Love Like This

9 | me, myself, and I

"Hang on, give me a second," I grunt into my phone, double checking behind me that no stray animal or child is following me outside before I slip through the door and onto my parents front patio. "It's a fucking madhouse in there."

I sigh at Beau once I can finally hear myself think.

My parents, Cami and Jay Larson, live in a state of orderly chaos at all times. When my brothers and I were growing up, we were always on the go. It was basically the rule of the house. Every kid had a sport and an instrument to play, and when schools started offering clubs, too, you bet your ass we were all signed up. Chess for Peter, the Student Leaders club for Peyton, and peer tutoring for me - I was a whiz at math and science. High school brought jobs and internships and I did my part, filled my role, until it all just became too much and I stopped everything except drinking and getting high.

That's when rides to practices and games, work shifts and internships, changed to trips to the therapists office, support groups, treatment centers. We were suddenly on the go in a whole new, less fun, more urgent kind of way.

The tattered calendars Mom used to keep in the kitchen have morphed into a whiteboard version, our activities replaced by events they're to attend for their three grandsons, vet visits for their two chocolate labs and three angry cats, and their own classes and festivities at the community center, volunteering and playing Bingo and whatever else it is they do there.

As it is right now, the whole family is cooped up in the home I grew up in: between myself, my older brothers, Peyton, the middle child of us three, his wife Sienna, and their three boys, Danny, Mark, and Nick, and Peter with his girlfriend Lyla, the place is fucking crowded. And loud.

"What do you need?" I ask into my phone, feeling the breeze against my clammy skin as the sun sets in front of me. I'm glad Beau called - it was the perfect excuse to dip out of dinner right as the serious questions started coming out.

Things like, "So what're you doing now, Parker?" followed by stifling support and encouragement over the lamest job ever, and questions like "So are you seeing anyone?" and "When will you settle down?" My brothers think I miss the way they grab their partners hands as they ask, how they share concerned glances with their girls when I say I'm single.

I don't.

While I know it's all well intentioned, all I really want to say is that of course I'm not happy with where I am in life but I have no one to blame but myself and no amount of their coddling or hand-holding will change it, so can they all just stop? Just for a second? So I don't have to think about how disappointing everything turned out to be for just one moment of the day?

Because that's how I am, if I were to answer honestly when they ask: I am disappointed. And tired. The mistakes that I made are lasting, they follow me everywhere, and now I'm seeing what all my bullshit really got me. A shit job and no shot at a girl I want to get to know better.