gym class or that guy who stares at the ground when someone makes a move on your girl. When the fog lifts, it is kind of scary how little you have evolved. The scariest thing of all is, you realize that you still crave success and accomplishment. Probably even more than before.

  I fling myself out of my sanctuary of warmth and head for the back room, also known as my office. I don't get ready for the day. I don't eat or drink anything. I just draw sketch after sketch like a mad man until about noon. Penelope is used to it. She does her own thing on days off like this. When I manage to hunchback my way out of my bell tower and shower myself, she greets me in the kitchen with lunch, coffee, a smile, and a kiss. God, I love her.  

  "Don't be fooled by the illusion of here and now," As my grandfather would have so eloquently put it. Though things are amazing right this moment, they were not always. Like any couple in the world, we've had our greatest hits and our falling outs. Until the money started to come through, it had definitely felt like more falling out than anything. Life has a funny way of putting you through a storm of chaos before finally giving you enough to stand on your own two feet. I only hope that the storm has passed and this isn't the calm between the hardest times of my life. I can only hope.

  In the beginning when I was still blinded by youthful mystification and not sure where exactly I should go in life, I found her. Maybe, she found me. From the first time I laid eyes on her I was instantly intoxicated by infatuation. When we finally conversed, we seemed to click right away. Talking to her was easy. It felt as natural as breathing. Unlike any other girl I had come across we had actually become friends and got to know each other before we started getting into the complicated stuff. Everything is fun and games until that game changing moment when you realize that you cannot lose this person. Once that happens, everything changes. Whether it is for better or for worse, it changes.

  A once easy operation turns into bomb defusing and occasional dates turn into planning your whole existence around somebody. I did what any guy that loves somebody should do. I adjusted and improved. I smiled in the faces of all the creepy guy friends and asshole male family members. Honestly, it wasn't all bad and even at times that it was, I didn't care because I would always have her. As I adapted and came to accept my new life, things inevitably got easier. I held down a job. I saved up for school. I took care of my girl. Everything that a responsible man should be expected to do. Over time my and her friends became our friends. The family warmed up to me and we became family. Her dad was great with cars and helped me into my car that I had up until just recently.

  Juggling a full time job and trying to draw schematics by myself was, for lack of a better word, a bitch. I was always tired, broke, and mad about it. My sweet girl would always tell me that she understood. She would always be there listening as if she understood when I told her the complications of how I feel about life. Just having someone. Who cares whether it's a lie or not? In the end, just the belief alone will make a person scale mountains. That's exactly what I did. I scaled mountains.

  I come from a very poor family. Even worse, a family full of violent and greedy cretins. That may sound mean and over exaggerated but, trust me, it isn't. My grandparents did their best and were good people. Hard working and always tried to do what was right. As for everyone else that followed, it was a disaster. Mostly, they are a bunch of low lives who chose drugs, money, and using people to get the two over an actual fulfilling life. So when I came along with my annoying dreams and goals, they did everything they could to hold me down. Everything you can think of between mentally, and sometimes physically, beating me down as a kid to stealing from me as an adult. Things only got worse once my grandparents died. Of course, all of their dear children, that they poured every ounce of existence into, got greedy the day my grandmother passed, not too long after my grandfather. That taught me a real lesson about what "two faced" really means. I've never been so disgusted with anyone more in my whole life. They practically fought each other to the death like hungry dogs over everything my grandparents had accumulated. I couldn't care less about the belongings. I guess, I was the only one who seemed to notice that our whole family died with those two great people. It kills me to this day. I have trouble not getting mad thinking about it. When my still breathing relatives had squandered every bit of everything they never deserved, they weren't any happier or better off. In fact, they always believed they should have gotten more. I curse you all to Hell for that one, guys.

  Since I had half a brain, I left and pursued my own endeavors. It wasn't easy either. Fresh out of high school with no money for college and very few people to count on made any chance of accomplishing anything seem impossible. I spent a long time working and trying to save money, but we all know how that goes. Also, nothing will make you lose faith in humanity quite like customer service. A couple of those jobs really taught me how much I hate your average idiot, but there is a good thing about this. Learning that I really don't want to deal with people made me choose a career with minimal human interactions. Thusly, the architect was born or so, the idea of being one. I got myself into a full time labor job and started seriously saving money. The best part was I didn't have to swallow the verbal crap of every dumbass who has the free time to shop when normal people are working. There were the hard asses, of course, it was a manly job. After a while though, you begin to get along with these guys and the days fly by.

  Then it happens. The moment you feel on top of the world, life throws you a curve ball. Every time.

  I was out with some friends at the movies. We were waiting for Dan to finish playing arcade games. I was, as usual, a little nervous being around so many people. I had my back to the wall next to the towering arcade machine that the guys were huddling around. As my eyes scanned the crowd they met a familiar set of eyes. She was looking right at me. The girl in high school that I always liked but never really talked to, Penelope. Terrified, I broke eye contact. A few seconds later when I checked to see if she was still looking, what I saw filled me with a mixture of excitement and fear. She was walking this way. Her hypnotizing gaze locked on me. I stand like a deer in the headlights. Most likely with a dumb look on my face.

