Please Forgive Me God (Then Eat Shit and Die)

“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are 'it might have been'” - Kurt Vonnegut

A baby boy is left at an orphanage with nothing but a letter to his name. On the envelope that contained the letter was written “To Dorian Clark Gable, to receive when at an appropriate age.” Inside the letter was this message.

“Dear Baby I held in my arms for what will always seem like moments ago,

I am going to tell you something that they'll refuse to tell you; most likely because when they look into your eyes they hope for the coming of a new and kinder world; that your future will not be like that of our dark past. But they are doing you a disservice. They are handicapping you and your chance to be ready with a noble gesture; one that has been wrong a million times over...

Child, terrible things are going to happen to you, inevitably. And when they do you must try not to hate the people around you – and god knows you will want to; as there is nothing in the world easier than to hate and nothing in the world harder than to stop – for these people are innocent equally as they are guilty. They are not your enemies; as much as they will seem like it at times. They work hard to hide it, but they are just as afraid and scared as you because similar yet uniquely terrible things are happening to them as well. It is these terrible things, in their constant assault and demoralization, that will cause us all to do equally horrific things to each other. Masked as vengeance, which has yet to wield even the slightest ounce of justice in our history, we will demand blood in accordance to our own idea of balance and fairness. Don't be fooled, it is all still empty and petty hate.

And in the rare times you will be able to prevent this hate, you will be left with a bitterness; one so foul that it will almost feel like a punishment for controlling yourself. But, I promise you the pains and the problems that you would face letting that anger run wild would be ten fold in comparison. Your lashing out from the tragedies that have befallen you would only continue on a chain we have been unknowingly pushing along since the first being knew of pain. Is it fair? No, but there is nothing promising you fairness. Fairness is much like vengeance, in that it is all a false expectation we conjured up for ourselves and have carelessly pushed onto you.

But you must not be too hard on the people of the past for it all stemmed from their belief in silly things; things such as beauty. It is important to remember that the world is not beautiful at all but instead ugly. Beauty promises right and wrong, beauty claims potential, beauty is the belief in what should be and what shouldn't be and thus gives us right to judge what is not beauty. But ugly does not promise you anything, ugly does not work to benefit you, ugly does not have consideration; it is equal in that it just exists. It is there and it is up to you to choose what of it you can bare; as there will be ugly things you will care for and ugly things that you will be repulsed by. There will be people that others despise whom you will love with all your heart and there will be people most everyone will love and you will have nothing but disdain for. No one is wrong. Some people just don't get along.

The only time I have ever believed in real beauty is when I saw your mother hold you in her arms and I understood that there was nothing more important in my life than the two of you; it felt right. I no longer cared about working to maintain my network of connections. I no longer cared about keeping up with the Jones. I no longer cared about immortalizing my name. When I had both of you, I didn't feel the need to fill my life with some sort of weightless meaning. The whole of my being was complete and no one else could possibly be so lucky to have been me for that first month. That was until your mother was taken from us...

What an ugly world it will be for you to grow up without ever knowing her. She was one of the few people who ever inspired me to be better. You must understand that before her, I was a mess of a human being; cold and untrusting; some may even say paranoid. But she came into my lowest point when I was ready to be alone for the rest of my broken life. She broke through the ice to find the weak beating heart underneath. Then she did a foolish thing and decided to love that weak heart. She deserved so much better. She was an honest-to-god angel. And if she were still alive you would have a chance to survive all this. But, I am afraid all you would have is me now...And the honest truth is that a monster cannot raise an angel.

Without your mother that I am nothing more than an uncaring creature. I have spent my life alienating people and back stabbing others; trying to rise to the top in order to feel like I had a purpose; to prove I was better than everyone else who ever criticized me. But, after all the failures and all the tragedies, I have learned that I could never rise to any form of Valhalla. For even if I was a master of my craft, I had failed to grasp on to the things that make life worth living.

