Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

by Matthew Quick

“Don’t do it. Don’t go to that job you hate. Do something you love today. Ride a roller coaster. Swim in the ocean naked. Go to the airport and get on the next flight to anywhere just for the fun of it. Maybe stop a spinning globe with your finger and then plan a trip to that very spot; even if it’s in the middle of the ocean you can go by boat. Eat some type of ethnic food you’ve never even heard of. Stop a stranger and ask her to explain her greatest fears and her secret hopes and aspirations in detail and then tell her you care because she is a human being. Sit down on the sidewalk and make pictures with colorful chalk. Close your eyes and try to see the world with your nose—allow smells to be your vision. Catch up on your sleep. Call an old friend you haven’t seen in years. Roll up your pant legs and walk into the sea. See a foreign film. Feed squirrels. Do anything! Something! Because you start a revolution one decision at a time, with each breath you take. Just don’t go back to that miserable place you go every day. Show me it’s possible to be an adult and also be happy. Please.

ponder what he said about there being people with worse problems than mine. It takes me all of three seconds to conclude that’s such a bullshit thing to say. Like the people in Iran are more important than me because their suffering is supposedly more acute.

I bet there are people in Iran who are happier than I am—who wish to keep living there regardless of who is in charge politically, while I’m miserable here in this supposedly free country and just want out of this life at any cost.

Once you understand how adults are controlled by the system, manipulating them is elementary.

I wonder at what age it’s appropriate to stop keeping track of everyone’s birthday. When do we stop needing the people around us to acknowledge the fact that we are aging and changing and getting closer to our deaths?

when someone rises up and holds himself to a higher standard, even when doing so benefits others, average people resent it, mostly because they’re not strong enough to do the same.

“Were the Germans evil or were they responding to the social and political climate of their day?” My classmates are mostly baffled. As I listen to their whiny answers and attempts to place themselves on high moral pedestals, I realize the gap between them and me is widening as we get older.

The lies are so vivid, they’re beginning to burn out my retinas.

I got to thinking that the world would be a better place if they gave medals to great teachers rather than just soldiers who kill their enemies in wars.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” I say. “People should be nice to you, Leonard. You’re a human being. You should expect people to be nice.

There were hundreds of adults drinking alcohol and gambling and smoking that night, but I bet none of them felt the high Asher and I did. Maybe that’s why adults drink, gamble, and do drugs—because they can’t get naturally lit anymore. Maybe we lose that ability as we get older.

then Lauren’s father gave a talk about humility and humbling ourselves so that we might be able to best serve God, which I didn’t really understand. If god existed and he created the whole universe, like these people believed, why would he need our help, let alone our praise? Why would he need us to serve him? Was god really both all powerful and emotionally needy?

Jackson, who was now somehow rubbing Lauren’s shoulders again and glaring at me like he wanted to kill me before I could accept Jesus Christ into my heart, and would therefore—in his mind—end up burning in a sea of fire.

The gray lion-haired bum looked at me like I was insane, but he snatched the money out of my hand and walked away. “He’s just going to buy alcohol or drugs, you know,” Lauren said, which made me sad, because she didn’t know that man at all, let alone whether he had a dependency problem.

These people we call Mom and Dad, they bring us into the world and then they don’t follow through with what we need, or provide any answers at all really—it’s a fend-for-yourself free-for-all in the end, and I’m just not cut out for that sort of living.

I whisper to myself. “You just have to squeeze your index finger and everything will be okay. The thoughts will stop. No more problems. You can finally just rest.”

it sort of makes me feel better all of a sudden. Just two words. Happy birthday. It makes me feel like I’m not already gone. Like I’m still here.

Herr Silverman narrates his whole trip for me like that and I listen to the sound of his voice and think that his words are the only thing keeping me tethered to this world right now—that his words are literally keeping me alive—and if he hadn’t picked up I really might have blown my brains out.

You still have the gun. You can still check out if you need to, fall into the water, sink… sink… sink into oblivion, I tell myself, and that also helps, because it means I have options. Options are important. So is an exit plan.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

I know how hard being different can be. But I also know how powerful a weapon being different can be. How the world needs such weapons.

“I feel like I’m broken—like I don’t fit together anymore. Like there’s no more room for me in the world or something. Like I’ve overstayed my welcome here on Earth, and everyone’s trying to give me hints about that constantly. Like I should just check out.”

our high school is just a tiny place. Just a blip in your life, really. Good things ahead. You’ll see.”

“As far as I’m concerned, all guns belong at the bottom of rivers.” “I wonder if it even fires,” I say. “I’d feel a lot better if you’d at least put the gun down. I’m trying really hard to appear calm, but my heart’s still racing, and it would be much easier for me if you no longer had a loaded pistol in your hand.”

“My life will get better? You really believe that?” I ask, even though I know what he will say—what most adults would feel they have to say when asked such a question, even though the overwhelming amount of evidence and life experience suggests that people’s lives get worse and worse until you die. Most adults just aren’t happy—that’s a fact.

I’m sort of freaked about everything I told him—like maybe it was a mistake to be honest. I’m worried he’ll never look at me the same way—he’s just being nice to my face, but then when I leave he’ll tell Julius that I sicken him.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next, and that makes me feel like I’m covered in super-pissed-off scorpions and spiders.

Leaving immediately—just getting far away from Herr Silverman and the talk we had last night—is the most important thing in the world. I’m imposing. I shouldn’t be here. Maybe I shouldn’t even be alive.

It worries me that I can be so explosive one day—volatile enough to commit a murder-suicide—and then the next day I’m watching Bogart save the day with Walt, like nothing happened at all, and nothing is urgent, and I really don’t have to do anything to set the world right or escape my own mind.

I know you weeded the waters of your mind for me, for Mom, so we could celebrate my eighteenth birthday together—and so I could go on and enjoy the life you gave me. Keep weeding, Dad. Weed your mind. And man the great light.

Your parents and everyone else will punish you if you choose to be you and not them.

True friends are better than novels! Better than Shakespeare plays! Any hour of the day! Fake friends, on the other hand—well, I’d rather smash open my skull with a solid-gold Bible than endure the slow poison of a fake friend!”