  She doesn't even let me ruin the moment by saying something cheesy. Her words, peppy but gentle, come blurting out one after the next. Just being able to see her nervous and flustered is adorable. I smile as she starts telling me how she remembers me from school and how her friends ditched her. I couldn't believe that she even remembered me in the slightest, much less wanting to sit by us in the movie. Things were surreal. I could tell the guys were in just as much disbelief as myself. Dan accidently lost his game. The night continued on and was amazing. So were the many nights that followed.

  We both always had the weekends off of work, so doing stuff with her and our friends became a ritual. It was good for me too. I finally started to go to all the fun parts of town that I never cared to know about as an introverted adolescent. I had learned how to converse with my peers and, most importantly, how to have fun. Once I really was able to come out of my shell, I grew a pair and got up the nerve to make a move on the only girl on my mind. We were having a movie night at her place. Our friend, Dan, was there as well. He had gotten up to go make more popcorn for the next movie. She was sitting next to me on the couch. She would usually sit next to me, but tonight she had scooted herself in closely. She kept looking deep into my eyes. It was mesmerizing. I saw this brief moment alone as a chance and I took it.

  "Can I kiss you?" I asked like a nervous young boy.

  Boom. Everything changes. It's enlightening and empowering at the same time but this newfound power comes with a huge weakness; her. You can do anything in the world and yet at the same time, you can't. Doing everything becomes easier. Success becomes an easier concept to believe in again. Even though you can move mountains, if it isn't what she wants, you will not move anything. Maybe it's all out of being naive, but I prefer to think of it as caring too much and willing to do anything for that one person you aren't willing to live without. It can be empowering, but the smallest notion of losing her will send you to your knees, in one way or another.

  Like any young couple, we were passionate and thrilled with the fact that we were together. Personally, I never really saw anything special in myself, but I wasn't about to start questioning why she was with me. Everything was better. Date nights had a whole new meaning and it was usually a blast. I found myself working harder and, in turn, taking pride in everything I did. I finally had a reason to stop smoking cigarettes and saved a little more money because of it. Aside from that, most girls don't like ash tray breath. After finally working my way into a permanent position, I had enough money to start seriously considering a higher education. Penelope suggested that we rent a house from her parents. She too was going to get a degree. A business degree, she said it was practical because she could realistically work in any field. It made perfect sense to combine our forces. With both of our busy schedules, it would allow us to still see each other often. At this point, we had been together a few years and I think we were both ready for the step.

  Endless talks of everything we were gonna do with our future would keep us awake night after night. The thought of having a hold on our lives, once and for all, and being able to do what we wanted with them made us feel immortal. She would own businesses and I would make blueprints for big companies. Life was going to be perfect. After an insurmountable amount of work, that is. We both had to hold down jobs and make sure our classes didn't conflict with our work schedule. It's a lot easier said than done. Luckily, we no longer live in the stone age and we were both able to find some online courses to free up our evening a little. I will never forget those college nights, though. I always pictured myself doing keg stands or something to that effect. Instead, it was a whole mess of always being tired and busy. With the stress levels turned up came the complications of living with your better half in the worst of times.

  I remember one day, I had an epiphany while at work. Like most moments that seem to change everything, it happened on a normal day. We had been working on renovating the entire outside of a large middle school for a few weeks. The job was expected to take the better part of a few months. I didn't mind though. Work is work. As long as I could work and not have to deal with people, I was fine. It gave me time to flesh out future ideas for my projects. I laugh when I think of how limited my knowledge was back then. I would overzealously try to design things that I thought looked cool, but would never work in actual application. I suppose the dreaming is a very necessary part of the perseverance process. If I wasn't so sure in some way that it could be great, I'm not so sure I would have had any follow through. So, this day I had forgotten my headphones at home, in turn, I couldn't just drown out the world like every other day. Instead, I had some ineffective earplugs that didn't come equipped with my music library. We were all replacing sod on a soccer field in the back of the school. Hector and I were using a pitchfork to roll the cut sections of old grass into giant spirals to remove them.

  On a typical day, Hector was cheerful and goofy. He was always quick to tell cheesy jokes or make bad puns. It would always make you laugh, though. That's why I liked Hector. He was always trying to lighten the mood. Today was different. From the moment he arrived to clock in, until now, he wouldn't look at or talk to anyone. He seemed to be in a trance of some kind. Once we got on the turf and started working, it wasn't hard to see that something was pissing this guy off. Hector was the kind of man to take it easy and never push himself too hard. Today he was pumping out triple the work of anyone else. He didn't stop for water or to shoot the shit with his buddies every ten minutes. He was plowing the fields with ox strength.