a journal entry

By Asa Montreaux 

I always wanted my life to work out as best as it possibly could, and I still want that. I wanted everything to be absolutely perfect, and I still do want that. Though sometimes it seems our life comes down to a few moments. Where everything hinges on a moment, and the success or failure of your life, or at least the next few years hinges on a decision. A moment where you have a choice to make. Where you have freedom, and responsibility for your actions. One day my life seemed to come down to one moment, and one choice. Where I both had to save myself, and take control of my future.

When I was a little boy I had been to had very mild congenital heart disease. The doctors have told me that we all little small holes in our hearts, and they never go away. Children have these and they are much bigger in this early part of my life. Eventually they start going away. Just a few of my holes were a little bigger than was considered normal. 

I’m not going to go into why I had slightly largely holes in my heart, but they are not there any more, and they were not something that I developed angry outbursts, or any kind of anger, or through any kind of physical excursion. Sometimes they had actually been worse than others, and that is normal. Normal life, stress, mild physical exertion, can cause small holes, or cause these holes to get smaller, or larger, but it’s usually only a very insignificant amount.

But as I got older they said it would go away. But by 2010 it hadn’t gone away. I was still a very young person but not everyone realized that. I was tall for my age, but not that tall. And I was very smart for my age, very smart. But someone didn’t understand all this. And he wanted to kill me.

When I was a little boy he often told me that I would go on a run and kill myself. He would tell me you’ll do drugs, and then you’ll go out there. And I’m sure you will, you’ll take lots of drugs, cocaine an everything, he said. And go out there, and do this. And then you’ll go run hard. And you’ll kill yourself. And you’ll have lots of coffee. And then you’ll run as fast. As hard as you can, he said. That was the way he said it. He paused and edited what he said. Emphasizing the being hard on the heart part. As if an aggression to do that. He’d say that. You do crack. I didn’t. I didn’t do drugs. I was a little boy.

All my life he told me this. That I was run so damn hard your gonna god damn die. High on crack. He’d always say that. You do crack. Of course I had not done that. Sometimes he would say it in public and draw the dirtiest looks to himself. He imagined no one could hear him. I don’t think he ever figured out they heard him and almost every time.

Over the years he would shout it around the house and people around, the neighbors next store, specifically, would hear him. He would shout lots of crazy things. And let’s say without really explaining, I avoided being around him. Though I always kept tabs on this. I was convinced it hep me beat him.

And of course when. I was younger it often occurred to me there must be some other reason for this. Because. I was needing further ultrasounds to see whether my condition (the condition of my heart) was improving. When it was gone, it definitely would be a freedom. I guess he would occasionally say that it was reckless to be a runner when you have a heart problem. My doctor said I was okay to jog and even sprint a little. He said you can just about as hard as anyone, though you are a boy. There was no reason to think I was going to hurt myself at all.

I guess I’ve never told anyone, at least not in a while, and it was only in absolute privacy, that was more than one or two times that he tried to kill me this way. He had tried forcing me to take coke, tricking me into it. He tried following me in car to make me sprint, as hard as possible I imagine. He even tried following me with a gun. He tried pointing at me and said run as fast as you can. He’d ask did you take the coke. I’d lie yes, I suppose. Just to try and get him not to shoot me. He tried numerous times. Though as time went on, he became more and more frustrated. 

Why he did this exactly, I won’t get into it. But he was jealous of somethings about me, about what I had accomplished. And he wanted money. I suppose he wanted my parent’s house, or houses. His name was Jamie. Or that’s what he called himself.

So eventually it all led to one battle. It was about becoming a man. I was reaching the age of manhood. He estimated the day I became of legal age. Though there were some neigh ours talking to us and we decided on a different date for the battle. I preferred never and this wasn’t a compromise exactly. Sure there was going to be a battle. But surely there were neighbours talking to us because all the sudden he was yelling things at the house next door and they said give a few week, or even a few months. And then added in then I added in the playoffs. Yes, the hockey playoffs. Ah, he mouthed. Then he said okay. Before the big game, I said. If you get there, he said. Or else, before, he said. I guess he was thinking he would keep track of it all himself. If we get eliminated, I said. And he thought that was a very good idea. Though he still wanted to kill me, he said. So that way he’d felt less inclined to predict for sure it would end. This definitely became even more a part of his psychology. That had predicted failure. That he predicted negative things in general. Because he wanted to right about this thing. But he had always done that. I had to resist laughing a little out loud, to myself, at how ridiculous it was that he always did that. Because he was wrong every time. But he was always trying to make decisions based on these early calls and it ruined people’s lives. 

As it turned, it had not happened. I had not went for a run. And I hadn’t used any drugs. I definitely hadn’t used any drugs the night before the big game. When he decided to go for it. I won. He didn’t get his way. And all the threats he made, to try and make me do this, all the control, it didn’t work. I just came home that night and went to bed. To drugs… no coffee. No running. I just went to sleep. And more on that later. More on the remainder of the story, later.

*this story is not fiction.