Categories > Celebrities > My Chemical Romance
Show My Scars
2 ReviewsFRERARD COLLABORATION WITH MYCHEMICALBITCHBOT! Being scarred, being afraid isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s what makes you who you are, molds your person. It isn’t something people shou...
In a word, life is bitter. It can be sweet, it can be salty, and it can have a pow! But it doesn’t always have these things, it can be full of disappointment, and usually is. But that doesn’t mean you have to be afraid, afraid of the world and afraid of the people around you. We get it, you have scars. Everyone does. It doesn’t matter how many you have, there will always be someone out there with more.
Being scarred, being afraid isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s what makes you who you are, molds your person. It isn’t something people should hate you for. It’s something people should look up to you for, for getting past it, facing your demons. You can be filled with as many poisons as you want, as long as you never let them take you down. Do you want to know why? Because you’re not nothing.
It was too soon, to most people, for someone to turn their back on the light. To completely forget what it’s like to be loved, to discard the desire to be loved altogether. It’s simple, almost painfully so to know it doesn’t take much to be on your own.
Some people, it would seem, can’t handle being alone. Can’t handle not having someone to cling to, someone to cry to when plans go awry. They can’t handle knowing they’re not loved. It’s a burning in them, a yearning ocean of need that will never dry up. It’s an annoying quality, yet so many people have that silly idiocracy called friendship.
I’m glad I’m not one of those people.
I am not, in any way, shape or form needy of human company or stalkerish agendas. I don’t have friends, I gave up trying to make things I don’t like ages ago. It would be silly to make friends, friends who will want you to listen to them when really, you just don’t want to listen.
Friends try to erase any boundaries you’ve set up, destroy the peaceful solitude that you bask in. Friends are a pointless game of hide and seek, you try to find them and they try to find you.
I’ve never been found while playing hide and seek. I suppose that’s just another thing that makes me “abnormal”. When I hide, I’m never found. I can lie at the drop of a hat; I can count the cards in poker like I can count the days.
It really does worry me that people let themselves be found so easily, open themselves up like they’re gasping for air. I wondered why, of course, that they could be so easily opened when I can’t, like the toughest oyster refusing to break I stand strong and alone.
I don’t really need to see people much; I work from home as an artist. I don’t really paint the norm, what people tend to desire. I once tried to paint a landscape someone told me was “beautiful”. It was a soft meadow field filled with bright flowers and seemed to make people smile just looking at it.
I took that serene meadow and made it what I saw, distorted, lacerations to the piece with a quick slash of the brush. I thought it was beautiful in dark purples, grey and black. They thought it was ugly, they thought I shouldn’t have ruined something so pure with the darkness of my heart.
Yet the painting sold at a high price, likely to someone with the same distant heart as me. There were enough people out there with the love for the abnormal, for the twisted views I seem to have on life to keep me painting, keep me locked in my apartment for countless hours pouring my soul onto the white canvases.
My tough shell got a crack.
It was a crack apparent to me, and maybe to my manager. It’s not subtle; it’s a blazing fire that refuses to be extinguished.
Because really, I didn’t want to be around anyone. I wanted to live a shallow life alone into my death, away from the cunning and cruel world. I wanted to live in seclusion; I want to be left alone with books and the images that seep into my nightmares for inspiration.
I’m still alone, I’m still fighting for myself but I’m so cruelly succumbing to the harsh ways of friendship, the way you visit me when you’re bored, the way you ramble on about the silliest things. It’s so stupid, you’re so stupid, but somehow I can’t stop painting you. I can’t stop the feeling that cones with you, anger and despair yet a hugging warm emotion that I had learned to hate.
Dare I say it? No, I would never dare to say that I might actually like you. Because I don’t, I really don’t. I really don’t care that you’re here with me every day, that you will talk while I work away at my paintings silently, your voice a soothing background melody. I think you understand that if you were anyone else I would ask you to leave. But I can’t get enough of your voice, it’s an intoxicating thing that somehow reaches into my soul and changes it, helps it grow, makes me care.
My art is still some of the darkest you’ll ever find, the occasional rushed stroke showing the insanity I hold at bay. But there’s an occasional glimpse of light, maybe a twisted creature reaching for the dark orange sun. It’s breaking me, it’s breaking everything about me and I’m finding that I love it. It’s intoxicating, I’m smiling and I mean it. I’m not lying when I say I love being alive. I’m not trying to drown out all my self-loathing when I’m with you.
You brought me out of my shell, taught me about the world. The first time you got me out of the house, we went to a coffee shop. I’ve always hated ordering, so you smiled and did it for me. I smiled back, and it was small, but it lit up your face. You had never seen me smile before.
I made letting myself smile around you a habit, it made you happy for some reason. I gave you a key to my apartment; you had a mug or two on my shelf. You would talk to me, tell me all of your problems with the people at work, and rant angrily at what the homophobes did to you.
I never had a problem with you being gay; I myself was ambiguous, maybe asexual. And I found myself getting angry, enraged whenever I heard the rude words people told you. I think it showed in my paintings, my manager told me he liked the style I had started working on, the vengeful thoughts interweaved into the soul of my painting.
We stayed at my apartment often, but would occasionally venture out into the cruel world together. We went to the coffee shop once a month, we even explored the local bookstore together. You tried to get me to go to a bar with you, and I turned you down right away. A month later you asked again, and we got drunk together for the first time. We were friends.
We were close, you eventually weaseled out information from me, and I listened to all your problems with open ears, knowing almost everything.
All that changed when you got a boyfriend.
You stopped visiting me so often, stopped by maybe twice a month or so. Then you stopped coming at all, moved out of the apartment building to live with your love. I cursed myself for letting you get close to me, for letting you rip me apart when you left.
My paintings, which my manager expected to be empty, were full with a new, twisted romance, one partner waiting for another that never comes. An empty wine bottle and arose across a darkly covered table, a half-full glass of the dark liquid and a vacant body slouched on the chair.
I was empty, not for the first time in life, but for the first time… it hurt. You changed everything about me, you took everything I knew and carelessly tossed it out the window. You earned my trust, something I thought I had lost. I felt abandoned, I felt betrayed.
And I scolded myself for thinking such things, for blaming you for all of my problems. You created a war within me, and didn’t even stay to finish the last battle.
I went out of my house to buy alcohol, not waiting for a mail delivery like I do with food. I couldn’t wait, I needed all the alcohol to drown out missing you. I didn’t want to feel the rush of emotions that overtook me when I thought about you.
I didn’t even wait to get home to open the bottle, I started pouring the whiskey down my throat the moment I left the liquor store. I walked home, bottle in hand, trying to forget everything as the cobblestone road made me trip along.
I just wanted it all to end, I wanted not to feel the love you burned into me. It was that drunken thought, so blunt and unexpected and so perfectly true. I was in love with you.
When I got back to my apartment, I could barely get the key into the lock. Maybe it was a sign, I thought. Maybe it meant that I’d find the right fit for me but we’d never be together.
I painted, liquor clouding my mind and I painted like I never had before. I painted raw hurt, I painted every dark thought that came to my mind and lashed the words in the corner, on the tables in my paintings, on a white shirt of a created character, anywhere I could. Somehow, you were almost always in them.
The paintings were messy, something I’d have to go back and fix, but they were real, and they were every emotion I had bottled up and ignored spilling out onto an innocent canvas.
I took a knife and slashed cuts into some of them, adding to the mood and not satisfying me in the least. I let the alcohol break my hold on reality, I let it wash over me and destroy any semblance of calm I’d ever built up.
I was real, I was me and I was suffering because you weren’t there with me. I was hurting, hurting like you’d left for good. I thought you had, I thought you’d never let me see your bright face again, that I’d never hear you call me “Gee” in a playful manner ever again.
I thought I’d never get to call you Frankie, I thought you were never coming back. I hated every second of it, and I let it show. My manager, when he saw the works I’d done, suggested I get a therapist. Said I needed it or I’d go off the deep end. I think I’d already jumped.
I didn’t, of course, get a therapist. You knew how much I hated to talk to people. You knew I preferred to show people how I was feeling through the stroke of a brush, a swipe of a pen or the splash of paint angrily hitting the page, the canvas, the sculptures I’d strung out across my apartment.
I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t happy at all. Before you, I’d been content to be alone, content and… well, not happy, but certainly not unhappy. I was just a person, alone in an apartment with a knack for art. My paintings sold, my sculptures sometimes went to museums. I painted what some might consider dark, but it was never this awful twisting raw emotion I began to pour onto the page. It never was so dark, it was never so hurt, it was never so… so sad. I was never that sad before.
