Disconnected ; Lashton

37. Have Faith In Me

I stare out into a sea of a thousand lights. I can't make out the faces but I know that they are there. I hear the sounds of their screams- slightly muffled by my ear pieces. I can't possibly count every single light I see, there's way too many for my brain to comprehend. It's almost overwhelming.

Almost.

But the feeling of my guitar strap weighing on my neck keeps me grounded. My feet stay flat on the floor of the stage below me, and I focus on my breathing until I can think straight once more. How many people are out there? How many did they say? Forty, fifty thousand? Something like that?

It's baffling. So many people in front of me. I can't currently see them as anything more than twinkling lights, but they're so much more than that. They're everything to me. And although I fail to understand why, everyday they make it more and more clear that I'm everything to them.

Those twinkling lights out there- they're all the reason that I'm up here. They're the reason I feel brave enough to do something like this. They're the reason.

They flash in my eyes and I take out my ears to hear them better. It's loud. Deafening. A million voices that gather into one.

If I was to speak right now, without the assistance of my microphone, none of them would be able to hear me. For whatever reason, I find an unbelievable amount of comfort within that realization.

But there's no point. If I'm going to speak up here at any point, it should be so I can be heard. They're here to listen, arent they? So listen they will. But not to my words in the form of speech-

How about a song, instead? I think it's about time the show began.

I've played shows before, we know that.

But nothing like this before.

I walk to the front of the stage and spread my arms out wide. Their screams rise.

So this is what it feels like. The exhilaration, the adrenaline. Feeling like nothing and no one can stop you. Like nothing can get to you or hurt you, like nothing bad that you've ever gone through matters.

This is what it's like, up here on a stage like this. It might as well be called heaven, because I feel as though I'm in the clouds.

This is what I know I want to keep doing for the rest of my life. I already knew that, back from the first day I ever played with my best friends up in Mikeys attic, but this really sets it in stone. I found a place to belong in that attic. A place to belong with the three boys on stage with me, a place to belong with the boy on the drums behind me. And now this.

I'm up here, and nothing hurts.

I don't care about the scars on my arms, or the ones deep beyond. I don't care about those who have hurt me or the things that I've done. I don't care about the person I saw the day I punched the bathroom mirror back in Australia.

I don't care at all.

All that I know, all that I feel- is just this. My guitar in my hands, the lights in my eyes, the screaming in my ears.

I feel as though I've been sleepwalking for the duration of my life, and now I'm finally waking up and gaining consciousness for the first time. Now it is overwhelming, the amount of pure joy that courses through my entire being. I feel alive, and how wonderful a thing it is to be!

"This song's called Everything I Didn't say!" Michaels voice echoes throughout the venue and the screams echo back at us.

This really is everything I didn't say.

As I sing, I'm electrified. Every word I never spoke, every sentence that wouldn't allow itself to be formed; it all comes out through my voice when I sing.