I don't know if we're building a midway park or not, for they'll say and do anything I want on any given Sunday before I remember that I still wasn't good enough, wasn't welcome, wasn't a force to reckon with, in the long run. My headphones are fused to my skull, I'm blocking out the world, feeling someone else's pain, letting my brain be stroked by emotions that only touch me via sound. And it cues up a mirror feeling inside, matching pain for pain before overtaking it completely and I no longer hear the words anymore, no longer can separate their objective pain from my deeply subjective pain.
All of it. I watch as the waves surge forward, higher and higher, fiercer, stronger, until the saltwater washes over me. She's only trying to help. She's trying to wash away my unintentional sins, my indelible heartbreak, she's trying to drown me to put me out of my misery.
I appreciate the thought, consider the efforts and the source, and press on, stepping back from the spray, disappointed when the music stops, headphones caked with salt and corrosion, head caked with decay and old memories that shouldn't have so much importance anymore but they do. The renewed silence brings the shouts and I turn away from the waves and see them coming. An army, deployed down the beach. Good. Just in time for B-day, storming the shoreline in the name of what's right. Centuries from now no one's going to mark it. Do we just die? Does it all just stop and then as the people who hold the memory of you die too everything just fades to black?
I hate it.
Lochlan's always the fastest, by virtue of being the smallest. It's a fact no one could ever deny, though he will tell you he cares the most and he will always get to me first. He's yelling something to me but he's only ten feet away and crashing into me, his arms out to pull me in just as my mind registers what he's been yelling all this time, his hoarseness masking the words.
Too close! Too close! You're too close!
As if I am a small child that's not listening. I suppose that I am, through no fault of my own. Caleb brings up that valid, undeveloped point on such a regular basis now in such a grand efforts to make and keep his amends and all it does now is serve to remind me ever so painfully that I'm not, nor have I ever been emotionally equipped to deal with Jacob and that Jacob should have known this and in his absence has put too much pressure on the army, too much responsibility on this army to deal with me, and it ages them before my eyes.
I close them so I don't have to see as I am violently crushed against Lochlan's chest, his arms a heavy vice around me, keeping the sea from her murderous thoughts, keeping me from mine, and his lips brush against my forehead and he says you're okay now, as if I am. As if I ever was, or will be, or might have been.
All of it. I watch as the waves surge forward, higher and higher, fiercer, stronger, until the saltwater washes over me. She's only trying to help. She's trying to wash away my unintentional sins, my indelible heartbreak, she's trying to drown me to put me out of my misery.
I appreciate the thought, consider the efforts and the source, and press on, stepping back from the spray, disappointed when the music stops, headphones caked with salt and corrosion, head caked with decay and old memories that shouldn't have so much importance anymore but they do. The renewed silence brings the shouts and I turn away from the waves and see them coming. An army, deployed down the beach. Good. Just in time for B-day, storming the shoreline in the name of what's right. Centuries from now no one's going to mark it. Do we just die? Does it all just stop and then as the people who hold the memory of you die too everything just fades to black?
I hate it.
Lochlan's always the fastest, by virtue of being the smallest. It's a fact no one could ever deny, though he will tell you he cares the most and he will always get to me first. He's yelling something to me but he's only ten feet away and crashing into me, his arms out to pull me in just as my mind registers what he's been yelling all this time, his hoarseness masking the words.
Too close! Too close! You're too close!
As if I am a small child that's not listening. I suppose that I am, through no fault of my own. Caleb brings up that valid, undeveloped point on such a regular basis now in such a grand efforts to make and keep his amends and all it does now is serve to remind me ever so painfully that I'm not, nor have I ever been emotionally equipped to deal with Jacob and that Jacob should have known this and in his absence has put too much pressure on the army, too much responsibility on this army to deal with me, and it ages them before my eyes.
I close them so I don't have to see as I am violently crushed against Lochlan's chest, his arms a heavy vice around me, keeping the sea from her murderous thoughts, keeping me from mine, and his lips brush against my forehead and he says you're okay now, as if I am. As if I ever was, or will be, or might have been.