I was alone, as I always had been, as I had been most of my life. But I did mind, I did want to be in your company. I wanted you to be near me, I wanted you to barge into my apartment and talk on and on about stupid little things of no importance. I wanted to hear about your arguments with your coworkers about the gender of Pikachu.
It was stupid, really stupid that I wanted all these things but I still did. I wanted you like I’d never wanted anything, I didn’t want be alone. I wanted to go out into the world and look for you, even if you were my neighbor. You still never came home, never visited.
I wanted to hate you, you must know that. I wanted to despise you, I wanted to fantasize about ripping out your throat. I wanted to hate you for making me want to be human, making me want to be normal and making me want to feel loved. But I couldn’t hate you.
I just didn’t have it in me to hate you, because you were my everything. You were the only thing I cared for outside of my art. I loved you more than I would ever even imagine loving myself, more than I loved my easel and more than I loved holding a strong stick of charcoal. I loved you. I really did love you, I really always wanted you with me in my apartment, not at your boyfriends.
I hated to admit that I loved you, that I thought of you every time I made coffee, every time I listened to my music at ear shattering intensities. You taught me that, you know? Before you, I listened to my music in a way that wouldn’t destroy my ears. Then you came along and cranked up the volume. I yelped, and you laughed.
You told me that’s how you’re supposed to listen to music.
Even when you were living with your boyfriend more than at the apartment, I still had some of your CDs. I kept them safe from the world, would listen to them every second I got. They were so raw, so full of passion and sometimes they screamed out undisguised hurt. You always went on and on about how great the guitar parts were.
I never really picked apart the music, just enjoyed it as a whole. That is, until you brought your guitar over to practice one day. Said you wanted to get out of your house, that your mum kept calling you and you didn’t want to talk to her. Something about you being more social or something.
I really didn’t get why she would ever want someone to be more social. You were that perfect mix of social and anti social. Social enough o come visit me, and anti social enough to stay with me. I loved that about you. I loved almost everything about you, but not when you left the cupboards open. You always did it, too. You knew that it annoyed me greatly, but I think it might have been a habit. Or you might have just been messing with me, you did that sometimes. You were gone, though, and I was painting and painting, on the brink of insanity in a drug induced haze.
I wasn’t particularly wealthy, but I made enough on my art to always have some sort of drug on hand, hidden away in a cupboard or on my table in plain sight. My manager didn’t really notice, and I continued this way for so long.
Drugs, alcohol and art.
That was what I became without you. I think I needed you, all I wanted was to be around you. When I wasn’t high, I visited the places in the city where we used to hang out, hoping to see you there. You were never there, and I always left feeling more empty and alone than before. I felt abandoned, like no one could ever love me. Everyone had left me, and I was just an empty bottle of acrylic paint. No one ever wanted the acrylic anyway, it was a new sort of paint that famous painters didn’t use.
I was walking a path I didn’t want to follow, I was stepping over the dreams I never knew were there. Everything was broken, I was shattered without you. I was rotting, I was alone and a mess of blood and hate. The blood.
It became something of an addiction for me, bleeding. Watching the blood pool up in beads around the open wound, and slowly drip across my limb or wherever I had thought would bleed the most without killing me. Pain. Because I would have rather felt pain than nothing at all, this numbness caused by the drug I was under and the depression that you unknowingly pulled me into.
I was a mess, a swirl of overpowering emotions that I couldn’t feel, that I injected myself full of poisons to forget. How did I become that? You were just a person. You were the only person who had ever cared about me just because they could, though. And you left, just like everyone else had. You destroyed me, after building me up.
You pulled all the pieces of me together, figured them out like a jigsaw, stacked me up like the bricks of a mighty building. And then you took a hammer to them, hammering out what was left of me. I wondered how you could do this to me. But really, you had done nothing at all. It hit me like a shock, and even though my veins were pumped full of toxins in the moment of realization, I knew it was so undeniable true that I had fallen in love with you.
It was funny, really. The hermit artist falling for his neighbor who randomly decided one day to visit, and the neighbor kept coming back. How could you just leave me like that? You just up and left, never said a word to me.
Well, that is until you stumbled into my apartment late one night, no doubt thinking it was yours. You were drunk. I, for once, wasn’t. I was fixing up one of the paintings I’d done while high. You collapsed on my couch and I was so shocked to see you. Did I never lock my door?
You were out cold, and I think I stared at you for a good hour. When you woke up the next morning, you had a raging headache. Hangovers, I knew well how lovely they were. I made you a cup of coffee with one of the mugs you had at my place, and slowly that hangover cleared. I made you breakfast. Well, I walked down to the nearby café to pick something up for you,as I didn’t really eat much at the time and had nothing in the fridge (bar booze).
You were embarrassed to have passed out at my place, but I smiled and shook my head. “You’re welcome here anytime.” I told you. You looked so surprised. You thought I’d hated you always being around, bugging me. I told you I didn’t mind, that I missed your company. You promised to stop by more often, promised that I wouldn’t be alone all the time again. You’d make time for me, maybe just spend less with your boyfriend. That made me happy, that I was almost on the same level as your boyfriend. I told you not to come if it was a chore. You said you’d come anyway.
You came and visited me again a week later. I’d hoped to see you sooner, and I thought you’d abandoned me again. You found me high as a kite, painting a horrible gory and demented picture while silent tears leaked out of my eyes, unnoticed by me.
You asked me what was wrong, you were mad at me for using drugs. Even in the off state I was in, I didn’t tell you that you were why I was destroying myself. I knew you’d feel bad, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want that at all.
Little by little, you got me to stop using. You didn’t know about some of my other habits, like the scars that decorated my skin. I made more at least every week, sometimes daily. Every day I didn’t see you I would cut. They were never as big as they had been when I started cutting, just little lines barely an inch long and very shallow. But enough to draw blood, enough to make me feel alive, if only for a moment.
I didn’t so much as think of what your reaction would be I you ever found out, but I didn’t show you my scars. I was ashamed I’d fallen to such a level. Mind you, it wasn’t very far off where I was originally, but you changed my standards for myself. You made me want to be the very best person I could be, the very best version of me there was.
You visited me whenever you weren’t with your boyfriend. I think being with me was your downtime, your time to vent off everything. You talked about everything there was, ranted on and on adorably. I think I started to show more signs of affection, I’d have a cup of coffee, with cream (just like you liked it), waiting for you whenever I knew you were coming. I nodded along with your rambles, I could actually respond accordingly if I wanted. I listened to you, I heard every word and did my best not to forget them. They were yours, something you brought me and I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to hear you every few days; you slipped away once before and could do it again.
I didn’t want you to stop coming to see me. I began to breathe when I was around you, I started to smile like I meant it. I’d never really meant it before. I could go to sleep and I would dream of you. I would think of our day, it would seep into my subconscious and keep me happy even when I wasn’t asleep.
I lived for the moments I could be with you.
You came every other day, and I always had an extra cup of Jo out for you. You loved that stuff to death, I swear. I think the first time you invaded my apartment you asked ‘Where’s the coffee?’ I was reluctant to give you any, but eventually you got the object of your religion out of me. And people told me I had an obsession with coffee.
You were still going strong with your boyfriend, though perhaps not as strong as before. I never met him, and for some reason I didn’t understand you didn’t want me to. I thought you were ashamed of me. It hurt, that you thought that. Thought I wasn’t good enough to meet someone you cared about, just the strange face you occasionally got drunk with.
I started cutting again. Not that I ever stopped, but I would sometimes cut deep in a burst of passion. I almost died once, but I managed to patch myself up in time. It was stupid, cutting. I shouldn’t have been doing it, I shouldn’t have had such a reaction to you. I told myself time and time again that I should stop, that it was irrelevant if you were ashamed of me. You were my only human interaction besides my manager, though. You were a big part of me.
All I had was you and my art.
Remember when I helped you compose a song? I couldn’t play the guitar, but when you got stuck in some part I could come up with the next chord to get you back on your feet. I was awful at the instrument, but I knew it well enough from watching and listening to you play every day for months. You loved that song. You played it around me a lot, more than you did any other song. I loved that we somehow managed to create something together, even if you did all the work.
I tried to get you to paint with me once. It was a disaster. There was paint everywhere, and we were covered in it. I got us a rather large canvas for us to use, big buckets of paint. I think you thought splatter paint would be fun. You dipped your entire hand in the bucket of blue, slamming it against the canvas and creating quite the splash. The paint got everywhere.
