30. Excerpt from Anthony Stephens’ Mood Journal

September 1 2003

Morning: 2 out of 10

Afternoon: 3 out of10

Evening: 2 out of 10

I went through my mom’s stuff today. First time since she passed. I found a picture of my dad in a box full of photos, the only picture I’ve seen of him since the day after he left and my mom burned everything he’d left behind in a barbecue pit we keep in the backyard. The picture was jarring, to say the least. Made me realize the quasi-image of him I’ve had in my head for years now is not my dad but some false mental projection of him that I created for some reason. I mean, it was weird seeing his face because I haven’t really had a full memory of that at all. Once I saw the picture though, it was like it filled some gap, and then I kind of wondered if there had ever been a gap to begin with or if I’d just let myself believe there was one. Made me lightheaded as shit looking at it, like somebody’d just implanted a memory in my head or something. Like in The Matrix when they’re uploading data into Neo’s brain so he can learn how to do Kung Fu and jump buildings and shit, the way he looked when they put that first program in his head, I feel like I must of made that face when I looked at the picture of my dad. Wide eyed and frowning but not mad, just confused like “…whoa.”

Basically, the discrepancies are this: my dad wasn’t as tall as I thought he was. He was actually pretty short. And skinny, really skinny, not big and burly like I remembered. My mom was smaller than him in the picture, but not by much. In the picture they’re eating cake and they’ve both got frosting on their noses and they’re laughing. I don’t know who took the picture, but whoever it was they caught something I didn’t even know existed: my mom and dad happy with each other. I can’t tell whether the picture helped my state of mind or not. I’ve been under the impression for most of my life that my parents hated each other every moment of every day since they met which—from what I gather—was right before they gave birth to me. I’d always thought that maybe they were just drawn together by obligation and some sick, masochistic urge to be around each other. But they looked pretty damn happy in that picture. I mean, like, really happy. It’s funny how drastically things can change sometimes.

Actually, what am I talking about? It’s not funny. That shit isn’t funny at all. It sucks. It really fucking sucks.

Next