Demons

The Only Part

"I'm just tired," she said her eyes looking away at the green nothingness ahead of her.
"Of what?" he asked, placing a comforting hand on her thigh.
She sighed and looked down. "Of everything: the unstoppable conflicts between my parents, the fact that my grades go down in every subject and won't go up any sooner, that my health and skin are also going down, that everybody reproaches me everything, that I can't find enough time to do all the things I have to do, nor the energy or the motivation I need to do them so that makes me stressed out and I can't deal with stress, that I can't get my priorities right... I'm tired of giving up so easily when I can't do something, but at the same time I wish I had more control on myself and would be able to try harder to understand when I don't.
"I'm tired of this shitty world, full of wars, troubles, miseries, diseases, fear, quests for power, falling empires, injustice and dying souls. I wish I could escape this, I really wish I could. It's my biggest wish, but the only way to escape's to actually quit it forever and I'm not ready for that. Not yet.
"I'm also tired of my own self. I wish I were someone else, someone different, someone better. I wish I could focus more, that I were better in what I do, that I had more determination to achieve what I wish I could achieve. I wish I didn't have all the health issues I possess. I wish I didn't live in this time, neither on this planet. I wish I'd never met everybody I know."
She glanced up at him and suddenly felt awful about her last words. She wished she could take them back and put them back inside the book she was reading to him that was inside her. But it was too late, she'd spoken up the heartbreaking words and now she had to face the consequences.
He looked down at her hands intertwined together and cupped them with his own. He brought them to his lips and gently kissed her reddened and scarred by eczema fingers. Their eyes met and the tears she'd kept in her eyes slowly rolled down her cheeks. She dropped her head again and wiped the tears, gently tapping the sides of her eyes to stop the burning from the salted tears on the dry skin around the area.
"I'm such a selfish person, I'm such an asshole. I don't know how you manage to go out with a freak like me." She jumped down on her feet and looked him straight in the eyes. "How can you not want to punch yourself for doing that?" She was so angry and yet so sad and feeling guilty for having said all that, but she couldn't keep the fire burning inside her.
He placed a hand on her cheek and brought her face to his but just when their lips were about to meet she yanked his hand from her, more rage thoughts coming out of her mouth.
"What are you doing? Why are you still here? You have the opportunity to escape the black hole you might fall into at any moment, why don't you go before it's too late? I'm a fucking mess, a disaster, a fucking monster, man. Just go before it's too late."
But he didn't move from his seat. She was looking at him so desperately, screaming at him, crying, pulling at her hair, but he didn't show any expression at all.
"I know I'm crazy and you know it too. I'll never achieve anything in life, I'll have a poor job with a cheap salary and bad working conditions. My parents - and perhaps my whole family too - will erase me from their lives because I'll be nothing more than just another mistake in their family tree, a stain they'll want to remove at any cost. I have to take multiple decisions that I'm not quite ready to take and they count on me, 16 years old and single child, to be willing to choose. But times have changed and people of my age are no longer left to themselves against the world to learn everything by their own mistakes like my parents. It just all went way to fast and it's all about to crash on me. And those decisions will play on my future, not only on the next couple of years but way farther than that.
"And I can't do fucking nothing without getting upset because I can't do it, I can't do my homework because I can't find the energy to do them and sure as fuck I can't study because I can't get fucking focused. Now apparently I can no longer do exams without being disturbed by songs playing in my head or getting lost in my thoughts. My brain's like a computer tower that's about to explode because it's full and it can't stock anything more because it's fucking full. Stories, songs, my own problems, things that get me stressed, simply no concentration at all, there's everything than what I need up there when I'm evaluated.
"I might not be accepted to college either if I fail physics because I might need the credits, or I might need the minimal grade in every subject to be accepted, or I might simply need a brain good enough to keep me in the program."
She glanced up and him and sighed. "And you're still here after all that." He nodded. "Why?"
"Because I love you."
"But after everything I just said, aren't you afraid of me?"
"No," he replied.
"Why?"
"We all have our own demons inside, yours might just be bigger and heavier than mine."
"You don't think I'm crazy?"
"You needed to express yourself so I allowed you to."
She confusingly stared at him; he had that little smile she loved so much. He took her face and this time she let him kiss her. When he pulled back he took her in a hug and they stayed like that in silence, enlaced in each other's embrace, in the middle of nowhere; him sitting on a small concrete wall, her standing up.