I was a boy once, I can almost remember it sometimes. I look back and see glimpses, flashes. My brother and I out on the farm pretending to work the land, pretending to be men. I see myself in a classroom thinking long division was the hardest thing people could solve.
I don’t get a whole lot of time to look back now, I have my job, and my responsibilities, and my schooling, and my family. All the aspects of my life have fallen to my plate without mommy or daddy to cut it into smaller bites. They have enough on their plates. I want them to be happy, to smile, so I take on the skin of a man, with my fingers almost reaching the tips on the skins’. it almost fits, but its designed for someone bigger, someone stretched by knowledge and experience.
My Dad slaves away at the job the job putting up wall after wall, wiping both sweat and ice fro his brow. His body screams for him to slow down, relax, take a week lounging around pools in mexico. Food wouldn’t be on the table and the roof that barely keeps the rain off our heads would be taken, so he pushes what he wants, what he needs to the back of his mind and builds another floor.
My Mom, she’s got problems of her own she’s exhausted daily with dark circles beholden to her eyes. Four kids she raised, two men two boys. Yet still she takes on more, caring for others’ who cant care for their own. Her body attacks itself through her MS to get her to let herself rest. Food wouldn’t be on the table, the roof that barely keeps the rain off our heads would be taken, so she pushes pushes her body and mind closer to the sheer cliffs edge.
I have the life everyone wants, the freedom to choose, but do I truly have freedom? No? If I walked away the cardboard castle I’ve spent so long perfecting would crumble under it’s own weight. I have the means, even the will to do, go, see whatever I please, but I’m shackled by duty. Forced by myself to take on the face of a man before my eyes have hardened with experience.
I long for the easy days of childhood back when the stars shone brighter and the clouds never truly plunged the world into dark. I dream of days where infinite possibilities lay in front of me, where life’s shackles were brittle and and too big. I wish for problems like “does the girl like, like me back? or “Is my art project due Monday or Tuesday?” I try to forget the troubles that plague my mind by day, creating fantasy realms where my problems are measurable and obvious.
I’m a man now, my life choices a list of two options. I have to play by the rules others have developed. There are no cheat codes or exploits like the games I played as a kid, but I chose this life. I made the decision to pull on the skin of someone older, I chose to forgo asking for the help I needed. I chose to be a man, the constraints that hold me now were my choice.
Sorry about this being late, I forgot all about is.
based off of the last prompt, the story, “Angela’s ashes”