Destruction

[Back to Present]

I couldn't sleep. It is already midnight.

I took a deep breath and meditated for a while. But couldn't get enough peace of mind. I didn't have all these thoughts and past memories haunting me for a long time. But my father's death seems to have brought all of these back.

I laid back on the bed and hugged a pillow tightly. I used my left hand to pat myself gently for two hours before I slowly drifted to sleep.

It might seem childish and even a bit retarded, but it has been a long time since I realized that the only affection that comes to you without any conditions is from yourself and the only peace you can find in your mind that could last longer than anything else is when you are with you.

The next day, I woke up normally. Had the breakfast my mother made and started writing. Ate lunch, wrote again, ate dinner, wrote again. After that, I masturbated and patted myself to sleep.

The same routine went on and on. I and my mother don't even have minimum communication. Actually, it is because I don't speak with her much, and every time she wanted to start a loving conversation, I had to force myself to listen and talk.

I laugh, make jokes, and listen intently, but everything is an act. For some odd reason, my mother doesn't seem to understand it. She was fully convinced.

When I think back to those scenarios, sometimes, I feel like I could become an actor. Not an excellent one, but at least a decent one.

After the exhausting week, I would take Sunday off, this is also part of the routine.

And just like that, this Sunday, I went to watch a movie in the morning. I don't really have a particular interest in movies. I don't care who acts in it, I only watch for the plot, the rest of the aspects, like the special effects, the music, and the abs of the main character are not my concern. I don't enjoy a movie, I just study it.

I try to understand the story to the best I can and would try to understand what the director or writer wanted to express with it. Most of the time, I end up nitpicking at the flaws in the way they told it.

Later, I went to the restaurant alone.

If you think you are a confident and secure person, try walking into the most crowded restaurant with a brightly lit ambiance all alone. Take the most eye-catching table there is and finish the meal without avoiding any eye contact that you might make accidentally. And do not look at your Phone.

You would know how insecure you are.

You would learn how self-conscious you can be. Without even knowing you would try to hide your flaws. If you have a feeling that you are fat, you would try to hide your belly as much as you can.

If you think that your taste in food is weird and you were repeatedly told by many but you acted like you didn't care, you wouldn't be able to order that food at that moment.

Without even knowing, every person subconsciously avoids the most eye-catching tables. They always search for the corners even when they are with someone.

But I do that every week. Trying to feel conscious of myself. Because for some reason, on the day Sam and Sunny disappeared, I stopped caring about what others thought of me.

I stopped caring about my hair, beard, clothes, and hygiene. Those thoughts don't cross my head. The only reason I tidy myself up is that my mother wouldn't let me hear the end of it if I don't.

And I am perfectly sure I obey everything she said, not just because I love her. There is something more. A feeling that I couldn't comprehend, it is like a complex mixture of solutions.

I don't know when I started feeling this emotional cocktail, which is the only form of emotional attachment I have by the way. But I still have a faint trace of memory which might be the start of that.

I finished my meal and went to the outskirts of the city in a cab. To a large abandoned warehouse.

The building is one big room. There is a lot of scraps everywhere. There is a corner with a lot of broken pieces of pottery, glass pieces on another side, and a half-destroyed old car.

I walked towards the last corner where a large blanket is covering a lot of things. I took off the blanket and there are many pottery, glass vases, wooden dolls, and other fragile and beautiful things.

There is a sledgehammer, a ball peen hammer, a claw hammer, a mallet, and a small chainsaw, and many more.

I took a couple of pots and the sledgehammer to the corner with broken pottery. I placed a pot, a beautiful hand-crafted pot with a wonderful floral design on it. I couldn't help but admire it.

I raised my sledgehammer and smashed it.

*CRASH*

"Ahhhh…"

"Yeah…"

I yelled at top of my lungs as I broke each piece. Then I moved to the glass. I threw them to the wall, broke them with the hammer, and finally moved to the half-broken car with a sledgehammer.

I started smashing the hammer on the car continuously.

*BANG*

*BANG*

*BAM*

*CRASH*

The silent warehouse, resounded with the destructive noise of metal hitting metal as I crazily hit.

I don't know what my face looked like at that moment, but if I had to guess my expression would show that I am alive. Because I felt alive.

This is something I do every two days.

But I had to stop it for the past few days, because of my father's funeral.

As for why I do it, the answer is simple yet complicated. But the basic reason is personal satisfaction.

People say that creating something is the most satisfying thing. It gives the greatest satisfaction. But I always feel that it is wrong. I don't believe that satisfaction is the greatest, but it might last long because of its physical presence, but it is not the greatest.

There is one type of satisfaction that might be short but will give you the greatest feeling and that is satisfaction through destruction.

Try destroying something beautiful once. I am sure you would be tempted to do it again.

Go to your home and try to find a fragile thing whose absence doesn't impact your life that much and break it.

Hit it like you mean it. Break it until there is no chance to put it back together. You will understand why I do that every other day.

Destroying a thing will give you primal satisfaction. For some people, it gives this sense or even an illusion of power, freedom, and superiority.

There is a reason why terrorists blow up things and people. Most of the time it is not for a cause, that is a lie they tell to themselves and others to provide a justification. It is about that satisfaction and the feeling of being powerful. That is what drives them to do it.

Every time, I do this, I feel alive, I try to feel that I am free, uncaged, unhindered, and unshackled. And this is the short time I feel that way.

I don't know how that cage was formed or how I wore those shackles, but as I mindlessly destroyed that car with the hammer, some memories came back haunting me.