A Greater Good
You drive up to the highrise on 38 Elm Street in Toronto, Canada at around 7:45 pm. It is raining heavily and it is already dark out. You pull out your phone and check it for messages but there are none. There never have been any. You sigh and put your phone back into the pocket of your blue denim jeans. You step out of your beat up Subaru Outback, it was a good car. Got good gas mileage. You step into the rain and flip up the hood on your sweatshirt. You look both ways before you proceed to cross the street. After crossing the street you enter the hotel lobby. You look around thinking to yourself What a nice place.
You then walk down the hallway towards the stairwell feeling somewhat depressed. You open the doors to the stairs and then begin climbing. Step by step. Your parents never knew that you were there. Only a room away. Your father was piss drunk. Your mother was scared. You should never have to witness those sorts of atrocities in your life, let alone when you're that young. There wasn't anything that you could do when your father started to hit your mother. You could only sit there feeling horrible, knowing that it would happen again. Again. You hear yelling coming from the the other room and fear for you and your mother's safety. Luckily this time its only shouting. Only shouting.
"You stupid whore, you don't know what I do for this family" You hear you father shout.
"Yes I do! you dont know what you do to this family!"
"To this family? And what do I do?"
"You drink 'til the nights over and then you come home and shit all over us!" You hear your mother shout at your father.
"And when are you ever in the house?"
"The only reason I leave in the evening is because of you. I can't live in this house without fearing for my life."
You always listen to the shouting matches, but you don't know why. As the shouting continues you huddle against the back of the couch with your arms pressed against your chest, breathing slowly and trying not to cry. Crying would make your father mad. As the years passed, things only got worse. Fast forward to your thirteenth birthday and your father is drinking six out of seven days of the week. He hits your mother more often and as a result she is out of the house at least 50 percent of the time to avoid the abuse. Your father even begins to hit you, and when he does, he forces you to wear long clothes to cover up the bruises. But bruises heal. What about the emotional pain? That is something that cannot be healed. It is much more complicated than that.
As you reach the third floor you look out a window. Outside there is a couple strolling down the sidewalk happily, even though it is raining. You think to yourself angrily Nobody ever cared about me. You continue on upwards one stair at a time. With each step you you think about the bad things people did to you in your life. You walked down the hall. You tried to be confident. But it is hard when when people abuse you constantly in life. Especially your classmates. As you walk, a penny hits you and someone shouts "Stupid Jew!" but you keep walking. You know that they are all watching you to see if you react. A reaction would just be a cause for more bullying. This happens daily. Between the abuse of your classmates and the abuse of your father you are under enormous stress. The only way that you know how to deal with this stress is by cutting yourself. Sometimes after school you go home and go to your room and shut the door behind you. You dig out the utility blade that you have stashed in your drawer. You take it out and roll up your sleeve. You drag the blade across your forearm, drawing blood. This brings a sense of relief to you, not pain. You do this six or seven times in a criss-cross pattern and then clean up the blood. This activity continues for about three years, until you are 17. Then you realize it is not helping you anymore. You get a job. Your first job at that. Your reasoning is that you will be around your father less of the time. While working on the job life is somewhat easier, you managed to secure a shift that would allow you to avoid the times which your father was drunk, which was key.
You liked your job very much and you were good at it too. You quickly rose through the hierarchy and managed to secure the position of "Crew manager." After a few months you receive a pink slip in the mail. You know what that meant. No more job. For the time being at least. Your next job was at a McDonalds and was about 15 miles away. Again you worked your way to "crew leader." Except this time you held the position for much longer. Without this job you might not have been able to keep yourself sane. During the period while you had your jobs one of the worst things happened to you at school. As you walk down the hallway you hear the usual jeers such as "Stupid Jew!" and "zeit Heil!" But as you walk one catches your attention when you hear it:
"Hey Fritz! How unfortunate it is that those Nazis didn't kill your parents!"
When you hear it you spin around to confront whoever spat the insult at you. "First of all buddy, get your facts straight. My parents weren't even in Poland during that time. Second, you don't even want to know what I'm going through at the moment. So Fuck off"
This retort doesn't even phase the boy who shrugs it off and and laughs at you. He also pushes you out of his way as he walks away. You think to yourself Why me? What did I ever do to them? You run to the bathroom and try to collect your thoughts. After about ten minutes, you feel collected enough to return to class.
When you reach the seventh floor you check your phone again. Still no messages. By now it has become habitual, even though you never receive any messages. Another window appears and outside that window rain is still falling and it is even darker. You continue to climb the stairs. Step after step, after step.
By now you have reached the twelfth floor and that is the floor below the roof. You look around for the ladder to the roof. You think to yourself There has to be a ladder somewhere around here. How else would they do roof maintenance? When you find the ladder after searching a little bit you take a deep breath and climb the ladder to the roof. You push open the hatch and climb out into the into the rain and the wind. You walk slowly to the edge of the building. Once you reach the edge you peer over inspecting the distance to the ground. A girl on the ground notices you and shrieks "He's gonna jump!" You mutter to yourself "Who cares...nobody ever did."
***
Consequences. Everything you do has 'em. I never thought about the people I left behind, but then again, did they think about me? My mother. She wasn't around half of the time...she barely knew who I was. My Father. Never understood that man, drunken bastard who probably doesn't even remember me. I hope he doesn't come to my funeral. Let's just say that people remember you by your last actions, whether you like it or not. I can say that my actions were for the "Greater good."