You told me to join you, and I reluctantly did so. I took off my shirt because I didn’t want to get it completely soaked in paint, even if it was just an old rag. I helped you take off your own painting shirt, and then you thought it would be a good idea to paint me. I wasn’t too fond of the idea, especially when your hands, covered in cold paint, splattered against my chest.
Naturally I had to get revenge. I took a moment to look shocked, however, because I was. I hadn’t expected to be assaulted by paint, to have your handprint in a deep blue across my chest. But I grinned, actually grinned, and dipped my hand in the forest green, ready to get you back.
The paint was somewhat bubbly from being shakes, and you gasped as my hand assaulted your chest and the paint dripped down further and further… I couldn’t stop watching the paint drip down, and fro a moment we just stood there, watching each other. We just watched, and waited. Waited for something in the other’s eyes to betray their feelings, and eventually there was an awkward silence and we painted in an awkward silence. I helped you when you got frustrated, stood behind you and my chest was pressed to your back and guided your hand.
It was quiet, relaxed and just so natural to have you with me.
You had to go, eventually, back to your boyfriend. I was empty again, but left with a glow of happiness that was the aftermath of you. You always left an aftermath, be it good or bad. I didn’t cut that entire week. I was getting better, you were making me better again.
I smiled for you, I big grin that stretched across my entire face. You were so surprised to see me like that, it was almost funny. It was your birthday, and you decided to come over before you went off with your boyfriend for a party or whatever. I painted you a picture for the occasion, and you loved it. I promised myself I’d make you more things in the future. I wanted you to be happy, I really did.
I was lost without you, you taught me what it meant to be human again. I had forgotten, over the various events in my past, what it felt like to be loved for who I was, not what I did. It was great, yet so dangerous in those moments when you left me, even only for a short while such as a week or so. I was sick, so sick without and drowning in self-abuse.
Why couldn’t I be perfect? Why couldn’t I be so loved, do something important in my life like you did? It was all I wanted, it was my every thought and I was jealous of you. Jealous, yes, but not hateful because of it. I loved it, I loved that it was a part of you and I accepted it would never be me no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I wanted.
You were you, and I was me. It was really that simple in my mind.
I admired you, through my jealousy. I wanted to be with you, I wanted to stay with you forever. But you had to go back and celebrate your birthday with your boyfriend, go out partying. You… You invited me to go with you, and meet all of your other friends. I didn’t want to go, didn’t want to meet the people I wanted to take you away from. I didn’t want to see other people get on with you, smile at you. I just couldn’t handle that, so I didn’t go. You looked sad, but I didn’t elaborate.
I cut again that night, for being weak and wanting you so much. For taking you away from your friends. It was wrong of me, I shouldn’t have done it. But I did, and I had to punish myself somehow. I didn’t want to go back to the bottle, you’d surely notice that. I didn’t want you to notice, but I did want you to pay attention. I was such a mess.
It wasn’t… I wasn’t around people much, I had to cherish the people whom with I could be around. I didn’t like many people, I thought they were disgusting and cruel. Some of them are, and there was enough bad people to cross out all the good ones in my mind. You were a good one, though. You didn’t drag me out if I really wanted to stay, you only went clubbing with me once, thank God. I couldn’t handle another round of sitting in a corner watching you dance, terrified of the people around me.
I was a coward, that’s why I was always alone. I didn’t want to tell anyone about me for fear of being hurt, something it seems I was born with. I used to tell my brother everything, but we fell out. He moved on, wanted to be more social. I’d only bring him down, so I stopped taking up so much of his time, and eventually we drifted apart. I don’t even know his phone number anymore.
My parents, they tried to get me to talk to them. I didn’t, I kept my lips sealed and my thoughts to myself. I think they thought I was mute when I didn’t speak to them for three months. I was bad, knew I was bad yet I couldn’t do anything about it. They took me to a shrink; I didn’t say anything. So the shrink told me to start talking to myself sometimes, then maybe it wouldn’t be so frightening to talk to others.
So I started talking to myself, as crazy as it sounds. It helped; for a while I talked more to Mikey, I uttered please and thank-you when someone passed me the salt. My parents were proud, and they kept taking me to the shrink. I didn’t particularly like those visits, you could say I hated them, but I learned some manners at the very least. I stopped going to the shrink, though, after I gave my parents a minute-long monologue on how much I didn’t want to go. It was the most I’d said in such a long time, it made my throat hurt a bit and my voice broke several times but I made it, I made it through and my parents were so proud. I think mom cried a little.
So I didn’t have to visit the shrink, but I kept talking to myself. My voice stopped being so scratchy, stopped cracking and breaking so often. I carried out conversations with Mikey in a higher tone than a whisper. I got a job taking inventory, made nervous small talk with a coworker. I was doing great, but then it happened.
I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I hadn’t done anything to merit the attention of the teens across the street late one Jersey night. But that didn’t matter to them, and I still came home with bruises and cuts and blood all over. I didn’t want to go out after that, I stopped talking to people. I graduated high school, went to art school and found a small apartment for myself and started selling my works. I somehow got a manager, and apparently my work sold. Then you came, you left and you came back.
I was so worried that you would leave again, or that your boyfriend would take you away, ask you to move in with him. You were there often enough anyways. I missed you when you weren’t around, and I was sorry I took you away from all the ones whom loved you, who wanted to hang out with you when I was taking up your time. But I needed you, I needed you to keep me steady. You gave me a taste of something sweet and I wanted more. I just couldn’t get enough.
I was, undeniably, selfish. But I’d never ask you to stay longer than you wanted, I never forced you around. I loved it when you were around, and you came of your own accord. I wanted more, but I held it in. I held it in with cuts and burns, and that was enough to tide me in. I was okay, I was okay as long as you were there with me. It was amazing how attached I’d become.
You came to me, one night. You were crying, snotting, the whole nine yards. I, of course, gave you a tissue immediately. Then I asked what was wrong. You hugged me, honest to God wrapped your arms around me and squeezed the life out of me. Well, I was still alive, but your hug was tight and fierce.
I asked you what was wrong, and you said something I couldn’t hear, then looked up into my eyes. “Make me forget.” You whispered. There were tears flowing from your eyes and I couldn’t resist the pleading, the begging you displayed. I knew I’d regret it in the morning, but I didn’t care.
That night I pounded into you, making you forget the world and see stars. When you hit your peak, though, you didn’t call out my name. You called out another. That really hurt, it cut at my heart. Burned it, rejected it. I cried once you’d gone to sleep, not heart breaking sobs like yours, but the subtle cracking of my heart was displayed in the wet tears that rolled onto the sheets.
The next morning you explained to me that you got into a fight with your boyfriend, and that you were sorry I had to pick up the pieces. It was awkward, at least for me, but I don’t think you noticed. I… I cut, and cut and cut. I just couldn’t stop cutting. There were so many tiny lacerations along my wrist, and my arms had been scab-free before that night I spent with you. You broke me, after all that building up.
But I wasn’t completely gone, not completely done. I… I didn’t know what to do. You used me for a one-night stand and I let you, you said you were sorry I had had to put up with you, but I don’t think that you got it. I don’t think that you understood that you destroyed what little hope I had of ever being loved by you, that it didn’t make things worse. If anything, you were digging your fingers into my wound.
I think I might have been a bit cold towards you that morning. I didn’t care; I was cold. I was freezing, barren and wasting away at the hurt you had inflicted on me. Accidental hurt, I suppose, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. You left to make up with your boyfriend after he left a particularly emotional voice message. That, that hurt too. I was already sulking in my own private pity party, ad when you left I didn’t hesitate to display that party to my canvas.
I broke so many things that day, so many pieces of art I shouldn’t have broken. I ripped canvases, overturned a sculpture I had been trying my hand at. It wasn’t very good anyway, but I still shouldn’t have wrecked it. I shouldn’t have wrecked anything the way I did. I shouldn’t have, but I did, and I’m ashamed to say my face wasn’t exactly dry, either. I considered going out to buy some alcohol, to buy anything to help me forget.
I wanted more than anything to forget, but I couldn’t. I took up heavy cutting, and there were too many cuts along my arms so I started to slice up my thighs, near my ribs. Anywhere you wouldn’t see if my shirt slid up a bit, if I wore long sleeves like I always did I’d be fine. You wouldn’t notice, couldn’t notice because you… I didn’t know how you’d react. You’d gone on and on about people being idiots and cutting them selves for attention, and I guess you were somewhat right about that.
I was cutting, but only to attend to myself because I didn’t dare hope for you to care for me. It took my mind off the fact that I was just a toy to you, that I was disposable and I could be disregarded without any warning to me. I… I wasn’t sure of anything anymore, I loved nothing but my art.
