When I Saved that Cockroaches’ Life

When I saved that Cockroaches’ Life

​It was one of those dark rainy summer nights you know? When you’re 5 years old and everyone in the house goes to sleep but you. The rain. It wasn’t soothing or chaotic as rain normally is…. It was just helping me think.

​I remember, whenever I couldn’t go to sleep. I would just stare out that window until hopefully I was in a dream. But what was I thinking about ….? Come on think! Think idiot, that’s it…. I was thinking about….. Not to sound like an asshole but…. I was thinking about me. Oh what am I saying, it happened 13 years ago, I was 5 years old, I was thinking about the big me. Yeah the big me, the older me. I was thinking about when I would change and if the world would end up changing with me, and if.

​I must have been thinking a lot on that August night. Because when I broke thought I realized I was on the floor of my room, half way under my bed with only my head sticking out, still bundled in my blanket…. just a little bit tighter.

​Remembering that night just brings back the feeling. I do not like it. Is it weird though? After all these years I can still remember that feeling.

​You know come to think about it, there was that one street light you could see through that one window from my bed. The street light, it was something about that night I just knew it even before my haed hit the pillow only to attempt to go to sleep.

​Then it begins, me the little me, 5 year old me still bundled up tightly in my blanket began to feel it. The feeling was dark. It creped like an English burglar through the night, as if it didn’t want you to know. A feeling like that how could you not know it was coming, I felt it growing behind me still creeping but beginning to close in. Then it happened.

​That darkness that felt the need to creep…. Grabbed me. Was it too late? The darkness, while holding my left leg began to drag me under. With my body half way sticking out from under the bed, I began to grab the ground. Thinking it would save me, but every time I went to grab I would just miss and my hands would helplessly hit the ground, palms hitting the floor. Constantly over and over doing the only thing I could think of that would make a difference in what the darkness was doing. Who was I to try and stop the darkness?

​Then suddenly, it happened. The darkness let go, I felt the freedom from the darkness when I was able to pull my leg away from under the bed. Why had the darkness let go?

​You know it was dark that night, in my room. I only had one window in my room in the old green house on Magnolia. And out that one window there was one street light. That had never been out but for some reason on that rainy night it had gone out.

​The darkness, did it let go because it gave up? Doubt it, I was hardly putting up the 12 round fight with the darkness. Or was it because the darkness second guessed its self? Or maybe it was that street light, that had never been out but for some reason had finally turned on.

​The feeling, of the darkness. Grabbing my leg. Right before it began to pull me reminded me of a lot like that time I saved that cockroaches life. It happened when we had been walking, we notice it running across the dirty ground in the quad. Something was said, I think it was, “Let’s light it on fire”. We agreed we should so we began to “light it on fire”, while stepping on the cockroaches leg, left leg, I had him trapped. I felt him trapped, I knew he was trapped because when he tried to run off, I felt the force of the roach get tugged from how fast he tried to escape. It’s kind of funny, the roach kept trying to run away even though the roach knew he was trapped, then it was like the roach gave up or honestly it was like the roach came to an understanding. An understanding of the situation that the he the roach had no control over what was going to happen, that there was no way the roach could save his own life. The roach must have felt a lot like me right before the darkness let go. Hopeless, just waiting for a street light to turn on, or maybe just hoping for a change of heart.

​So am I the darkness or the hopeless roach? I think about that a lot. That hopeless roach and that dark feeling around my leg. I bet the roach lived a good life .

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