The Third Wave of Thoughts
John's childhood wasn't defined by moments of kindness but by the weight of expectations- expectations that often felt suffocating. One of the most vivid memories he had from that time was from a long, silent night at the dinner table.
It had been a normal evening, at least by their standards. The familiar clink of plates, the quiet hum of the TV in the other room, and the heaviness of the air that only seemed to sit in the house when Papa was around. But that night, John had done something he hadn't even meant to-he didn't finish his food.
The plate was half-empty, a silver of overcooked meat and pile of soggy mashed potatoes left untouched. John wasn't hungry. He just couldn't stomach it, but Papa wouldn't let him get away with it.
"Finish your plate, boy." Papa's voice cut through the stillness like a blade. There was no room for excuses.
John looked at the food, the cold mash potatoes that seemed to mock him, but he couldn't bring himself to eat. He just stared at it, in hopes it would just disappear, but the silence in the room thickened instead, as if the very air was waiting for him to break.
"Finish it." Papa repeated, his voice now quieter but still commanding, the force of years of authority backing his words. "Or you can sit here all night."
John glanced at the clock. It was already past seven, the usual time he was allowed to leave the table. He didn't want to be here any longer, but didn't want to face the ridicule in his grandfather's eyes or the punishment that would follow. But the uneaten food seemed like a mountain in front of him. The more he tried to push it away, the more impossible it felt.
Papa was a man who believed in consequences. He didn't need to raise his hand, didn't need to shout. The unspoken threat of his presence was enough.
Hours passed. The flickering light above him felt heavier, as if it was inching closer to his head. His stomach ached, but not from hunger-from the weight of the silence, the judgement, the waiting. The clock ticked loudly in the corner of the room, the seconds stretching endlessly in front of him.
"Still not eating?" Papas voice was low, now almost taunting. "Then we'll sit here all night, don't think I'm afraid of a fight."
It was as if the punishment of sitting at the table wasn't about the food-it was about breaking him, bending him into his will, instilling a sense of control that would make him comply.
John's eyes filled with tears, but he quickly wiped them away, refusing to show weakness. He thought about his mom, but she wasn't there. No one was there to protect him from this-a punishment he had no chance of escaping.
It wasn't until midnight, his eyes heavy with exhaustion and his hands shaking from the hunger he'd tried to ignore, that he finally forced himself to finish the last bite. The food tasted like ash in his mouth, but it was over. He could leave.
"Good boy." Papa said. the words hollow, empty. There was no praise in them, just a cold finality.
The coldness of Papa's discipline had always been a cruel form of love in his eyes, but one memory stood out as particularly twisted-a moment that John would never forget, even though it still made him stick to his stomach. The memory of the dog Jack.
It had been a rare soft spot for Papa, buying Bobby and John the dog. It was a little mut, scruffy and dirty, but they loved him like nothing else. They'd name him Jack after a dog in a book bobby's mom use to read to him. Jack had a kind of wildness in his eyes, the same wildness John sometimes saw in himself when Papa wasn't looking.
For the first time in John's life, he had something to love unconditionally-a companion who didn't judge him for being weak, who didn't care about the mistakes he made, who didn't punish him for every misstep. For a brief moment, John thought maybe, just maybe, Papa had shown him some mercy.
The mercy didn't last long. One afternoon, after John had gone to school, Jack got into the fridge that was left open. He had eaten a few hotdogs Papa had been saving. It wasn't a big deal, at least not to John. Just a dog being a dog, right? But to Papa, it was betrayal.
When john came home, the house was too quiet. The kind of quiet that wasn't normal. The kind of quiet where something had gone wrong.
"Papa?" John called out, his voice trembling.
Papa was sitting in his usual chair, the shotgun lying across his lap. His face was as stoic as ever, but there was something different in his eyes-a kind of coldness that John had never seen before.
"Papa?" he asked again, his heart thumping in his chest as he looked around for Jack.
"Your dog ate my food." Papa said, his voice low and tight. "A dig that can't respect the house is no good to anyone."
John froze, the words barley registering. He didn't understand. He couldn't understand.
"Wheres Jack?" John asked, his voice now trembling.
Papa stood up, his figure towering over John. "He's gone, Lesson learned, train your dogs."
John ran outside, his small feet slipping in than mud, his heart pounding in his chest. He called Jacks name, over and over, as if by some miracle the pup would come running out of the woods, wagging his tail, ready to forgive John for whatever he had done wrong. But there was nothing. No Jack. Just the cold empty woods.
He stayed out there for hours, the winter air biting at his skin, hoping, praying Jack would return. But he didn't. Jack was gone, and John's heart shattered to pieces.
For weeks, John couldn't sleep. Every night he stayed awake, staring out of the window, hoping that one morning, Jack would come trotting back. But he never did. Every night, the weight of the betrayal settled deeper into John's soul, along with the bitter understanding that, to Papa, nothing was ever a mistake. Every action has consequences. Every choice was weighed against a scale of right and wrong.
John sat in the cold silence of the house long after Papa's words had faded. The sting of his grandfather's discipline still burned in his chest, but it was the emptiness left by Jack's absence that gnawed at him, deeper than anything else. He didn't understand how one mistake—one small mistake—could take everything he loved away. Was that what it meant to be a man? To have no room for errors, no space for forgiveness?
The moonlight filtered through the window, casting a pale glow across the room, but it felt like everything was shrouded in shadow. The weight of the past, the weight of expectations, pressed down on him harder than ever before.
Papa's words echoed in his mind: "A dog that can't respect the house is no good to anyone." The meaning of that lesson was lost on him now, just like the lesson that had been left on his plate—the lesson of consequences. All he could feel was the growing resentment, a quiet rage simmering beneath the surface, and a hollow feeling that the man Papa wanted him to be wasn't the man he wanted to become.
John had learned the hard way that love didn't come with mercy, and mistakes didn't come with second chances. But somewhere deep inside, a small voice whispered that it didn't have to be this way. He didn't have to be like Papa. And for the first time, John wasn't sure if he even wanted to be.