Some Day One Day

55

The silence was a killer. It was a few beats from making my heart stop and discouraging me to continue, but I had to bear it. This had been long overdue. The longer we kept secrets under covered the longer the pain would have to be endured.
The temperature wasn't glacial or chilly, but I run my hands over my exposed arms experiencing a type of cold created by my misshapen past. With each breath that I took, my entire body was much like a mass of fire that continued to writhe and writhe like gasoline and wood was being hurled into it.
Uniting my haywire emotions together as best as I could, I braced myself to tell him of how it had all happened.
"Lee and I were living a dazed life, both of us not really in tune with one another. He lived his own life while I lived mine. We still managed to maintain a friendship though and comfort each other whenever we were at our weakest points. He was and still is a great person."
Pausing to place my arrayed thoughts in place, I continued with my head bowed, eyes trained to the walkway.
"We'd endured it for two years before the tsunami happened. My parents and sister were going on vacation. My parents and I had somewhat rekindled our past relationship-moreso with my father than with my mother," I gulped the ball of fire knotted in my throat down, "My mother and I never had the same relationship again. I'd be lying if I said I didn't detest her, but I'd be lying if I said I still didn't love her no matter how much I didn't want to."
Of course I refrained from telling him how he was the supreme controller of every thought in my mind. No matter how distant the subject would be Shawn would find a way to latch and connect himself to that thought. I couldn't do anything without thinking about him. It drove me insane.
"I wasn't able to go because I fell sick with a fever. I was on bed rest for nearly two weeks but the next time I woke up," my eyes moistened at the memory, "Lee was right by my side with tears in his eyes. I wasn't so sure why he was crying. For a moment I thought it was because I was sick, but after a while I knew something else had to be really wrong. And so he told me. They'd died from a natural disaster. At first I hadn't believed him because, well, I thought such a thing happening would be so unlikely. I never believed him at first. Then-"
The flames became sweltering and unbearable. I felt like I couldn't breath as I remembered that slated morning.
"It was so sudden. Before they left, my mother and I had had another argument. I think we were having a talk about something, about me wanting to move because I was unhappy, and we'd argued in circles until we ended up arguing about you. That's always the underlying truth of all the arguments we had ever since she threatened to have you thrown in jail-every argument we had would lead to you, us or me. Before she left she'd told me out of frustration that she loved me no matter how much I hated her, but because I was so angry I hadn't said anything.
"Later on that day before they left my father came to speak to me. He was always a man of few words and back then wasn't an exception. He told me that they did what they thought was best for me...that night my father just looked at me and started crying. And he said he was sorry for ruining my life but he only did what he thought was best. He also said he hoped I didn't love him any less. I was still angry about the whole situation, and I wanted to leave it at that but when I remembered the heartattack and the fact that I'd been the cause, I told him that I still and would always love him...and Mom. But that was the last time I saw them. It was almost like going to sleep and waking up into a nightmare.
"For the first few days I honestly didn't feel anything because I didn't believe it had happened. But my mother's pestering was no longer there, my father's comforting shoulder was no longer there for me to cry on, and my sister wasn't there to be my friend. Lee told me people worried because I acted as though nothing happened, but it's because I was so shocked and found it so untrue that I just didn't feel anything. It started to sink in though, slowly but surely it sunk in and I realized that nothingness I felt inside stemmed from not caring at all.
"I didn't care about anything. I'd been doing well in college," I stopped abruptly when the reason why I'd been doing well was simply because of Shawn and the inner need to please him and make him proud even though at that time he wasn't in my life, "And...and I went from one of the top in the class and plunged to the bottom. I stopped talking to people period...Lee even took me to the hospital once because he thought trauma had me suddenly mute, but that wasn't the case. I was also working part time even though I didn't need to, but I used to do it to take my mind off of you and all the could have beens of my life, so I stopped doing that too. I started to indulge recklessly on shopping for unnecessary things, realizing that that was exactly what my parents used to do to compensate for the time they spent slaving over their work. They would just buy me things all the time to fill in that void and that's how I started to fill in my time...even though you'd shown me better.
"Everything was a downward spiral not because of anyone else, but myself. Everytime I tried to reach out to you I felt hypocritical. Whenever I talked to Ojay and he spoke of you, he told me flat out that from the way you acted that you did hate me...so I guess I'd gotten what I wanted. He told me you seriously wanted nothing to do with me and that you just wanted to get on with your life. That was the night that I...I...I just started walking around aimlessly because I'd reached the lowest point. I walked a few ways off campus to some party some students were having."
I bit my lips in self-loathe as the blurry past hazed in my mind. Everytime I thought of that day I became sick to my stomach. I could remember it vividly yet in the same token I couldn't remember it at all because I couldn't believe I'd had a hand in it.
"It's strange, it's a moment I'll never forget, yet I don't know what time of the day it was, what I was wearing, I barely remember what the place looked like...but I remember what I did. Someone offered the drugs to me, and my immediate reaction was no. But the..." not wanting to give excuses for why I did it, I pursed my lips in hesitation.
"There's no need to explain why I did it, because there's never an excuse for doing what I did. No matter how much the pain is, whether you're rid of emotions to the point where you don't even feel human...that's not an excuse. But I did it. One time was all it took for me to never look back. This will probably be the ugliest thing I've ever said, but I thought it was my comforter. I was the definition of nothing before drugs, and I thought I'd found something with it-a purpose to get out of bed everyday.
"Everytime I wasn't high, which became a rarity in no time, I would think of my parents and...and you and how you guys would be so disappointed in me. Then I would get angry because I felt whereas everything was my fault, I still couldn't seem to do anything right even when I tried to, so I would use drugs again to keep me from thinking about the people I loved who were no longer there. The fact that I was the one who had chased all these people out of my life strove me to do more.
"Getting drugs was no problem because I had the money. Along with my parent's will, I had it all. I went on shopping sprees and spent lavishly to fill in for things that weren't there. When that didn't work, I spent my money on drugs. Sooner or later, that stopped working...and even much sooner, the money began to disappear."
Apart from my parent's home and the ring Shawn gave to me, there was an amount of money that I kept in another count that I never dared to tap into...ever. I left it for something else, anything else, but I somehow had the willpower not to use it. It's ironic because when drug strikes, nothing, not even Heaven or Hell can stand in your way, but the thought of a certain someone made me keep that investment pristine and untouched.
I didn't bother to tell him about that though.
"Over the next five months, I lost everything though. Everything. But when I took these drugs, this is an old cliché but it's true, I felt like I was finally in control of something in my life."
Not that I hadn't been in control before as I previously thought. I'd matured to learn that anyone can take control of anything they want...
They just had to work hard for it. Real hard. Yet in some ironic way it was that thinking that got me out of my drug habit-I had to work strenuously hard not to do it again.
"It didn't take long for Lee to recognize I had a problem. He realized that I was swindling him for money, and that's when he had me put in rehab for the next three months. Once I got home though, all that rehab went to waste when I relapsed and Lee threw me out."
I didn't know what Shawn was doing, if he was still there because it was so quiet, but I carried on. If he'd in fact left then this would be some meditation and therapy for my own good.
"For a long time I hated Lee for doing that to me, because I thought he didn't understand me. I also hated him for making all the mistakes I'd made in my life clearer than before. my wild spending had left me penniless. My drug intake got me put in jail. That was the last straw for Lee despite him helping to have me out without a sentence. His family was really, really supportive in getting me a good lawyer and trying to put me through an intervention, but I knew they were disappointed. So I was living on the street for a while."
I clutched my eyes tightly at the memory.