Origin Stories

i went to hell when i died

TW: self harm, suicide

I see you driving Dad's white Nissan down the back roads. You pull over and cry into your forearms, leaning against the steering wheel and teetering there as if on the edge of a cliff. You fight it at first, but it overwhelms you, and you start to cry those kinds of tears that can't be started or finished on purpose.

I hear you sobbing the way you did when we were kids, both of us still in highschool, and you got that text, and your eyes swelled up and went so red where they should've been white. You're crying so hard, and instead of your tears and snot making a mess of my favorite flannel shirt-- I wasn't prepared to see you cry; you never cry-- they slide against your skin until there's no more of you left and they have to come apart from your face to be absorbed by the car seat. It's swallowing your pain more easily than I ever could, but you don't even notice. You just feel so alone.

You press your palms to your eyes, and I can see now. There are scabs on your arms again. They rise pink and angry against your tanned skin, deeper than the ones you showed me when we were kids. I used an old pair of sewing scissors, turned my arms into quilts, embroidered my thighs with reminders of how unhappy I was. You used that old dull pocket knife, sawing into yourself like the plastic wrap of a hay bale until the blood finally showed. What does it say about us that you turned yourself into another job to do while I made myself into a craft project? Does it say anything?

We always said it couldn't get any worse. We always knew it could.

Here it is: Your worst case scenario.What you never even allowed yourself to think might happen. You're living it. Barely, but you are. It's all there in the scars you can't stop giving yourself, scars that will never outmatch the one I gave you.

I know you don't think I can hear you yelling at me, but I do. And I don't blame you for being angry. I don't blame you for skipping Adam's Song every time it comes on. I don't blame you for leaving it on every playlist in your spotify account, though I don't know if it's so you can skip it, or so you can hear the first note.

I see you straighten behind the wheel. Your face... you look young, like the little boy who sat across from me at the kitchen table and posed for pictures when I got my first iPod touch. But you look old, old like a Winchester, like you've been through impossible torture and it just keeps going because the real torture is in walking around like you're perfectly alright. You hated Supernatural before, but you're on season five now.

You turn your eyes to the road with vigor, but it doesn't last. You're on the road barely a minute before your whole face starts to crumble like dirt at the edges of a fresh-dug hole. A burial site.

I went to Hell, when I died. I had to watch you keep living.