REFLECTIONS

"You're useless. What are you doing here? You're useless. "

It's not the first time I've heard that; my mother and father already said it to me. My father always belittled me; it wasn't a surprise coming from him. He always hated me, maybe because when he hit my mother, I tried not to cry, maybe because I played the role of man of the house when he left, when I took better care of my mother than he ever did.

This shell that I built up around myself, it's because of him, so that nothing can hurt me. I suffered too much when I was young, from the absence of my father, from his mockeries when he was there! I also suffered from all this violence, which I knew before the age of 10, how somebody who claims to be a human being can do that to a woman and, worse still, to two children. my father, this man who never knew what life was worth.

Then, the same sentence came from my mother's mouth, my own mother, my own blood. She didn't say it exactly, but made it clear to me; since I arrested my brother, Mickey, for possession of drugs, she doesn't speak to me anymore. She told me things that I could never erase from my memory: "Just because you're a cop doesn't mean that you should arrest everybody . He's your brother . I'm sorry that not everybody can be as perfect as you are Maurice." And she just went on and on. I have never felt so much pain, as if I'd been stabbed.

It seems like everyone is turning away from me. but maybe it's my punishment? But did I deserve this punishment? I arrested my brother, but I'm a cop, so what was I supposed to do? Let him sell his drugs to anybody? Let him destroy himself? She doesn't understand that I did it for Mikey. Every time I try to help, nobody notices it; after all why would somebody like Maurice Boscorelli help a person? Everybody thinks that I don't have a heart. I am the one with the friend who's afraid of my anger; everybody thinks that I become enraged for nothing.

One single person, A SINGLE person has never thought bad of me, this person that I trusted with everything, the only one who didn't consider me useless, this person, tonight, turned away from me.

Faith, my best friend, the one in that I could trust without restraint, the only person who always supported me, just about killed me.

Fred had a heart attack. I went to the hospital to support her, and she was hysterical. She screamed me at me that I was useless, that she was tired of always putting up with me, that I go back where I came from.

Oh my God, Faith! Why? What did I do? What had I said or done to hurt her? I don't know if she realized the way she made me feel, she broke my heart. A lot of people have hurt me, but that . it's as if she ripped out my heart and held it in her hands, and ripped it in two.

I didn't let it show on my face how she made me feel. I just left and now I find myself here, in my mother's bar, a person who hates me, for what I did, for what I am. People walk by me, without seeing me, I've become a ghost, invisible and useless. I'm ignored, I'm misunderstood.

What you do if the people you love turn away from you?

I am in the men's room at the bar, ashamed to look at my reflection in the mirror. My mother, Faith, everybody considers at me useless. Even at work everybody ignores me. I walk around as if I was nothing; well, more to the point, nobody looks at me or talks to me.

The catechism teaches us that life is worth being lived, but when there is nothing that connects you to this world, as if you were a person among a million, and nothing distinguishes you from the others, how can anyone see you?

I punch the mirror once, then again. The second one breaks the mirror into million glass slivers. That is what I am, a glass sliver no more and no less. One small sliver that when you sweep them up, stays hidden and then it waits patiently and then a barefoot man comes and steps on it, he shouts, he roars, he tries to remove the little sliver, but it will not budge, it is there, it hurts, it sinks into his skin a little, and then deeper and deeper until it reaches the bone, and then finally you are stuck with it. What is only a small sliver turns out to be your worst nightmare.

I let off steam on this mirror.

I don't want to think about what Faith said me, maybe physical pain will make me forget the mental pain? No, once again I made a mistake, nothing can make me forget! The slivers of glass cut into my skin, blood pours out, and still, it doesn't hurt as bad as what Faith said, so I keep letting the slivers of glass cut into my hands. My hands are a mess, but still I continue to cut my hands.

I begin to cry, to ask what's left for me now that my one true friend thinks that I'm useless. What do I do now? I look at my hands, at the blood in the sink, and at the blood that has splattered the ground, and then I see it. A large piece of glass from the mirror. I know what to do now. It's the only solution. Nobody will miss me anyway.

I pick up the piece of mirror and I put it on my right wrist and I cut it. The blood begins to pour out. I put the glass on my other wrist and do the same. A sort of bliss fills me; it's the first time in months that I've felt so at peace. Maybe because for once, for one last time, I know that I have done something.