timeless melody ↝ eddie vedder

𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐲 𝐬𝐢𝐱

I wasn't surprised that he had asked. Most people get curious when they find out I somewhat abruptly moved out of my mother's house to live with my dad, who I hadn't seen in years. Although, when you know the details the move doesn't seem so abrupt.

Outside of my family, I had only ever told the whole story to four people; Sarah, Chris, Andy, and Stone.

All was on seperate occasions, but all times when I needed someone to confide in about it, and the four of them were my closest friends. I trusted them with that information.

As for my other close friends, I only fed them bits and pieces of the story. Enough so that they understood the general picture and didn't feel the need to pry any further, but didn't know the ugly details. They simply didn't need to know.

It's not that I didn't trust them, it's just difficult for me to be that vulnerable.

I weighed the pros and cons of telling Eddie, and it took me a minute to make my decision. On one hand, I had only known him for, what, a month and a half? I barely even knew him yet, and disclosing very intimate details from my childhood to him seemed less than desirable, logically speaking.

On the other hand, something about him made me feel like he already knew everything about me. It made me feel like I could tell him anything, without feeling judged. And that part of him, the part of him that felt familiar, and comforting, was much stronger than the part of him that felt like a stranger. So I decided to tell him.

"How much of it do you wanna know?" I chuckled lightly.

"As much as you're comfortable with telling me."

"Okay, um..." I looking at the ceiling for a second, thinking of where to start. I decided to start at the beginning, explaining that my dad and my mother, Monica, had their first child when they were both sixteen. It was my oldest brother, Dean. The next year, they had my sister, Mason, and the year after that they had my brother Brandon. Everyone thought it was strange that they kept having kids so young, and to be honest so do I, but I guess that they still loved each other then.

They took a short break from reproducing until I was born in 1965; four years after Brandon, when my parents were twenty-two. From what I've been told, things went well for a while. The six of us lived in San Francisco, occasionally spending time during the summer down in LA where my grandparents lived. Even with Dad touring, we functioned as a family, sometimes going with him, other times staying at home and waiting for him.

In 1969, just before my fourth birthday, Dad came home from a long European tour. We spent a few days together as a family just catching up, but on the night before my birthday, Monica took me, and left my Dad and my siblings. They had never married, so she didn't have to worry about a divorce, and the house was being rented in Dad's name, so she didn't have to worry about that either. Nobody ever knew why she left, and I never got an explanation.

"It's like one day, she just snapped, and she was suddenly this different person, Y'know?" I paused, needing to take a bite of pizza and have a sip of my drink.

"Yeah, I know what you mean." Eddie gave confirmation that he was actually listening. He nodded slightly, and took a sip of his own drink.

I took a deep breath in and let it out, "D'you want me to keep going?"

"Only if you're okay with it."

And I was okay with it. So I kept going. I started telling Eddie about the shit-show that my childhood turned into; Monica started by moving the two of us to Michigan. We had no family there, no friends, she couldn't find a job there, or anyone to look after me, so we left after a few months of hovering above the poverty line. We moved from Ann Arbor to Arlington, Virginia. We stayed there for two years.