So I was watching Donnie Darko the other day. That movie came out towards the end of high school. At the time, I was questioning the unfairness of this rat race. It hurt me to go through the motions, but I had no choice. My parents put a roof over my head, loved me unconditionally; they wouldn’t let me just give up. Even though I had stopped trying, I was still going through the motions, for their sake. But, you know. That’s life.
Now, Donnie Darko is a singularly depressing film. It makes you think. It makes you wonder how any of us manage smiles. And yet, when that movie first came on at my friend Cody’s house, I felt at home – both in the movie and at Cody’s. See, I’d go to Cody’s place every day after football practice. And when football season was over, I’d still head over there right after school. We’d spend hours listening to Bone Thugs, Dayton Family, and other, obscure, unmentionable and entirely cringe-worthy rappers (Tech N9ne comes to mind).
We’d eat hot pockets, we’d drink Dr. Pepper, and we’d play Madden 2006 on GameCube. We’d play for hours and hours and hours, the skies outside always dark, it being Seattle. Cody’s room was in the basement of his family’s house. Wes would be there, Dylan, too. Sometimes TJ would come over from down the street with his computer and they’d all play counterstrike together while I played minigames in Madden. Rushing Attack was my favorite because I could play it by myself over, and over, and over – escapism at its finest. Chugging more Dr. Pepper, the skies getting darker. This was before the time of cell phones, at least, not in my family’s budget. A lot of kids at school had Motorola Razr’s, but I wasn’t a lot of kids – my dad was a cabbie raising a family of 8. My mom rarely called me, but she knew where I was. At Cody’s house.
On the occasions that I stayed too long after dark, and she got really worried, mom would call the house phone at Cody’s. Where are you, she’d ask. At Cody’s, I’d say. Doing what, she’d ask. Playing video games, I’d say. Come home. Okay, mom. And I’d say bye to the guys and walk the twenty minutes home. She always suspected I was doing drugs or some similar sin over there. In reality, we were a straight edge bunch. We didn’t do much besides play video games, curse like sailors, and drink too much soda. Just some kids, really. Escaping the world. Escaping the pain of being 15ish. I mean, it’s not like our high school experience was any worse than most Americans’. High school is by default a painful time. Growing pains and peer pressure to fit in. Economics. Social status. Cloudy skies.
It was all a mess, and on top of that, I didn’t belong. Too white-washed for the black kids. Too black for the Asian kids. Too foreign for the locals, too local for the foreigners. An absolute anomaly. Small wonder I discovered writing, though I didn’t believe in myself enough to see that as a viable option in my future. I didn’t really see much of a future, period.
I just played those video games, drank that Dr. Pepper. Played pick-up football at the park down the street from Cody’s house. The drizzle blanketing us with sideways embraces as we ran routes in the grass, dew drops on the football forming between the grippy dimples. Like Donnie Darko’s smile. Run, cut, catch, touchdown.
I might not have seen it as happiness at the time, but we were all helping each other survive. Coping with the pain of Seattle. Everyone is depressed there, you know. It’s an open secret. It shocks me that people still romanticize that city. That people still move there, buy homes there. Sometimes I wonder if Seattle is an objectively bad place or if my subjectively bad experience forever paints it that way. I don’t know. All I know is trauma is not in the business of bartering; some of those memories don’t let you go.
But this is me letting them go.