My Name is David 0mega

I was assigned the name David Junior at the time of my birth

And I was eventually told, in no uncertain terms, that the expectation was that I would shine bright as the sun

But the son was never what I wanted to be for as long as I could remember

Since my first memory

The first memory of my father’s hand coming down on my father’s son

The first memory of my father’s son falling to the kitchen floor

The first memory of my father’s son struggling to get up from the kitchen floor

The first memory of my father’s son learning the hard way that struggling to get up from the kitchen floor makes things worse

The first of many hard-learned lessons that my father’s son drank even harder to forget

The first of many deeply buried sessions my father’s son struggled to dig up with his archeologist, I mean therapist

The first of many pills that my father’s son had to swallow to steady trembling hands and a shaking voice

David Junior is the name of my father’s first and only son, he made damn sure of that

The prologue to this particular tragedy started long before I was even born

The idea, nah, the ideal of David Junior was created first and then, and only then, were little Davids allowed to come along

Don’t you get it? I wasn’t just named David Junior

I was foretold as if to be pre-ordained

Of course that poor kid kept falling to the kitchen floor because my father’s son never stood a chance

Please do not call me David Junior because I am not my father’s son anymore

I have worked so goddamn hard not to be

I will no longer carry his anger to my grave

I don’t need it to protect myself anymore; I’m not convinced I ever truly did

And the realization that he passed it on to me when I never wanted it makes it painfully clear: it was never truly his from the start

I don’t know who was the first David to start this awful tradition but I know damn sure which one will be the last

I do wish I could meet that Alpha David, though, and break his fucking jaw for everything he’s put us through

Goddamn it I just said I’m not gonna be my father’s son anymore

Fine, but I still want find out who started this

I wanna have one of the many conversations he, I, David, father, son should have had a long time ago

I want to ask him what terrified him so deeply

I want to ask him what pushed us on to this terrible path

I want to tell him he’s safe now

I want to tell him I won’t let anyone else hurt us and more importantly that I won’t hurt anyone else to accomplish that

Please do not call me David Junior

My name is David 0mega

Because the tradition of passing down my forefathers’ anger will end with me