You didn’t visit for a long while, you left me alone for the most part. That… made me sad. And happy, too. I didn’t have to deal with you if you weren’t around. Well, I could at least pretend not to be thinking of you when you weren’t around. It was… awkward, when you finally came back. You were a bit nervous, but eventually got over it and began to talk my ear off again. I tried to listen to you and ignore your every word all at once, which really just confused me as I painted.
“Why don’t you roll up your sleeves?” You asked me. I had a mini heart attack.
“I… I’m trying to paint this shirt, just, um, on accident?” I tried. It sounded meek, so I elaborated my on the spot lie. “I’m trying to make it into an art piece. The paint-covered shirt… or something.”
You looked amused at my oddities, but let it go. But you were suspicious, and I had to bite my lip until I drew blood when you took my wrist in your firm grasp. I think the cuts broke too, because once you’d left there was a bloody mess where you had held me. It hurt, but at least it took my mind off things. I could focus on the pain, the physical pain and not the emotional. They were both caused by you, funnily enough.
I wrapped gauze around my arms, just a thin layer you wouldn’t notice under a sweater or sleeved shirt. I slept in a long-sleeved shirt, I never knew when you would show up and I didn’t really want to risk waking up and walking shirtless into the kitchen only to find you there. You used to practically live with me, after all.
You brought your guitar, one day. I loved to hear you play, and you practiced some songs for your band and composed new ones while I painted. I asked if you composed songs for your boyfriend. You said no, that although you loved him, yes, you loved him, you could never find the same state of mind you got when you came to visit me. That made me quite smug. Quite smug indeed.
You invited me to a gig you were going to, and you were so excited I couldn’t say no. I really needed to learn to say no to you, really needed to learn that just because you thought it was a good idea didn’t mean it was. But I went, dressed up nice just for you. I was going to sit in the back corner, no doubt, because I think if I saw your boyfriend I might just have to maul the man.
Of course, you introduced me to him. “Boyfriend, this is Gerard. He’s the friend I always tell you about.”
Boyfriend smiled. We didn’t shake hands, of course not. I hated shaking hands. You went off with him somewhere before the band played, and I found a table in the corner to sink into. I kept to myself, as I expected I would, and you disappeared from the bar with boyfriend at some point after the music. I didn’t want to think about what you two were doing.
I went back to my apartment next to yours that night, and suddenly I wasn’t right. I tipped that delicate balance that had stopped me from cutting over the last week, kept me from the booze. Somehow, this hurt me more than when you left had left me. You left my heart an open wound, but I loved you for it. I loathed myself for it. The pain, my art, and poison were the only escape for me.
I didn't expect you to come over the next day. I was shocked to see you walk through my front door. As hard as I tried, I couldn't stop the small smile that stretched across my face. You grinned back and asked me about the gig. I didn't talk much, due to a raging hangover from last nights indulgences. But you were used to my silence, and continued the small talk with minimal effort from my part. Eventually you had to go, go back to Boyfriend, and not long after you left, my mind wandered.
How could I be so stupid? After all you had done, I was still happy when you visited. After all the pain, still hopelessly in love with you. It was a path of destruction. You wouldn't ever love me, and all I would have to show for this were empty bottles, scars, and twisted paintings. And even in realizing this, I still couldn't bring myself to hate you. Its pathetic.
You didn't come back the next day, or the day after. But when you did return, you weren't chatty like usual. We sat in silence, me pouring the darkness of my heart onto the smooth canvas, you merely watching. After a while if this I couldn't take it, and so I asked you if you were alright. You just shrugged and looked down, avoiding my gaze, but I dropped it anyway and returned to painting.
The next time you visited, you were cheery again. Every trace of the dark mood from before was gone. You asked me to go on a picnic with you, and I obliged. We drove to a little park with a small pond, and spent most of the hot summer day there, talking. Eventually you suggested a game of tag, and I was more than eager to participate in your childlike wish. We chased each other all over the park, and ended up panting on the swing set.
"Jesus, Gerard, its so hot," you said. "Why are you wearing a long sleeved t-shirt?"
"I dunno, it's my favorite, I guess." I replied, blushing and looking down.
"Oh.." You said, although you were curious, you just weren't curious enough. You would push that extra inch to see the truth. But it wasn't your fault, because it wasn't your job to see.
That night I cut again. It was like I was ill, with a terrible disease, and you were my medication. Whenever you were around, was a time of relapse for me. I could feel better, happier even. Though, when you were gone, the disease would consume me whole, turn me into another person. I went to bed that night with fresh bandages on my arms.
The next day, there was a knock on my door at one 'o clock. This surprised me because you were the only person that ever visited me, but you always let yourself in. You never knocked. I opened the door, to see not you, but Boyfriend. This was even more surprising. We exchanged pleasantries as I invited him in. The second the door closed, Boyfriends face dropped. It was no longer pleasant, but grim, tinged with evil and sadness. It didn't look right, it didn't belong.
Boyfriend told me he knew everything. He knew what happened between us that dreaded night, when you two had fought. I tried to defend myself, but it was no use. Boyfriend is much stronger than I. He overpowered me, walking out of the apartment, leaving me bloody and bruised on the floor.
The next time you visited, was a week after the beating, and most the bruises were gone, bar the yellowing patch around my eye. You noticed and asked me what happened, but I just told you I walked into a door. I didn't want to upset your relationship with Boyfriend. When you left, I felt as if I hit an all time low. So many cuts, all over my body. Reopened on my wrist, slashes over my ribs, my abdomen, and legs. I was a bloody mess. I watched as the crimson life poured from me, spreading onto my white sheets like paint on a canvas.
You didn't visit for a long time. It must have been a month. A month of cutting and poison to cope with my disease. I had lost my will to even paint. I was hopeless. Then one day you supposed me, caught me off guard. You burst through my front door with enthusiasm like you always did, but your face went rigid when you saw me. I was unprepared, it had been so long I didn't even think that you would drop by. I stood in the middle of the main room, shirtless, my scars on display.
My body froze. I didn't know what to do. You stood by the door gaping at me as you're eyes took in my torn flesh. Eventually I came to my senses, and went to my room. After throwing on a long sleeved t-shirt, I was surprised to see that you hadn't left. Instead you were sitting in my living room, with the saddest expression written all over your face. And it cut me deep to know that I was the cause for something so terrible. "Gerard..." you began, searching for words, the pain showing on your eyes, "How could you do this to yourself? Why?" I remained silent avoiding your gaze. I couldn't tell you the truth, I couldn't let you ser how pathetic I was. " Gerard, how long?"
"A while..." I answered, my voice trembling.
Your face was stine white. You sat there for a moment before answering. "All this time. This while time." you muttered shaking your head. "Gee. There is nothing worth hurting yourself over." you said, "Why did you do it."
It was then that I had to tell the truth. I couldn't do it anymore. I thought for a second that, maybe, just maybe everything would be all right. Even if you turned me down, I would have closure, I would be better. I took a deep breath and told you how you came into my life, and turned it all upside down, how much pain I felt when you were gone, how much I missed you. How much that night we spent together meant to me, and how Boyfriend beat me for it. I told you everything.
You sat. Unmoving for the longest time before you said, " Promise me, you won't hurt yourself." and I did. Then you got up, excused yourself, and walked out of my apartment.
I couldn't break my promise to you, though you leaving was like a knife through my heart, I took my aggression, my hatred for myself, out through my art. It was a twisted scene, depicting a murder. The most gruesome piece I had done yet. I worked through the night, and the day after. I knew I wouldn't be sewing you for a while. Then, when the painting was done, I crawled into bed, and simply wished to disappear forever.
Its funny how a person can tear themselves apart, slowly, piece by piece, and not even the closest person to them will know. Sometimes, people just don't care enough.
Days later, I lost track, you were there at my front door. Your eyes were red and puffy. You had been crying. I stood there awkwardly for a minute, before it happened. You grabbed me, pulled me close, and smashed your lips onto mine. Right there in the doorway. The kiss was passionate, but sloppy. Our noses bumped, teeth clicked together. When you pulled away you told me, "Being scarred, being afraid isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s what makes you who you are, molds your person. It isn’t something people should hate you for. It’s something people should look up to you for, for getting past it, facing your demons. You can be filled with as many poisons as you want, as long as you never let them take you down. Do you want to know why? Because you’re not nothing."
END.
*A/N : Ohmigosh! Thank you so much Mychemicalbitchbot, you are such an inspiration too me, and I can only dream that my work did any justice compared to yours.
As for the rest of you, R&R let us know what you think!!!
