The Box

The Box

There are only three kinds of people in the world:

Those who make things happen,

Those who watch things happen, and

Those who don't know what happened.

Old proverb

The door stood open beckoning me into The Box. I took off all my clothes, folded them carefully, and laid them on the ground. Then, as though I were Caesar crossing the Rubicon, I stepped inside, closed the door behind me, and slammed home the heavy, locking bolt.

There is no turning back.

I don't remember when I decided to build The Box. I do recall being in the backyard, sorting through an odd assortment of lumber pieces I had managed to collect over the years when the idea came to me. I carried all the wood to a far corner of the yard and laid them out according to their sizes and lengths. Slowly, I envisioned a design for The Box.

At a nearby salvage yard, I found some heavy metal stakes and drove them deep into the ground for anchors and bolted the floor joists to them. Next, I framed the walls, the ceiling, and the roof. Sheets of plywood covered the floor and enclosed the exterior.

As work progressed, I was consumed by a relentless, driving force to finish it. Barely able to think of anything else, I worked on The Box every day from early morning until late at night. Nothing else mattered. Nearing the end, I installed a heavy, solid core door. Then, I painted everything, inside and out, a dark, charcoal grey.

No one asked what I was building - nor why. Everyone assumed it was to be a tool shed. I alone knew the purpose for which it was intended.

There are no windows in The Box. There are no lights. There is no furniture. There are only four walls, the floor, and the ceiling. The pungent smell of sawdust and fresh paint fill my nostrils. A tiny, single ray of sunlight slithers beneath the door sill, but is quickly absorbed by the blackish interior walls.

At first, I could not see a thing, but gradually my eyes adjusted to the near darkness. I can barely make out the inside corners of the comfortless box that now restricts my range of movement. It is quiet - as quiet as a tomb. It is an overwhelming, welcome relief.

I am alone - yet I am not lonely.

My world, in fact my entire existence, is now reduced to the simplicity of this small six-sided box. I stood for what seemed hours, although I am not actually sure how long it was as I do not have a watch. But, here in the very dimmest of light, even if I had a watch, I could not have seen the time, and quite frankly knowing the time no longer matters to me.

Leaning back against the plywood wall I took a deep breath and slid down to the floor. I shifted my body into a fetal position with my knees pulled up under my chin and my arms wrapped around both legs. Relaxing, I tipped my head back against the wall, closed my eyes, and retreated into the depths of my mind and inner soul.

How did things ever get to this point? I am not all certain, except I know it has been a long, bewildering journey - if it can be called a journey at all.

I had to escape from a world so filled with chaos that it defies understanding and overwhelms me. I know there must be more to the meaning of life, yet the answers are elusive. At least, here in The Box, I have the comfort of mind and quiet ease for which I have been so desperately searching. Now I will have a chance, and the time, to sort things out - maybe.

Gone, but not missing, are the brash noises of television with all its mindless blaring stupid commercials, reality shows, sitcoms, talk shows, and depressing news. Oh, how I hate television. Its only value came from the fact it distracted my wife and daughters for hours on end.

My wife - a woman who is never satisfied. Anything and everything I do is wrong. She is a good woman, but all she ever does is whine and complain - or at least so it seemed. It is funny when I think about it now, she was never like this before we married. But no sooner was the wedding ceremony over than it began. Rose has the kind of voice that grates on you - something akin to the sound of fingernails dragging across a chalk board. What's worse, both our teenage daughters turned out as carbon copies of their mother. When the three of them started carping together, I ran to the only place left open to me - the garage. For one reason or another they usually left me alone out there. I never understood why - nor did I care.

My feelings for my wife and daughters are strangely conflicted and confusing. It is not that I don't love them, or care for them. But I don't understand them in the least. Even worse, I have not the slightest idea of how to talk to them. They live vicariously in the lives of movie stars and gossip magazines idols. I could never understand it. We live in the same house, yet we exist in worlds far apart. It is probably more my fault than theirs, but I don't know how to fix it, and it frustrates me to no end. As time went on, it got to where I could not stand being around them. Now they are gone - only distant memories of an unpleasant past.

My only joy in life was my son - my wonderful, wonderful son. He was tall, lanky, and a little on the clumsy side. But girls loved him for his warm, infectious smile and his copper red hair. Strong willed, he was only 17 years old when he joined the Marine Corps. A year later he was killed somewhere in the blowing, desert sands of Iraq.

I cried for days. I wanted to die. I never knew anything could hurt so much. The image of his torn, lifeless body lying under the blazing, blistering sun will torture me forever.

I am filled with unremitting rage for those who did this.

After learning of his death, everyone tried to comfort me - family and friends alike. I pushed all of them away. I just wanted to be left alone with the memories of my son and me together - sweet father-son memories of going to baseball games together, or working together on his old Ford pickup replacing some broken part, or simply hanging out with each other.

