Oblivion

Prince with a Thousand Enemies

I walk down the street, hands in my pockets, my breath clouding in front of me. I stare at the windows, imagining the lives of everyone in there, the ghosts in their walls. Even though I go to school with all of them, I don't know them. They don't know me. No one knows anyone. Because we have our own lives, separate from everyone we know. It's the life we live inside of ourselves. And that life, no matter how hard we try, only we can know.

Only we can stop ourselves from hanging ourselves in our bedroom.

Only we can stop ourselves from not leaving an explanation to our best friend and our parents and every single fucking person who cared about you.

Only we can decide who we're going to leave behind.

I never sleep. No, that's not true. I hardly sleep. My old psychiatrist said that insomnia can be caused by depression and anxiety. They were finally starting to help when my parents pulled me from our meetings because they believed that that was the amount of time I needed to heal. It wasn't. But there's no way I'd argue. Dad's not safe to be around when he's challenged. Or angry. Or drinking. Or sad. Dad's not safe to be around, period. And Mom. She was good, once. They both were, I think. At least I remember them being good. Faintly. Like when they would sit on opposite sides of my bed and take turns reading me to sleep. Or when we would go have picnics at the park in the summer.

And then I got older. They might have always been this way, I just never noticed until I grew up. And now I'm stuck. The one person who actually cared about me killed herself.

Kat. She was the person who was going to save me. Turns out, we both needed saving. I knew Kat practically my entire life. We went to the same preschool, the same elementary school, but then we got separated during middle school. Our friendship changed after that, but not in entirely bad ways. Thankfully she ended up going to high school with me, but she only survived a year. To be honest, I don't know how I survived longer. That wasn't the plan.

We were going to graduate, move out and study abroad in Europe, and live out whatever remained of our lives in a cottage in the middle of nowhere. This was a promise we made to each other, a pact, crossed our hearts and hoped to die.

I guess she was the only one who took that last part seriously.

I stare at the side walk, counting the steps I take in each section. One, two, one, two, three, one two, one, two, three. I time each step to the pattern. It busy's my mind for a little while, until it doesn't. So I just look up and stare at the sky. The light pollution from a small town isn't all that significant, but it's enough to dampen the light of the stars that live trillions of miles away. Stars have always made me feel ten times more invisible, more insignificant than I already do. But I can never take my eyes off of them.

I pass my house. The lights are still off. Of course they are, it's fucking two in the morning. I keep walking. I walk, and I walk, and I walk. I ended up drowning my thoughts in music at one point. I stop paying attention to the world. I'm sick of the world.

It deserves to end.

I deserve to end.

I want to end.

Right?

As my thoughts continue to spiral, my pace gets faster and faster. The speed increases until I'm running.

Sprinting. To where? I have no idea.

Not like I give a shit anyway.

It's whatever.

I turn down streets I've never been down before, I run in the middle of the road. At one point, I started crying. It just makes me run faster. I feel like I can't breathe. I'm drowning. My lungs are on fire and my body screams for me to stop. I bite my lip from screaming myself. I stop, right there in the middle of the street and tear out my ear buds. I bend, grasping my knees. I gasp for air and cough at the sudden abundance of oxygen. Wiping my tears, I look around. While I do live in a small neighborhood, we're surrounded by clusters of other neighborhoods. I'd probably know where I am if it was lighter and I knew the roads I took to get here. But my brain's too foggy to try to figure out where I am.