* A/N numero dos! Hai guys! Like seriously thanks for the two reviews that made my day, and the four rates, to those who did r&r I love you!!! But hey, wanna make an aspiring artist with a career of failure ahead of her duper happy? Can I get one more rate? Make my baby here go green? Pweese? Heheh. Ok. Moment of greed over! Thanks guys =D
Being scarred, being afraid isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s what makes you who you are, molds your person. It isn’t something people should hate you for. It’s something people should look up to you for, for getting past it, facing your demons. You can be filled with as many poisons as you want, as long as you never let them take you down. Do you want to know why? Because you’re not nothing.
It was too soon, to most people, for someone to turn their back on the light. To completely forget what it’s like to be loved, to discard the desire to be loved altogether. It’s simple, almost painfully so to know it doesn’t take much to be on your own.
Some people, it would seem, can’t handle being alone. Can’t handle not having someone to cling to, someone to cry to when plans go awry. They can’t handle knowing they’re not loved. It’s a burning in them, a yearning ocean of need that will never dry up. It’s an annoying quality, yet so many people have that silly idiocracy called friendship.
I’m glad I’m not one of those people.
I am not, in any way, shape or form needy of human company or stalkerish agendas. I don’t have friends, I gave up trying to make things I don’t like ages ago. It would be silly to make friends, friends who will want you to listen to them when really, you just don’t want to listen.
Friends try to erase any boundaries you’ve set up, destroy the peaceful solitude that you bask in. Friends are a pointless game of hide and seek, you try to find them and they try to find you.
I’ve never been found while playing hide and seek. I suppose that’s just another thing that makes me “abnormal”. When I hide, I’m never found. I can lie at the drop of a hat; I can count the cards in poker like I can count the days.
It really does worry me that people let themselves be found so easily, open themselves up like they’re gasping for air. I wondered why, of course, that they could be so easily opened when I can’t, like the toughest oyster refusing to break I stand strong and alone.
I don’t really need to see people much; I work from home as an artist. I don’t really paint the norm, what people tend to desire. I once tried to paint a landscape someone told me was “beautiful”. It was a soft meadow field filled with bright flowers and seemed to make people smile just looking at it.
I took that serene meadow and made it what I saw, distorted, lacerations to the piece with a quick slash of the brush. I thought it was beautiful in dark purples, grey and black. They thought it was ugly, they thought I shouldn’t have ruined something so pure with the darkness of my heart.
Yet the painting sold at a high price, likely to someone with the same distant heart as me. There were enough people out there with the love for the abnormal, for the twisted views I seem to have on life to keep me painting, keep me locked in my apartment for countless hours pouring my soul onto the white canvases.
My tough shell got a crack.
It was a crack apparent to me, and maybe to my manager. It’s not subtle; it’s a blazing fire that refuses to be extinguished.
Because really, I didn’t want to be around anyone. I wanted to live a shallow life alone into my death, away from the cunning and cruel world. I wanted to live in seclusion; I want to be left alone with books and the images that seep into my nightmares for inspiration.
I’m still alone, I’m still fighting for myself but I’m so cruelly succumbing to the harsh ways of friendship, the way you visit me when you’re bored, the way you ramble on about the silliest things. It’s so stupid, you’re so stupid, but somehow I can’t stop painting you. I can’t stop the feeling that cones with you, anger and despair yet a hugging warm emotion that I had learned to hate.
Dare I say it? No, I would never dare to say that I might actually like you. Because I don’t, I really don’t. I really don’t care that you’re here with me every day, that you will talk while I work away at my paintings silently, your voice a soothing background melody. I think you understand that if you were anyone else I would ask you to leave. But I can’t get enough of your voice, it’s an intoxicating thing that somehow reaches into my soul and changes it, helps it grow, makes me care.
My art is still some of the darkest you’ll ever find, the occasional rushed stroke showing the insanity I hold at bay. But there’s an occasional glimpse of light, maybe a twisted creature reaching for the dark orange sun. It’s breaking me, it’s breaking everything about me and I’m finding that I love it. It’s intoxicating, I’m smiling and I mean it. I’m not lying when I say I love being alive. I’m not trying to drown out all my self-loathing when I’m with you.
You brought me out of my shell, taught me about the world. The first time you got me out of the house, we went to a coffee shop. I’ve always hated ordering, so you smiled and did it for me. I smiled back, and it was small, but it lit up your face. You had never seen me smile before.
I made letting myself smile around you a habit, it made you happy for some reason. I gave you a key to my apartment; you had a mug or two on my shelf. You would talk to me, tell me all of your problems with the people at work, and rant angrily at what the homophobes did to you.
I never had a problem with you being gay; I myself was ambiguous, maybe asexual. And I found myself getting angry, enraged whenever I heard the rude words people told you. I think it showed in my paintings, my manager told me he liked the style I had started working on, the vengeful thoughts interweaved into the soul of my painting.
We stayed at my apartment often, but would occasionally venture out into the cruel world together. We went to the coffee shop once a month, we even explored the local bookstore together. You tried to get me to go to a bar with you, and I turned you down right away. A month later you asked again, and we got drunk together for the first time. We were friends.
We were close, you eventually weaseled out information from me, and I listened to all your problems with open ears, knowing almost everything.
All that changed when you got a boyfriend.
You stopped visiting me so often, stopped by maybe twice a month or so. Then you stopped coming at all, moved out of the apartment building to live with your love. I cursed myself for letting you get close to me, for letting you rip me apart when you left.
My paintings, which my manager expected to be empty, were full with a new, twisted romance, one partner waiting for another that never comes. An empty wine bottle and arose across a darkly covered table, a half-full glass of the dark liquid and a vacant body slouched on the chair.
I was empty, not for the first time in life, but for the first time… it hurt. You changed everything about me, you took everything I knew and carelessly tossed it out the window. You earned my trust, something I thought I had lost. I felt abandoned, I felt betrayed.
And I scolded myself for thinking such things, for blaming you for all of my problems. You created a war within me, and didn’t even stay to finish the last battle.
I went out of my house to buy alcohol, not waiting for a mail delivery like I do with food. I couldn’t wait, I needed all the alcohol to drown out missing you. I didn’t want to feel the rush of emotions that overtook me when I thought about you.
I didn’t even wait to get home to open the bottle, I started pouring the whiskey down my throat the moment I left the liquor store. I walked home, bottle in hand, trying to forget everything as the cobblestone road made me trip along.
I just wanted it all to end, I wanted not to feel the love you burned into me. It was that drunken thought, so blunt and unexpected and so perfectly true. I was in love with you.
When I got back to my apartment, I could barely get the key into the lock. Maybe it was a sign, I thought. Maybe it meant that I’d find the right fit for me but we’d never be together.
I painted, liquor clouding my mind and I painted like I never had before. I painted raw hurt, I painted every dark thought that came to my mind and lashed the words in the corner, on the tables in my paintings, on a white shirt of a created character, anywhere I could. Somehow, you were almost always in them.
The paintings were messy, something I’d have to go back and fix, but they were real, and they were every emotion I had bottled up and ignored spilling out onto an innocent canvas.
I took a knife and slashed cuts into some of them, adding to the mood and not satisfying me in the least. I let the alcohol break my hold on reality, I let it wash over me and destroy any semblance of calm I’d ever built up.
I was real, I was me and I was suffering because you weren’t there with me. I was hurting, hurting like you’d left for good. I thought you had, I thought you’d never let me see your bright face again, that I’d never hear you call me “Gee” in a playful manner ever again.
I thought I’d never get to call you Frankie, I thought you were never coming back. I hated every second of it, and I let it show. My manager, when he saw the works I’d done, suggested I get a therapist. Said I needed it or I’d go off the deep end. I think I’d already jumped.
I didn’t, of course, get a therapist. You knew how much I hated to talk to people. You knew I preferred to show people how I was feeling through the stroke of a brush, a swipe of a pen or the splash of paint angrily hitting the page, the canvas, the sculptures I’d strung out across my apartment.
I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t happy at all. Before you, I’d been content to be alone, content and… well, not happy, but certainly not unhappy. I was just a person, alone in an apartment with a knack for art. My paintings sold, my sculptures sometimes went to museums. I painted what some might consider dark, but it was never this awful twisting raw emotion I began to pour onto the page. It never was so dark, it was never so hurt, it was never so… so sad. I was never that sad before.
I was alone, as I always had been, as I had been most of my life. But I did mind, I did want to be in your company. I wanted you to be near me, I wanted you to barge into my apartment and talk on and on about stupid little things of no importance. I wanted to hear about your arguments with your coworkers about the gender of Pikachu.
