Lower Topia • Chapter One
Episode 1
A Conversation
Charlie, I have a problem
In the beginning, we were uncomplicated and ready to be molded.“So, if I don’t have a legacy to offer, will anyone really miss me, remember me, after I am dead?” I really just wanted someone to help me with that question, even maybe for Charlie to hear me ask it; someone to talk about it with me. “Charlie, it has to be your fault. I mean it was your job, your only job. You were there from the beginning, you were there to ensure, create stability within our family from the beginning, not wreak havoc among its players.” I believe I had the right to tell him that. Sadly, you will see, he had no answer for me. We, Charlie and I, have a problem, and I want to share it with anyone who has time to listen. I’m not asking for help, however, nor answers. You can’t actually help me, there are no remedies, no resolutions. It just happened to end this way.
February 2023 My name is Charles. I am 77 years old, as of the first writing of this story. I live today, as I do and as I am, I believe, because of the actions, or lack of actions, of my younger self, Charlie. However, if there is anything I have learned from retelling my story is that, dear reader, we are all the same. Yet, that would be hard to prove since some of you are really good at not looking for questions to answer; some of you don’t believe they should ask any questions, then there are those who just don’t care to look nor ask, and then, sadly, some of you who just lie. Therefore, there is I believe, no standard rubric by which to compare my family story to yours. If yours seem to function, please know, as Charlie would concur, mine never did. But our families are not really good comparisons, are they? We know black and white are not the same, having little to call common; one isn’t even a color. Families join together for dinner, destination vacations; they smile for the camera in order to memorialize that moment. If you trust that smile, you’re golden. I would never purposefully rock your boat and your belief in the value you place on your family unit. I know I don’t have any right to criticize, belittle, nor threaten the sanctity of your family unit. But what I am to do, when all I have to rate my family are the social media portraits of your happy family you post for me to envy, to covet. Oh, I know you really didn’t mean to do that to me. But now I look at my family pictures, the few that I was allowed to keep, and see no image of happiness, no hope for this family to survive. I admit that maybe some of those smiles might have been honest back then, but, at this point in my life, the memory was being masked by what I have left to remember them. In the end, and with my quest to understand who I am, I have little to offer as an entitlement. I have to admit that I have no family unit. Never seemed to have ever had one. My dream of sitting on my lounge chair in the family room, watching my children’s children play, visit, share the comfort of my lap never happened. I could only lean onto the one person I believed I could rely on; to account for what went wrong back then. The single person I thought I could trust to offer me some insight, a memory; Charlie. I believe that a total stranger would only be able to wrap their arm around my shoulder, and say “I understand and feel your pain,” but do they really? They try but they don’t succeed. In the end, I believe I only have Charlie. At 77, I wanted more than consolation anyway. In the end, I guess, I wanted a chance to leave behind the only legacy I have to give my grandchildren, my story. And to write this story I asked Charlie to help me. He agreed. We’ll see how successful we were.
“Hey Charlie, it’s great to see you!” I was actually very happy to have this chance to talk with my younger self; maybe 10, maybe older, definitely not younger. He seems mature in stature, possibly a teenager. Charlie replied without hesitancy, “This is really weird.” “Definitely,” I agreed. Soon realizing he was here only to serve a role that I conjured up for him, he asked.
“So, Charles, what am I supposed to do? Just like ask you stuff?” Yeah, this Charlie had to be a teenager, his arrogance was obvious. “Sure, okay, maybe, do you want to know about yourself when you get to be me?” “Um,” Charlie was careful to make sure his first question was one that would help him know if it was worth all the bullshit he had to deal with lately. “So, I guess I want to know if we are happy.” “Sometimes, Charlie,” I need to explain that better for him; that ambiguous answer surely had to open up a whole world of questions even for myself. “But, hell, no one is really happy all the time, right Charlie?” Charlie was obviously annoyed as to how this conversation was starting out, and he needed to have a more specific answer, so he asked, “Yeah, but are we like happier?” Oh shit, Charlie really seems to be worried that his life wasn’t going to improve with age. How do I help him? I mean, if Charlie isn’t happy, then that has to have an effect on his future. Me. No? I once asked a therapist this question, if my younger self isn’t happy, and if I could, would it help me now if I could change that? Or does it really matter if the younger you can have a miserable life, while still allowing the older you to end up happy. Or is your shitty life now a direct relationship to your shitty life as the younger self? All I got from the $175/hour therapist was to ‘reach out more often to my estranged daughter’. Great!! [“Sarcasm, Sheldon. Sarcasm”].
“I can’t help you, Charlie. No, it never seemed to get any better. Maybe for short spurts of time, there was fun, but it always had a miserable base. My world, Charlie, how did it end so up-side-down? I don’t know if it started with your life; was it a result of your learned fear of dominance. Was it accepting your fate as destiny. Laying here Charlie, as I am, so precariously immobile with the weight of the sky, and so aimlessly wandering without a foundation of a firm ground” I agonizingly tried to make any clear understandable sense of how I am now left with no pride of fatherhood, no self-importance of any devotion, no love from admiration. How was I left with a child’s unrequited love for a father? I think I loved my father. Did I Charlie? “How did all this happen, Charlie?” Comforting as I can be to the teenager I seem to be in conversation with, I added in conclusion, “I’m sorry Charlie. This is not your fault. You’re not guilty. I know that now because of our mother. The mother that you embraced for comfort, the mother I cradled to offer wellbeing. I now understand we’re not guilty. You then, me now, it was just a bunch of bad decisions, assuming love can conquer all things human. We know now, Charlie, that was wrong.”