Thread:Urkelbot666/@comment-26268104-20150826235822/@comment-26268104-20150920170925

Ok, this is draft number 2. What do you think?

              My intentions were good, but how I tried to do them was a disaster. Because of that, I’m thought of by everyone as the new Jeffery Dahmer. Maybe it’s good if I’m locked up in prison, rather than being in the world to hear what everyone has to say about me. About you, you don’t have to listen to my story, nor do you have to care about it, but if you listen to me, thank you.

First, I think I should tell a bit about myself. My name is Denis Barnes. Me and my family lived on a farm. I had a dream of becoming a doctor with a degree in medicine and biology. Meanwhile, my brother, Theo, wanted to become a comedian. Everyone in my family was close, and overall, our life was great. Until what I like to call the incident happened.

It started ten years ago, when I was 12, and my brother was 1. My dad just came home from a medical examination. I was doing homework, so I didn’t noticed his grim expression. He wore it only when I or my brother got punished. It wasn’t until I finished my homework that I noticed his expression.

“What’s wrong,” I asked.

Dad stared at me for a while, then he took a deep breath and said “I’ve been diagnosed with…” He trailed off and just stared back, into the distance. After a minute or so of this, he sighed and went upstairs. As I watched him go upstairs, I felt a mixture of depression and fear. I knew dad was going for a medical examination, but I didn’t know what he was being examined for. Would he be ok? I refused to accept the idea of dad dying.

After a few minutes of silence, I crept toward the stairs. Above the ceiling, I could hear mom and dad talking.

I hear dad say “I just…I can’t tell him. Could you tell him?”

Mom responded “How will that make the shock any better for him?”

“It won’t,” my dad said. “But it will be even worse for him if we don’t bother to tell him at all.”

“Alright, I’ll tell him,” mom said.

A few seconds later, mom marched downstairs toward me. She was trying to remain emotionless, but thanks to her wide eyes and half-open mouth, I could clearly see she was shocked. Again, the thought that dad might have been diagnosed with something deadly crept into my mind. I tried to suppress the thought, but the tear inching down my cheek told me I wasn’t doing a good job.

“At the appointment,” mom began. She trailed off.

I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. So I asked “Is my dad ok?”

Mom paused then said “He has…”

Baby Theo’s wail interrupted us. We waited for the baby to calm down, and heard dad say “Shhhhh,” to the baby softly. He always talked in that soft voice whenever the baby cried and to me when I was younger. After a few moments, I asked “What does my dad have?”

“He…he has lung cancer,” my mom said quietly. My heart sank. Lung cancer was one of the least survivable diseases in the world. More tears slipped out of my eyes. I pulled a chair from the table behind me, sat down, and cried some more. I knew that dad would likely live only 15 years or so. I was 9 then, so I wondered something.

<p class="MsoNormal">What would I be like at 24 years old?

<p class="MsoNormal">The next few months were the worst months of my life. Every time it seemed I could get over my grief, more bad news would come from the hospital, sharping it again. I would spend hours in my room, crying until I had a terrible headache. It felt like a cycle that went like this: my grief would sharpen, become dull, and then sharpen again. This cycle repeated until mid-October, when news from the hospital finally stopped coming to our farm.