It was stupid, really stupid that I wanted all these things but I still did. I wanted you like I’d never wanted anything, I didn’t want be alone. I wanted to go out into the world and look for you, even if you were my neighbor. You still never came home, never visited.
I wanted to hate you, you must know that. I wanted to despise you, I wanted to fantasize about ripping out your throat. I wanted to hate you for making me want to be human, making me want to be normal and making me want to feel loved. But I couldn’t hate you.
I just didn’t have it in me to hate you, because you were my everything. You were the only thing I cared for outside of my art. I loved you more than I would ever even imagine loving myself, more than I loved my easel and more than I loved holding a strong stick of charcoal. I loved you. I really did love you, I really always wanted you with me in my apartment, not at your boyfriends.
I hated to admit that I loved you, that I thought of you every time I made coffee, every time I listened to my music at ear shattering intensities. You taught me that, you know? Before you, I listened to my music in a way that wouldn’t destroy my ears. Then you came along and cranked up the volume. I yelped, and you laughed.
You told me that’s how you’re supposed to listen to music.
Even when you were living with your boyfriend more than at the apartment, I still had some of your CDs. I kept them safe from the world, would listen to them every second I got. They were so raw, so full of passion and sometimes they screamed out undisguised hurt. You always went on and on about how great the guitar parts were.
I never really picked apart the music, just enjoyed it as a whole. That is, until you brought your guitar over to practice one day. Said you wanted to get out of your house, that your mum kept calling you and you didn’t want to talk to her. Something about you being more social or something.
I really didn’t get why she would ever want someone to be more social. You were that perfect mix of social and anti social. Social enough o come visit me, and anti social enough to stay with me. I loved that about you. I loved almost everything about you, but not when you left the cupboards open. You always did it, too. You knew that it annoyed me greatly, but I think it might have been a habit. Or you might have just been messing with me, you did that sometimes. You were gone, though, and I was painting and painting, on the brink of insanity in a drug induced haze.
I wasn’t particularly wealthy, but I made enough on my art to always have some sort of drug on hand, hidden away in a cupboard or on my table in plain sight. My manager didn’t really notice, and I continued this way for so long.
Drugs, alcohol and art.
That was what I became without you. I think I needed you, all I wanted was to be around you. When I wasn’t high, I visited the places in the city where we used to hang out, hoping to see you there. You were never there, and I always left feeling more empty and alone than before. I felt abandoned, like no one could ever love me. Everyone had left me, and I was just an empty bottle of acrylic paint. No one ever wanted the acrylic anyway, it was a new sort of paint that famous painters didn’t use.
I was walking a path I didn’t want to follow, I was stepping over the dreams I never knew were there. Everything was broken, I was shattered without you. I was rotting, I was alone and a mess of blood and hate. The blood.
It became something of an addiction for me, bleeding. Watching the blood pool up in beads around the open wound, and slowly drip across my limb or wherever I had thought would bleed the most without killing me. Pain. Because I would have rather felt pain than nothing at all, this numbness caused by the drug I was under and the depression that you unknowingly pulled me into.
I was a mess, a swirl of overpowering emotions that I couldn’t feel, that I injected myself full of poisons to forget. How did I become that? You were just a person. You were the only person who had ever cared about me just because they could, though. And you left, just like everyone else had. You destroyed me, after building me up.
You pulled all the pieces of me together, figured them out like a jigsaw, stacked me up like the bricks of a mighty building. And then you took a hammer to them, hammering out what was left of me. I wondered how you could do this to me. But really, you had done nothing at all. It hit me like a shock, and even though my veins were pumped full of toxins in the moment of realization, I knew it was so undeniable true that I had fallen in love with you.
It was funny, really. The hermit artist falling for his neighbor who randomly decided one day to visit, and the neighbor kept coming back. How could you just leave me like that? You just up and left, never said a word to me.
Well, that is until you stumbled into my apartment late one night, no doubt thinking it was yours. You were drunk. I, for once, wasn’t. I was fixing up one of the paintings I’d done while high. You collapsed on my couch and I was so shocked to see you. Did I never lock my door?
You were out cold, and I think I stared at you for a good hour. When you woke up the next morning, you had a raging headache. Hangovers, I knew well how lovely they were. I made you a cup of coffee with one of the mugs you had at my place, and slowly that hangover cleared. I made you breakfast. Well, I walked down to the nearby café to pick something up for you,as I didn’t really eat much at the time and had nothing in the fridge (bar booze).
You were embarrassed to have passed out at my place, but I smiled and shook my head. “You’re welcome here anytime.” I told you. You looked so surprised. You thought I’d hated you always being around, bugging me. I told you I didn’t mind, that I missed your company. You promised to stop by more often, promised that I wouldn’t be alone all the time again. You’d make time for me, maybe just spend less with your boyfriend. That made me happy, that I was almost on the same level as your boyfriend. I told you not to come if it was a chore. You said you’d come anyway.
You came and visited me again a week later. I’d hoped to see you sooner, and I thought you’d abandoned me again. You found me high as a kite, painting a horrible gory and demented picture while silent tears leaked out of my eyes, unnoticed by me.
You asked me what was wrong, you were mad at me for using drugs. Even in the off state I was in, I didn’t tell you that you were why I was destroying myself. I knew you’d feel bad, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want that at all.
Little by little, you got me to stop using. You didn’t know about some of my other habits, like the scars that decorated my skin. I made more at least every week, sometimes daily. Every day I didn’t see you I would cut. They were never as big as they had been when I started cutting, just little lines barely an inch long and very shallow. But enough to draw blood, enough to make me feel alive, if only for a moment.
I didn’t so much as think of what your reaction would be I you ever found out, but I didn’t show you my scars. I was ashamed I’d fallen to such a level. Mind you, it wasn’t very far off where I was originally, but you changed my standards for myself. You made me want to be the very best person I could be, the very best version of me there was.
You visited me whenever you weren’t with your boyfriend. I think being with me was your downtime, your time to vent off everything. You talked about everything there was, ranted on and on adorably. I think I started to show more signs of affection, I’d have a cup of coffee, with cream (just like you liked it), waiting for you whenever I knew you were coming. I nodded along with your rambles, I could actually respond accordingly if I wanted. I listened to you, I heard every word and did my best not to forget them. They were yours, something you brought me and I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to hear you every few days; you slipped away once before and could do it again.
I didn’t want you to stop coming to see me. I began to breathe when I was around you, I started to smile like I meant it. I’d never really meant it before. I could go to sleep and I would dream of you. I would think of our day, it would seep into my subconscious and keep me happy even when I wasn’t asleep.
I lived for the moments I could be with you.
You came every other day, and I always had an extra cup of Jo out for you. You loved that stuff to death, I swear. I think the first time you invaded my apartment you asked ‘Where’s the coffee?’ I was reluctant to give you any, but eventually you got the object of your religion out of me. And people told me I had an obsession with coffee.
You were still going strong with your boyfriend, though perhaps not as strong as before. I never met him, and for some reason I didn’t understand you didn’t want me to. I thought you were ashamed of me. It hurt, that you thought that. Thought I wasn’t good enough to meet someone you cared about, just the strange face you occasionally got drunk with.
I started cutting again. Not that I ever stopped, but I would sometimes cut deep in a burst of passion. I almost died once, but I managed to patch myself up in time. It was stupid, cutting. I shouldn’t have been doing it, I shouldn’t have had such a reaction to you. I told myself time and time again that I should stop, that it was irrelevant if you were ashamed of me. You were my only human interaction besides my manager, though. You were a big part of me.
All I had was you and my art.
Remember when I helped you compose a song? I couldn’t play the guitar, but when you got stuck in some part I could come up with the next chord to get you back on your feet. I was awful at the instrument, but I knew it well enough from watching and listening to you play every day for months. You loved that song. You played it around me a lot, more than you did any other song. I loved that we somehow managed to create something together, even if you did all the work.
I tried to get you to paint with me once. It was a disaster. There was paint everywhere, and we were covered in it. I got us a rather large canvas for us to use, big buckets of paint. I think you thought splatter paint would be fun. You dipped your entire hand in the bucket of blue, slamming it against the canvas and creating quite the splash. The paint got everywhere.
You told me to join you, and I reluctantly did so. I took off my shirt because I didn’t want to get it completely soaked in paint, even if it was just an old rag. I helped you take off your own painting shirt, and then you thought it would be a good idea to paint me. I wasn’t too fond of the idea, especially when your hands, covered in cold paint, splattered against my chest.
