“You have talent, Mr. Hernandez, there's no denying it. But you have to choose a lane, an audience. We don't know where to put you. You're too unorthodox. And I'm sorry, but we're letting you go.”
I tilted my head back, letting the liquid run down my throat. It burned like hell, but I didn't cringe, used to the feeling. I threw the empty glass bottle to the floor, along with the others.
You're the reason for my actions.
I took one of the bottles in my hand, twisting it, pretending to read the label over and over. But there was no way I could distract it from coming. The tears slipped over my jaw, fast and salty. My veins pulsed out of my arms. You're selfish. Expelling the anger growing inside me, the bottle of liquor crashed against the wall, its glass littered the floor like falling rain.
You're the cause of my rage, my frustration.
I angrily wiped the tears away, balling my fist, the bones of my jaw clenching. I climbed higher on that ladder of rage, not caring if it destroyed me. I threw whatever was in reach. I kicked everything in my path. Kind of what you like to do, isn't it? A knock sounded on the door, followed by the shaking and twisting of the door knob. Their fists banged on the wood, causing me to cower back at the noise.
“Bruno? What the hell are you doing in there?”
At the sound of my best friend's voice, I felt my shoulders sag, my head hang low. I collapsed backwards into a chair, pressing my fingers to my eyes. I'm letting him down. I'm letting everyone who believed in me down. You were always the reason I felt stressed out and defeated. I'm like a rubber band to you. You pull me further and further apart. I try to suffice, but you never stop pulling.
I always bend backwards for you, until I break in half.
Broken. That's how you churn up my feelings with your ways, as I am right now. I wake up to you every morning, with good intentions, a smile across my lips. I'm happy when I'm with you, when I listen to the different sounds you create. You have this satisfying touch that I live for, that I breathe for.
You're the only thing I know.
Yet you're the one setting this stone of sadness within me, creating a goal that is too far to reach. You just sit there and laugh as I cringe stepping on broken glass, desperately trying to find that success you were supposed to lend me.
Instead, you leant me nothing but pain.
When the pounding on the door ceased into a loud silence, thoughts of my family, my friends, and all of my loved ones gripped the chance to appear in my mind. I wouldn't go back home, that was the promise I made to myself when I had aboarded the plane to California.
Unless there was a check in my pocket to buy my mother a house, Hawaii would not see me coming back. I would not face pitiful eyes.
And at that moment, a bubble of hope settled within myself. I took ahold of it, enjoying the feeling until it grew and that was all I could feel. I would make it out there one day and you would see my name on the top of the charts all around the world.
Because this is what I was born to do. I've been singing ever since I was two years old. I have a need for bigger stages and a need to make people all around the world form their own emotions from my voice.
Even though the consequences you bring while trying to find success in you are profoundly difficult and are the reasons why I'm scarring my liver with the alcohol and damaging my lungs with the smoking—to at least find that tiny bit of relief from you—I'm willing to suffer through them all because, well, you're all I know.
I chuckled humorlessly, groaning between my fingers.
Fuck you music, you'd all I'd ever be.
***
“It's just expression, it's music. It's supposed to make you feel something. . .” - Bruno Mars
“If you don't believe in yourself, no one else is gonna believe in you. I was like, no fuck that, I'm the shit, I'm gonna do this.” - Bruno Mars
