That night after starting a fire in the wood stove I became extremely depressed. I could not get the days events out of my mind. The argument. Her flight of panic up the stairs. The crashing and bashing of the door. My hands shaking her. My yelling at her. The sobbing of her voice. The hurt in her eyes as I told her I didn’t love her anymore. The overwhelming looks of fear and hurt in my own two little sons eyes. The final scene of them driving away into the distance would stay with me forever. It was all too much. I pulled a full forty-ounce bottle of whiskey from the cabinet and began to drink it straight. To once again try to numb all of the emotions, the guilt, the hate I felt inside of me. That would not go away, would not leave me alone. I drank perhaps half the bottle, then decided to take about ten, or twelve pain killing tablets I had in the medicine cabinet. I slumped on my couch more morose than ever. How could I have come to this point? Why did I do what I did that afternoon? How could I do something so terrible to the very people that had loved me, had once loved me? I stood up feeling my self-sway with the beginning of drunkenness setting in, or was it the pills. I didn’t care any more. I placed the glass in the sink, grabbed the bottle of whiskey and took some deep gulps. I looked around this tiny small cabin, at my belongings, my photos, my life, and felt deeply ashamed. Walking to the kitchen storage area I opened the door and remembered that I had borrowed a friends twenty two-caliber rifle, finding it, I picked it up and went to the living room and sat down on the couch. Drinking some more I stood up and walking uneasily approached the kitchen table, grabbed a note pen and paper and headed back to the couch. I began to write a letter to my ex and the boys, trying to tell them how sorry I was for the things I had done to them. I told them that what I was about to do was not their fault but my own undoing. I told my ex to make sure that they knew it was not their fault, was not her fault. That it was my own choice. It was how I felt about myself and no one else. I took the last of the whiskey and drank it. I turned off every light but one small one in the living room and reached for the rifle. I had checked the rifle earlier and knew it was loaded. All I had to do was to cock the hammer back, place the barrel in my mouth and pull the trigger, and I would have peace. Peace from the torment, guilt I felt inside. They were all better without me. I had caused them nothing but pain. Well I would cause no one any more pain, ever. I leaned back into the couch, placed the rifle between my knees, the floor and coffee table, pulled the trigger back, opened my mouth to except the barrel, and had one last thought. Why or where this thought came from I don’t know. It was the furthest thing from my drunken mind at the time. I pulled my mouth off of the barrel, looked to the ceiling and cried out, “ If there is such a thing as God, then where are you now!” I put my mouth over the barrel again and reached for the trigger. As soon as I felt my finger touch the trigger, I felt as if I were being electrocuted. That’s the only way I can describe it. From the tip of my toes to the top of my head I felt as if I had placed my finger in a light socket and I was being electrocuted. There was an electric current running through my entire body. I looked down at my hands, my fingers, they were no longer on the trigger, and the trigger was not cocked back. What was going on? The rifle fell to the side of me, and the electricity I was feeling was replaced by a Warm tingling sensation that started at the top of my head and ran through me, down me, around me, over me. In one split second I felt more serene than I ever have in my life. I thought for a split second that maybe this is what it felt to be dead; I had pulled the trigger after all. I was standing now. I touched myself, I could feel myself, and I was alive. I was completely, completely and utterly sober. It was as if I had never drunk at all period. I walked to the door, opened it, walked out on to the porch in the half moonlit sky, sat on the stairs and began to cry, and cry, and cry. For three days and nights I cried. On again off again, like some tap that had a mind of it’s own. The tears would come and go, as I saw no one. No one called, no one came, and all I did was sleep, wake up, cry and sleep again. On the fourth day I knew what I had to do, what I needed to do, it was not going to be easy, but it was for everyone’s good, safety right now.
