Too Old for This

by Samantha Downing

regret is one of the most insidious things out there. Arthritis is a close second. You can’t live and not have regrets. Some call them life lessons and try to figure out what they’ve learned from each experience. That’s well and good, but you’ll always wish you hadn’t done it in the first place.

Eight years later, when Detective Burke asked who my son’s father was, I couldn’t tell him any of that.

Burke also didn’t know that Marilyn, Walter, and Paul were years after Gary, when killing had become a bit like sex. First, I had to be in the mood. Next, the opportunity had to present itself. The place, the time, who was around and who wasn’t. It all had to work. But the most important thing was the anger. I had to be very, very angry.

Giving in is a process, not a moment. It happens piece by piece, little by little, like the way my house has deteriorated over time. Some chipped paint here, a leak in the bathroom, then a loose floorboard, or two or three or ten. It takes a long time for a house to become run-down. The same goes for people. It’s one thing to have all these aches and pains, but it’s quite another to forget something important. Something so crucial. It’s no longer a sagging porch or wiggly banister. My mind is deteriorating, and that’s like discovering a crack in the foundation.

It’s not momentous. There is no giant light bulb that goes off in my head, or a sudden earth-shattering realization. This is a slow, agonizing surrender. I am getting too old, and too weak, to live the life I want.

Judgment is one of those things you can feel before you know what it is.

Yes, people put their interests ahead of others’, even in times of tragedy. Accident, illness, missing child—it doesn’t matter. Self-interest always takes precedence. The people who are supposed to help, who get paid to help, will still choose themselves.

I rarely post on social media, but not because I don’t understand it. I don’t post because I do understand. The urge to prove I have lived never goes away.

That’s the thing about anger. It doesn’t just sit around, doing nothing inside of you. Anger has to go somewhere.

People say they want the truth, and they believe they want it. But it’s a lie. Nine times out of ten, if you know what’s good for you, the last thing you want is the truth. What you want, what we all want, is the story we believe in. And it’s probably a lie.