In The Care Of Dogs

I am writing this to you because you have agreed to care for Dogs beginning x + 8:00 AM CST on 12/25/11 through (and ending) x + 3:00 PM CST on 12/26/11. (ref “def Term” call at end of writing).

I consider the beforehand agreement a sub-requirement to my main reasoning for this writing. My main reason being: the need for written instructions is an opportunity to write.

My reasons revealed, I will begin my instruction in the care of Dogs:

You are the substitute pack leader. The term leader has been left for you to define (ref “def Term” call at end of writing). You may choose to be a passive leader, a tyrant, loving, or a good leader. The best of these is the good leader. Before giving direction in the choice to define Leader(persona=”good”), I will provide you with the raw information for the care of Dogs:

LWM: The Shiv

My son is always collecting some new treasure to bring with him back into our house. I will come home from work and there, on the dining room table, laying on the floor in the living room, or sitting on the coffee table will be the collectable — maybe a stick resembling a gun (to him) or a box I attempted to throw away the other night. I will find the boy and ask him why his subjective treasure is in the house; he has no intelligible response besides “Because.” I explain, again, to him why the thing cannot be in the house and have him take it back outside. Skipping the confrontation and explanation with him and me simply taking the object and throwing it out the back sliding door, I have found, only leads to the thing migrating back into our home. My boy must reason “Why is my thing outside, I think it valuable, it must come back inside with me”, or something similar.

LWM: AR-15 In My Mouth: My Nights In Detox

This is my narration of some suicidal thoughts I had and as a result, spent a weekend in detox. I tried to give an as accurate account as possible and capture some concrete examples of what I was feeling.

I thought about using this experience as a framework for a fiction story instead of this narration, but decided against it for now. I may redo the narration and embellish it with some fictitious accounts to make it more dramatic, but probably not — that would make for bad fiction — the reader would most likely hear the lies.

So, read this as a factual narration. Some dramatic elements are present, such as; my thoughts of killing myself, putting a rifle in my mouth, I was sent to a detox facility, and I kept the situation from my wife.

The narration is still in progress, this may be a bit of risk to publish prematurely being much editing needs to be done, but I wanted to publish it to get feed back as I went along and hopefully attract more readers to my blog. I will make announcements with each update.

                                                                                              

Logistics

I am sitting in a dark bar parking lot, it’s closing time and I am heading home. But, before going home I wanted to test something — the most non-brutal way I can put this is: I wanted to see what the logistics of shooting my self with my rifle were. I had always thought I would have to pull the trigger with my toe, or it would be a stretch for me to reach it, but to my surprise it wasn’t difficult at all. As I dried fired the rifle (no rounds in the weapon) in my mouth, easily reaching the trigger, my next thought was “too easy”, which I said aloud as well.

I have had many suicidal thoughts in my life, but this…this is as far as I have gone — to actually make a plan, to feel the cold steel against the roof of my mouth, the black metal pushed against my teeth, imagining the percussion of the shot and the projectile traveling through my head into my brain. I spiraled into more thoughts of the end. I loaded a magazine with twenty rounds and snapped it into the weapon. I let the bolt slam a round into the chamber. I cleared it causing the round to fly from the rifle into the seat of my truck — picking up the round I roll it between my fingers, feeling the cool steel and appreciating its destructive powers. I perform this ritual in the parking lot for the next half-hour and decided to go home.