I substituted peace of mind with cynicism and pretended it was awareness. I have been so bitter most of my life thinking that the world betrayed me that I didn't realize that it was me poisoning myself. My simple vanity eventually boiled over into a depraved sense of self-righteousness and my foundation and principles dissolved into a manic rejection of the conclusion I had been given. There was no me as a living person; just a single purpose vessel, like that of an insect infected by a fungi that wished to devour more and more until all were made into the image of the first. It is only now, after the intervention of your mother, that I have become so conscious of it. But I constantly fear that I might have realized this years too late in a period of my life where no redemption could be possible...No matter. Still, each day, I work to not become the thing I used to be, in her memory.

Forgive me, son. I am a terrible person trying so hard to be good. And that is the reason that I cannot be the one to raise you. As long as I still have this darkness inside of me, you will be in danger of my relapse. I must give you up to people who will work to protect you and give you a good home where you can grow up healthy and with role models worth having. They will be the ones who you will need to love. Do not forsake their presence in your life. If you need anyone to point your anger to when those terrible things happen, let it be me for I will deserve it. I will absorb all that torments you, abuses you, fails you, and betrays you. If I can't be there for you as the father you deserve, then at least let me give you my being to burn in effigy.

...It is so odd now. When I was young, I learned that my biological father left when I was hardly a year old. I was so angry at him for the longest time and I promised if I did end up having children that I would not abandon them like he did to me. I guess there was always a small fear in my mind that in never meeting him that I would subconsciously become like him and repeat his mistakes. I can imagine that not only have I become him but I have exceeded him in awfulness. But I am sure my old man would have been just as terrible in person as he was in absence and even though I am abandoning you now, to this orphanage where I can only hope that you will be taken good care of and given to a good family, I hope you will understand that it is all for the better.

If one day you want to search for me, whether it be for curiosity or to give me a swift punch to the jaw, I will not hide from you. I will be waiting. But, I will tell you now what you may find on that fateful day. You'll find someone who will not recognize you and no matter how many pictures you've seen, you will not recognize him. You will have heard stories, both good and bad, of a man who fought endlessly to make something of himself and didn't wait for others to get out of his way. He did many unbelievable things; most things he is not proud of, but he realizes he can't take back. He fought men and he evaded death. He poked giants and he traveled worlds. But when you come to finally see this man, you will wonder if this is the very person that all those stories were about. And the answer is no. He was at one point but he is no longer. Instead, he has become a sad man that can hardly conjure the will to proceed from day to day but he will push on pathetically with a sigh. And most likely you will feel sympathy for him, but you will be the only one. Broken and alone, he will sit atop his empty castle. An after-image of a dream gone wrong and the corpse of a possibility smothered to death. The most useful aspects of him have been stripped and wasted only to burn what is then left over. They sometimes ask who is John Gable? This is John Gable.

I tell you all this because I don't want you to be disappointed and hurt. The world has a way of taking expectations and smashing them. You can have dreams but you must understand what from these dreams will make you happy. Do not search for approval from anyone but yourself. It is a starving void that can never be filled. And don't think that because most people can't have it, that it is worth having. There will be more death and torment in search of the golden fleece than will ever be worth it. At the very least, do not be like your father.

This letter is my meager attempt to make things right. I can't predict if by the time they hand it to you if it will mean anything or if it will make you happy or sad. I can just hope that it will give you a nudge away from the fire I fueled. Maybe it will seem almost without context and you will not care about my plight and I cannot justify asking you not to judge me. But, I will ask you to have sympathy for others who you would otherwise have no sympathy for. If you find someone that you can do nothing but despise, just know that terrible things have happened to them, inevitably, and that no one person can understand another's struggle. Like how I will never be able to understand what you will go through, I can just hope for the best.

In an attempt not to ramble on inanely, I will end my letter here with no further words; as for once I wish not to digress.

Love,
Your Father, John Gable”