Naturally I had to get revenge. I took a moment to look shocked, however, because I was. I hadn’t expected to be assaulted by paint, to have your handprint in a deep blue across my chest. But I grinned, actually grinned, and dipped my hand in the forest green, ready to get you back.
The paint was somewhat bubbly from being shakes, and you gasped as my hand assaulted your chest and the paint dripped down further and further… I couldn’t stop watching the paint drip down, and fro a moment we just stood there, watching each other. We just watched, and waited. Waited for something in the other’s eyes to betray their feelings, and eventually there was an awkward silence and we painted in an awkward silence. I helped you when you got frustrated, stood behind you and my chest was pressed to your back and guided your hand.
It was quiet, relaxed and just so natural to have you with me.
You had to go, eventually, back to your boyfriend. I was empty again, but left with a glow of happiness that was the aftermath of you. You always left an aftermath, be it good or bad. I didn’t cut that entire week. I was getting better, you were making me better again.
I smiled for you, I big grin that stretched across my entire face. You were so surprised to see me like that, it was almost funny. It was your birthday, and you decided to come over before you went off with your boyfriend for a party or whatever. I painted you a picture for the occasion, and you loved it. I promised myself I’d make you more things in the future. I wanted you to be happy, I really did.
I was lost without you, you taught me what it meant to be human again. I had forgotten, over the various events in my past, what it felt like to be loved for who I was, not what I did. It was great, yet so dangerous in those moments when you left me, even only for a short while such as a week or so. I was sick, so sick without and drowning in self-abuse.
Why couldn’t I be perfect? Why couldn’t I be so loved, do something important in my life like you did? It was all I wanted, it was my every thought and I was jealous of you. Jealous, yes, but not hateful because of it. I loved it, I loved that it was a part of you and I accepted it would never be me no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I wanted.
You were you, and I was me. It was really that simple in my mind.
I admired you, through my jealousy. I wanted to be with you, I wanted to stay with you forever. But you had to go back and celebrate your birthday with your boyfriend, go out partying. You… You invited me to go with you, and meet all of your other friends. I didn’t want to go, didn’t want to meet the people I wanted to take you away from. I didn’t want to see other people get on with you, smile at you. I just couldn’t handle that, so I didn’t go. You looked sad, but I didn’t elaborate.
I cut again that night, for being weak and wanting you so much. For taking you away from your friends. It was wrong of me, I shouldn’t have done it. But I did, and I had to punish myself somehow. I didn’t want to go back to the bottle, you’d surely notice that. I didn’t want you to notice, but I did want you to pay attention. I was such a mess.
It wasn’t… I wasn’t around people much, I had to cherish the people whom with I could be around. I didn’t like many people, I thought they were disgusting and cruel. Some of them are, and there was enough bad people to cross out all the good ones in my mind. You were a good one, though. You didn’t drag me out if I really wanted to stay, you only went clubbing with me once, thank God. I couldn’t handle another round of sitting in a corner watching you dance, terrified of the people around me.
I was a coward, that’s why I was always alone. I didn’t want to tell anyone about me for fear of being hurt, something it seems I was born with. I used to tell my brother everything, but we fell out. He moved on, wanted to be more social. I’d only bring him down, so I stopped taking up so much of his time, and eventually we drifted apart. I don’t even know his phone number anymore.
My parents, they tried to get me to talk to them. I didn’t, I kept my lips sealed and my thoughts to myself. I think they thought I was mute when I didn’t speak to them for three months. I was bad, knew I was bad yet I couldn’t do anything about it. They took me to a shrink; I didn’t say anything. So the shrink told me to start talking to myself sometimes, then maybe it wouldn’t be so frightening to talk to others.
So I started talking to myself, as crazy as it sounds. It helped; for a while I talked more to Mikey, I uttered please and thank-you when someone passed me the salt. My parents were proud, and they kept taking me to the shrink. I didn’t particularly like those visits, you could say I hated them, but I learned some manners at the very least. I stopped going to the shrink, though, after I gave my parents a minute-long monologue on how much I didn’t want to go. It was the most I’d said in such a long time, it made my throat hurt a bit and my voice broke several times but I made it, I made it through and my parents were so proud. I think mom cried a little.
So I didn’t have to visit the shrink, but I kept talking to myself. My voice stopped being so scratchy, stopped cracking and breaking so often. I carried out conversations with Mikey in a higher tone than a whisper. I got a job taking inventory, made nervous small talk with a coworker. I was doing great, but then it happened.
I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I hadn’t done anything to merit the attention of the teens across the street late one Jersey night. But that didn’t matter to them, and I still came home with bruises and cuts and blood all over. I didn’t want to go out after that, I stopped talking to people. I graduated high school, went to art school and found a small apartment for myself and started selling my works. I somehow got a manager, and apparently my work sold. Then you came, you left and you came back.
I was so worried that you would leave again, or that your boyfriend would take you away, ask you to move in with him. You were there often enough anyways. I missed you when you weren’t around, and I was sorry I took you away from all the ones whom loved you, who wanted to hang out with you when I was taking up your time. But I needed you, I needed you to keep me steady. You gave me a taste of something sweet and I wanted more. I just couldn’t get enough.
I was, undeniably, selfish. But I’d never ask you to stay longer than you wanted, I never forced you around. I loved it when you were around, and you came of your own accord. I wanted more, but I held it in. I held it in with cuts and burns, and that was enough to tide me in. I was okay, I was okay as long as you were there with me. It was amazing how attached I’d become.
You came to me, one night. You were crying, snotting, the whole nine yards. I, of course, gave you a tissue immediately. Then I asked what was wrong. You hugged me, honest to God wrapped your arms around me and squeezed the life out of me. Well, I was still alive, but your hug was tight and fierce.
I asked you what was wrong, and you said something I couldn’t hear, then looked up into my eyes. “Make me forget.” You whispered. There were tears flowing from your eyes and I couldn’t resist the pleading, the begging you displayed. I knew I’d regret it in the morning, but I didn’t care.
That night I pounded into you, making you forget the world and see stars. When you hit your peak, though, you didn’t call out my name. You called out another. That really hurt, it cut at my heart. Burned it, rejected it. I cried once you’d gone to sleep, not heart breaking sobs like yours, but the subtle cracking of my heart was displayed in the wet tears that rolled onto the sheets.
The next morning you explained to me that you got into a fight with your boyfriend, and that you were sorry I had to pick up the pieces. It was awkward, at least for me, but I don’t think you noticed. I… I cut, and cut and cut. I just couldn’t stop cutting. There were so many tiny lacerations along my wrist, and my arms had been scab-free before that night I spent with you. You broke me, after all that building up.
But I wasn’t completely gone, not completely done. I… I didn’t know what to do. You used me for a one-night stand and I let you, you said you were sorry I had had to put up with you, but I don’t think that you got it. I don’t think that you understood that you destroyed what little hope I had of ever being loved by you, that it didn’t make things worse. If anything, you were digging your fingers into my wound.
I think I might have been a bit cold towards you that morning. I didn’t care; I was cold. I was freezing, barren and wasting away at the hurt you had inflicted on me. Accidental hurt, I suppose, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. You left to make up with your boyfriend after he left a particularly emotional voice message. That, that hurt too. I was already sulking in my own private pity party, ad when you left I didn’t hesitate to display that party to my canvas.
I broke so many things that day, so many pieces of art I shouldn’t have broken. I ripped canvases, overturned a sculpture I had been trying my hand at. It wasn’t very good anyway, but I still shouldn’t have wrecked it. I shouldn’t have wrecked anything the way I did. I shouldn’t have, but I did, and I’m ashamed to say my face wasn’t exactly dry, either. I considered going out to buy some alcohol, to buy anything to help me forget.
I wanted more than anything to forget, but I couldn’t. I took up heavy cutting, and there were too many cuts along my arms so I started to slice up my thighs, near my ribs. Anywhere you wouldn’t see if my shirt slid up a bit, if I wore long sleeves like I always did I’d be fine. You wouldn’t notice, couldn’t notice because you… I didn’t know how you’d react. You’d gone on and on about people being idiots and cutting them selves for attention, and I guess you were somewhat right about that.
I was cutting, but only to attend to myself because I didn’t dare hope for you to care for me. It took my mind off the fact that I was just a toy to you, that I was disposable and I could be disregarded without any warning to me. I… I wasn’t sure of anything anymore, I loved nothing but my art.
You didn’t visit for a long while, you left me alone for the most part. That… made me sad. And happy, too. I didn’t have to deal with you if you weren’t around. Well, I could at least pretend not to be thinking of you when you weren’t around. It was… awkward, when you finally came back. You were a bit nervous, but eventually got over it and began to talk my ear off again. I tried to listen to you and ignore your every word all at once, which really just confused me as I painted.
