I Feel Terrible Still

When I was 15 years old, my parents divorced. We lived on a farm and I bucked bails and pulled fence year-around to pay for motorcycle gas. I was also about 6’4″ and 300lbs at the time, playing varsity football.

I wasn’t taking the divorce so well, so I moved in with my mom, who had just got her own place. I was in my bedroom one day and heard a commotion, so I went to the kitchen to look. Right as I turned the corner, I saw her new boyfriend (we’ll call him Jim, because that was his name) backhand my mom, knocking her to the floor. She scurried to her feet in disbelief, grabbed her keys and ran out of the house. Moments later, I heard her lay rubber in the driveway…

Seeing my mother flee from this man with such panic and fear in her eyes filled me with rage. I’ve been mad before, but not like this. I wasn’t mad, I was full of pure hatred and rage. My life sucked already. My parents were going though a very messy divorce. I was a misfit in school. My younger brother and sister were both suffering as well, so all-in-all, I was already furious about everything up until this very second.

I confronted Jim, who stood 5’5″ and maybe 150lbs max, about hitting my mother, trying to the best of my ability to hold back the rage. He made the worst mistake possible. Jim got physical with me. He raised his hand up like he was going to backhand me and that’s when I snapped.

I don’t remember how his swing landed. I’m not sure if he was able to land a blow or not, everything was just a blur. The next thing I could really remember was sitting on his chest punching his face so hard, the back of his head was bouncing off the linoleum. I hit him until he was unconscious and bleeding from both every hole in his face.

I stood up and went to the bathroom to clean myself. When I got back to the kitchen, he was still unconscious on the kitchen floor. The pool of blood around his head was still growing. At this point, I thought I had killed him. I dragged him out of the house by his feet to the back of his hilariously jacked-up ford pickup. I dropped the tailgate and threw him into the bed of his truck. I threw his coat, keys and anything else I could find of his in the house in the bed with him and went back into the house.

About an hour and a half later, I heard his truck start-up and drive off. When my mom came home, she did not even ask about my hands or the half-cleaned bloody drag marks on the front patio, concrete walkway and the grass. I’m sure she knew exactly what had happened. I’m half convinced that she anticipated my reaction and that may be why she left me at the house with Jim after he hit her. I don’t know.

I saw Jim in a gas station several years later and his face still showed obvious signs of trauma. Bags under his eyes, twisted nose, missing teeth up front, etc. And yes, I feel terrible, still. 🙁