I remember all the times we went fishing at a nearby creek. Our favorite place was beneath an old oak tree whose branches draped far out over the water. Every now and then we would catch a brook trout. But mostly, we just lay under the shade of the oak where I listened to him talk about school and his friends. He told me everything. And, as surely as the morning sun rising in the eastern sky, we had loud, laughing arguments about the size of any fish that got away. Somehow, his were always bigger.

On occasion, we brought sheets of paper which he folded into airplanes and launched into the gentle breezes of the meadow. In the late summer, when conditions were exactly right, rising updrafts of air lifted the paper planes higher and higher to where they soared with effortless ease. And, of course, each plane had to have our name written on it so he could tell whose flew the longest, or the furthest.

Late in the afternoon, after soaking our feet in the cold, crisp creek water, we often surrendered to the warmth of the sun and napped under the canopy of the giant oak. These were the most perfect moments of my life. And never will I forget all his boyish, “Knock, Knock. Who’s there?” jokes - many of which he made up himself. They were so corny. Yet, I laughed at all of them.

Oh God, I miss that boy.

But, as always, the rage within me returns to strangle out his memory and turns into a poison pulsing in my veins making me wish he never existed so to be spared the pain.

I wonder, Will I miss my job?

No, not a chance. Everything has changed. The economy slid into a deep recession and my company, like many others, is closing its doors and shifting its manufacturing to plants overseas. “Outsourcing” they call it. What it really means is I am about to be outsourced from the only crummy job I ever had.

Now, what am I supposed to do? It’s too late to go back to school or to start a new career. Job competition is keen, and nobody will hire someone my age.

I feel as though everything in my life is coming apart or crashing and there is absolutely nothing, I can do about it.

I feel both inept and impotent.

Am I insane?

Have I become someone who needs to be locked away in a padded cell?

Am I someone to be pitied, examined, and poked by well-meaning doctors whose world is so far from mine?

Who will judge me?

What is sanity anyway?

I remember my father said it was just someone's definition of rational behavior in a world that is completely irrational - a world mad as a March hare where there is little room for human compassion, or for those of us who just want to be left alone. It is a world inexorably locked in the grips of war fighting over pieces of dirt in distant lands with combatants who are convinced of their moral righteousness because God is on their side. What was it Napoleon said? “God is on the side with the most artillery.

“What is sane about a world filled with hatred, racism, greed, intolerance, poverty, and ignorance? Who is to say I am insane to leave this madness behind me?”

I have no idea of how long I have been sitting here, but I am beginning to wonder how long I can last. Surprisingly, I am neither hot nor cold. Yet, the floor is hard and when I shift my weight, or try to move, the rough plywood wall tears against the skin of my back. I can feel little rivulets of blood running down my rib cage.

In my rush to complete The Box I never gave any thought as to bringing something to eat or drink. But it really doesn’t matter as I am neither hungry nor thirsty. Besides, what I really want cannot be satisfied by food or water.

I think it must be nighttime as the thin ray of sunlight that once found its way beneath the door sill is gone. Now I am enveloped in a darkness so intensely black that it distorts all my senses of spatial dimension. It is only because I can feel the floor beneath me and the wall behind me that I know I am not falling into an abyss of unbounded emptiness.

Is this what death feels like?

Is this what my son felt as his life slowly ebbed away in that Iraqi desert? Just thinking about it makes me cry again.

Oh, God I wish I could see my son.

Am I dying? I don't know. Maybe.

I have little desire to go on with this tormenting life. Yet, I am too much of a coward to end it by my own hand. So here I sit in a state of suspended non-existence, somewhere between being physically alive on the outside but dead on the inside. Maybe this is purgatory.

A sudden, sharp banging on the door of The Box jolts me from my deep thoughts bringing me back to the present moment. Outside I hear the shrill voice of my wife demanding I open the door and come out. Within the clamorous racket I hear my daughters screaming at me.

But now, more than ever, I see with crystal, clear clarity I can never again be part of their lives. Nor can they ever again be part of my mine. How can they understand the utter hopelessness that engulfs me, or how much I hurt? How can anyone understand?

I cover my ears to shut them out.

I cannot go back.

I will not go back.

It is safer here in the dark.

I suppose it was inevitable my solitude would be broken. Someone would respond to my wife's pleas to open The Box and pull me back into a world to which I no longer belong - nor want. When they did arrive, it took them more than an hour to pry open the heavy door and pull me out.

I did not resist or struggle.

I am emotionally exhausted and far from caring.

In the days following, I developed a new design for The Box - only one far, far better. The difference being I built this Box within the deepest, furthest recesses of my mind. It is an inner sanctuary where I have gone to be free. It is a place where there is no pain - a place of only peace and serene calmness. More than anything else, it is a place where no one can ever tear down its door - or enter. It is an impenetrable fortress.

I am back in The Box again.

This time, no one will ever get me out.