“Why don’t you roll up your sleeves?” You asked me. I had a mini heart attack.
“I… I’m trying to paint this shirt, just, um, on accident?” I tried. It sounded meek, so I elaborated my on the spot lie. “I’m trying to make it into an art piece. The paint-covered shirt… or something.”
You looked amused at my oddities, but let it go. But you were suspicious, and I had to bite my lip until I drew blood when you took my wrist in your firm grasp. I think the cuts broke too, because once you’d left there was a bloody mess where you had held me. It hurt, but at least it took my mind off things. I could focus on the pain, the physical pain and not the emotional. They were both caused by you, funnily enough.
I wrapped gauze around my arms, just a thin layer you wouldn’t notice under a sweater or sleeved shirt. I slept in a long-sleeved shirt, I never knew when you would show up and I didn’t really want to risk waking up and walking shirtless into the kitchen only to find you there. You used to practically live with me, after all.
You brought your guitar, one day. I loved to hear you play, and you practiced some songs for your band and composed new ones while I painted. I asked if you composed songs for your boyfriend. You said no, that although you loved him, yes, you loved him, you could never find the same state of mind you got when you came to visit me. That made me quite smug. Quite smug indeed.
You invited me to a gig you were going to, and you were so excited I couldn’t say no. I really needed to learn to say no to you, really needed to learn that just because you thought it was a good idea didn’t mean it was. But I went, dressed up nice just for you. I was going to sit in the back corner, no doubt, because I think if I saw your boyfriend I might just have to maul the man.
Of course, you introduced me to him. “Boyfriend, this is Gerard. He’s the friend I always tell you about.”
Boyfriend smiled. We didn’t shake hands, of course not. I hated shaking hands. You went off with him somewhere before the band played, and I found a table in the corner to sink into. I kept to myself, as I expected I would, and you disappeared from the bar with boyfriend at some point after the music. I didn’t want to think about what you two were doing.
I went back to my apartment next to yours that night, and suddenly I wasn’t right. I tipped that delicate balance that had stopped me from cutting over the last week, kept me from the booze. Somehow, this hurt me more than when you left had left me. You left my heart an open wound, but I loved you for it. I loathed myself for it. The pain, my art, and poison were the only escape for me.
I didn't expect you to come over the next day. I was shocked to see you walk through my front door. As hard as I tried, I couldn't stop the small smile that stretched across my face. You grinned back and asked me about the gig. I didn't talk much, due to a raging hangover from last nights indulgences. But you were used to my silence, and continued the small talk with minimal effort from my part. Eventually you had to go, go back to Boyfriend, and not long after you left, my mind wandered.
How could I be so stupid? After all you had done, I was still happy when you visited. After all the pain, still hopelessly in love with you. It was a path of destruction. You wouldn't ever love me, and all I would have to show for this were empty bottles, scars, and twisted paintings. And even in realizing this, I still couldn't bring myself to hate you. Its pathetic.
You didn't come back the next day, or the day after. But when you did return, you weren't chatty like usual. We sat in silence, me pouring the darkness of my heart onto the smooth canvas, you merely watching. After a while if this I couldn't take it, and so I asked you if you were alright. You just shrugged and looked down, avoiding my gaze, but I dropped it anyway and returned to painting.
The next time you visited, you were cheery again. Every trace of the dark mood from before was gone. You asked me to go on a picnic with you, and I obliged. We drove to a little park with a small pond, and spent most of the hot summer day there, talking. Eventually you suggested a game of tag, and I was more than eager to participate in your childlike wish. We chased each other all over the park, and ended up panting on the swing set.
"Jesus, Gerard, its so hot," you said. "Why are you wearing a long sleeved t-shirt?"
"I dunno, it's my favorite, I guess." I replied, blushing and looking down.
"Oh.." You said, although you were curious, you just weren't curious enough. You would push that extra inch to see the truth. But it wasn't your fault, because it wasn't your job to see.
That night I cut again. It was like I was ill, with a terrible disease, and you were my medication. Whenever you were around, was a time of relapse for me. I could feel better, happier even. Though, when you were gone, the disease would consume me whole, turn me into another person. I went to bed that night with fresh bandages on my arms.
The next day, there was a knock on my door at one 'o clock. This surprised me because you were the only person that ever visited me, but you always let yourself in. You never knocked. I opened the door, to see not you, but Boyfriend. This was even more surprising. We exchanged pleasantries as I invited him in. The second the door closed, Boyfriends face dropped. It was no longer pleasant, but grim, tinged with evil and sadness. It didn't look right, it didn't belong.
Boyfriend told me he knew everything. He knew what happened between us that dreaded night, when you two had fought. I tried to defend myself, but it was no use. Boyfriend is much stronger than I. He overpowered me, walking out of the apartment, leaving me bloody and bruised on the floor.
The next time you visited, was a week after the beating, and most the bruises were gone, bar the yellowing patch around my eye. You noticed and asked me what happened, but I just told you I walked into a door. I didn't want to upset your relationship with Boyfriend. When you left, I felt as if I hit an all time low. So many cuts, all over my body. Reopened on my wrist, slashes over my ribs, my abdomen, and legs. I was a bloody mess. I watched as the crimson life poured from me, spreading onto my white sheets like paint on a canvas.
You didn't visit for a long time. It must have been a month. A month of cutting and poison to cope with my disease. I had lost my will to even paint. I was hopeless. Then one day you supposed me, caught me off guard. You burst through my front door with enthusiasm like you always did, but your face went rigid when you saw me. I was unprepared, it had been so long I didn't even think that you would drop by. I stood in the middle of the main room, shirtless, my scars on display.
My body froze. I didn't know what to do. You stood by the door gaping at me as you're eyes took in my torn flesh. Eventually I came to my senses, and went to my room. After throwing on a long sleeved t-shirt, I was surprised to see that you hadn't left. Instead you were sitting in my living room, with the saddest expression written all over your face. And it cut me deep to know that I was the cause for something so terrible. "Gerard..." you began, searching for words, the pain showing on your eyes, "How could you do this to yourself? Why?" I remained silent avoiding your gaze. I couldn't tell you the truth, I couldn't let you ser how pathetic I was. " Gerard, how long?"
"A while..." I answered, my voice trembling.
Your face was stine white. You sat there for a moment before answering. "All this time. This while time." you muttered shaking your head. "Gee. There is nothing worth hurting yourself over." you said, "Why did you do it."
It was then that I had to tell the truth. I couldn't do it anymore. I thought for a second that, maybe, just maybe everything would be all right. Even if you turned me down, I would have closure, I would be better. I took a deep breath and told you how you came into my life, and turned it all upside down, how much pain I felt when you were gone, how much I missed you. How much that night we spent together meant to me, and how Boyfriend beat me for it. I told you everything.
You sat. Unmoving for the longest time before you said, " Promise me, you won't hurt yourself." and I did. Then you got up, excused yourself, and walked out of my apartment.
I couldn't break my promise to you, though you leaving was like a knife through my heart, I took my aggression, my hatred for myself, out through my art. It was a twisted scene, depicting a murder. The most gruesome piece I had done yet. I worked through the night, and the day after. I knew I wouldn't be sewing you for a while. Then, when the painting was done, I crawled into bed, and simply wished to disappear forever.
Its funny how a person can tear themselves apart, slowly, piece by piece, and not even the closest person to them will know. Sometimes, people just don't care enough.
Days later, I lost track, you were there at my front door. Your eyes were red and puffy. You had been crying. I stood there awkwardly for a minute, before it happened. You grabbed me, pulled me close, and smashed your lips onto mine. Right there in the doorway. The kiss was passionate, but sloppy. Our noses bumped, teeth clicked together. When you pulled away you told me, "Being scarred, being afraid isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s what makes you who you are, molds your person. It isn’t something people should hate you for. It’s something people should look up to you for, for getting past it, facing your demons. You can be filled with as many poisons as you want, as long as you never let them take you down. Do you want to know why? Because you’re not nothing."
END.
*A/N : Ohmigosh! Thank you so much Mychemicalbitchbot, you are such an inspiration too me, and I can only dream that my work did any justice compared to yours.
As for the rest of you, R&R let us know what you think!!!
* A/N numero dos! Hai guys! Like seriously thanks for the two reviews that made my day, and the four rates, to those who did r&r I love you!!! But hey, wanna make an aspiring artist with a career of failure ahead of her duper happy? Can I get one more rate? Make my baby here go green? Pweese? Heheh. Ok. Moment of greed over! Thanks guys =D
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