Suspension

My thumb slammed in the door, rapidly turning purple. At first I didn’t even realize, I had become that numb to reality, similar to how my thumb was about to be. My neighbor, Mr. Smithers, waved at me from across the way. I sent him back a forced smile while my thumb was still stuck in the door. As I walked in, Rachael, my wife, yelled out, “Hey hon, I’m in here.” She said the same thing every day, so this was obviously no surprise to me. 

Our house was a depressing but still somehow livid combination of browns and pinks, mixed with florals and gold accents. Not my decision, obviously. “What’s for dinner?” Not like I cared, again, it was the same thing every week. We started the week with some type of pasta, typically spaghetti smothered in a tasteless red sauce. Tuesday followed with a meatloaf, the absolute worst was Wednesday though, being a casserole of leftovers folded in neatly and orderly. A mixture of unknown meat, cheese and an at least three-day-old veggie mixture. God, what is she making now? I don't even care, I'm just hungry, I don’t think I’ve eaten anything today. 

My face was starting to look old, wrinkled and obscure spots appearing at random every day. For a while now I had started to feel the effects of repetitive, unchanging life. I come home, say hello to my wife, set my almost weightless briefcase down, and go sit in the bathroom until I feel time start to pass. I never even had to use the restroom. I just sat and stared, at myself, at the peeling wallpaper next to me, even at the frog-themed toilet paper holder bolted into the wall. Thoughts never even popped into my head, it was just a blank slate of blackness, an everlasting hole of monotony. A knock on the door slightly startled me. “Yes? One minute.” I replied.

“Dad!” Hurry up, I gotta go.” Henry, my seven-year-old son, scrambled to say.

“One minute,” I said, even as I continued to just sit there in numbness, finally opening the door to a young blonde boy who looked quite similar to me. He rushed past me, shutting the door frantically, with a loud and remarkable “Kavoom!” 

“Dinner's ready!” Rachael exclaimed from across the house. Everyone made their way to the dreaded dining table. A long, dark oak table extending for what seemed like forever. Every night we sat at this table, attempting to converse about our always boring days. I sat in my slightly padded chair staring at the mantel atop the soot filled fireplace. What an odd place for a fireplace, I always thought to myself. Why not in the living room? The commercial smell of “autumn breeze” wafted through the air, not a particularly unpleasant smell but not my favorite. I always felt as though it got stuck in my nose. Swimming in but not being able to come back out again, like those fishing nets I see on the late night TV programs. 

I rarely thought about how my face looked, but my family stared back at me with absolute vapidity. I realized it must look quite flat. I could often tell my family was talking around the table but could never seem to tune into the same frequency. Like I was suspended in Jello, and the sound got so distorted through the waves of colored gelatin. Only a partial wavered version of what they said reached my ears, so I didn’t tend to respond. 

“Hey dad, how was your day?” 

I just continued to stare blankly and take occasional bites of my prepared supper. 

“Hon?”

It was like I could've been a ghost, floating weightlessly within a casing of flesh, filled with blood and constantly pumping organs. 

“Mom, is dad okay?”

Unfeeling and unreactive. Absolute numbness surrounded me daily. 

“Just leave him be, baby.” 

Mornings, I woke up with no sort of rejuvenation, but instead a feeling of termination. I went to work at a job I hated, surrounded by blinding fluorescent lights, coworkers that only ever annoyed me, and a boss that didn’t give a shit about the work actually being produced. I couldn’t even have dinner with my family anymore, carry on a conversation at the least. I wanted to get better, I truly did, but what motivation did I have? Nothing really seemed worth living for. Yes I have a family, a home, and a stable job, but are these things enough to bring me out of whatever slump I’m in?

The cold linen of my napkin was pressed against my forearm, I looked down and noticed a small smudge of potato had gotten onto my pin-striped sleeve. I thought nothing of it, but soon I felt as if that’s ALL I could think about. How did that get there? Is it gonna leave a stain? Why did I even care about this? “Wait.” Henry shot his head up as fast as a rubber band springing into action. We locked eyes as I pushed myself away from the table, extending my arms outward in front of me. Walking with a determined pace towards the front door. The little glass panel sitting within the door looking mysteriously intriguing as of now. 

“Andy, Andy! Where are you going? Come back to the table!” Rachael’s strained voice stringing along through the hallway after me. But I was so far out the door, my thoughts circulating around me like a tornado of knowledge. It was as if I had been in a coma for the past year of my life and something of such insignificance had brought me back; a blotch of potatoes dropping onto my wrist. It wasn’t significantly hot or wet, just completely average. So strange indeed. 

I could suddenly hear everything around me, to the extent of my neighbors talking in their house about what to make for dinner, to the extent of the “kalunk, kalunk” of a teenager skateboarding down the cracked sidewalk. I could even see the specks of dirt splattered on my bone white fence, and the dried worms plastered to the pavement. Even the consistent beat of my chest, up and down, up and down. My heart was beating in and out of my constricted chest at an alarming rate. My life had reopened, I had awoken from my slumber of dejection. The inertia of my life was slowly gaining speed and it started right now at this moment. I have to keep it this way, I can’t let my despair creep up on me again. 

“Andy, what are you doing out here, come back inside, I’m serious.” I pivoted my neck to look back at my beautiful wife standing in the decreasing light of this fall evening. Looking like an angel, illuminated with her flowing auburn hair and freckled skin. I sent her a contented smile back and meaningfully walked back inside to experience the rest of life.