Undone [Completed]

Undone: [Nineteen]

So, I know author's notes both before and after a post aren't appreciated, but...hi there! I'm super  psyched to know you're still reading (I won't add' if you are' because that's just silly, 'cause I doubt someone's randomly going to click on this), and I'm really sorry for the long delay. I can promise it won't be four months before the next time I upload.

Nineteen - Max

Shutting one’s eyes is not the same as falling asleep – having done that for more nights than I could recall, trying to get there with a ‘fake it till you make it’ approach, I would know.

The breaking of dawn had only signified the end of a very long night, and the onset of a headache. The stampede in my head hadn’t allowed me any rest, not that the message wouldn’t have sufficed to accomplish the same result, but even then, I was nowhere.

Maybe with a little more self loathing than there had been, but generally, the night full of remembrances and regrets hadn’t brought me a single step closer to where I wanted to be.

What am I going to do?

I’d flirted with the idea of coming clean, telling Mum and Dad what was going on, but those regrets I just mentioned included what I’d already put everybody through, and I couldn’t bring myself to add onto it. There were the countless hours spent visiting the hospital and courtroom, of course, but they weren’t primarily what I had in mind. There was little bit of it, definitely, but the emotional turmoil far outweighed anything else I’d put them through. From the fact that I’d lied and gotten myself into the mess that I had, to the shell I’d chosen to reside inside – I’d known it had hurt, and I hadn’t done anything about it.

 And I still wasn’t.

At least this way, I wasn’t making it any worse than it already was. I tried not to think about it much each day, but every time I told Mum or Dad that I was ‘fine’, or that school had been ‘okay’ and that I was up to ‘nothing much’, it hurt. I’d see it flicker in their eyes for a brief moment, then it’d disappear, and there’d be guilt – they’d think they were doing it wrong.

They didn’t need any more.

So no – I wasn’t going to tell them.

Then what am I going to do?

Rationally, I knew it had nothing to do with it, but the instinctive part of me felt stuck, like there was anything I could do till I figured out something it considered far more important.

 How is he doing this?

He was in jail.

This was a definite fact because I’d been around when he’d been sentenced, and parole within even five years had definitely not been part of the sentence, and if he’d escaped, or something, I’d have received a notification. It had been a criminal case, and although I wasn’t sure of exactly how the legal system worked, I was fairly positive that if he had broken free, I’d have been informed.

The problem was that that was the only fact I knew to be entirely true. And it wasn’t even that comforting to know, because clearly, even though he was in prison, he had access to things he shouldn’t – like a mobile phone.

Unless, of course, this isn’t him.

And that complicated things further. If not him, it was someone I thought to be a friend, which meant…I didn’t even know. And I know I’m seeing pretty calm right now, thinking rationally about everything and just keeping my head in its place, but that’s not how the night had been.

No, that had been more of a restless shuffle from question to question, thought to thought, draining me entirely till I could only repeat to myself what I’d said over and over and over again already.