Better Than Tears (sweeter than sleep)

Don't wanna be lonely

Jungkook had always felt lost.

When he was a kid, swinging on the swings with no one to push him and his mom's face burrowed in whatever trashy romance novel she was reading, the other kids running around with bright smiles decorating their faces, he felt lost. He felt like he should know something more, like there was supposed to be more to life, something that everyone else seemed to have and he didn't understand they he didn't have it too. Everybody around him - the kids playing tag, the adults talking animatedly - always seemed to be moving in a generally forward direction. It was more than loneliness. It was a genuine lack of purpose.

Those people he watched, kids or adults, they all seemed to have a sense of purpose. They had friends. They laughed. They played and talked and it was all normal for them. They went to school and came home to eat dinners with their families, bright smiles decorating their faces. He knew because he ate dinner at their houses sometimes - back when he still knew how to talk to people - and wished that his face could smile so bright.

There wasn't a lot of smiling in his house. His hyung was the only was who really smiled, and then he went away, and Jungkook didn't have a real friend after than. School was an escape of sorts, though he didn't really speak to anyone and always ate lunch alone. It felt right, it felt normal. Jungkook was alone wherever he went. That's just how it was. He was alone, he was lonely, he was lost.

That's just how it was.

His dad left when he was very little, and Jungkook only remembered that he was tall and would sing him to sleep when his mom couldn't get out of bed. He didn't know why she couldn't get out of bed, but it scared him, and having his dad there to sing him to sleep made it better, sort of. He didn't remember there being words, but there would be a hand to brush through his hair and there was a bit of security in that. Singing made him feel safe. But then one day his mom couldn't get out of bed and his dad wasn't there and Jungkook cried himself to sleep that night.

And for a lot of nights after. Crying became like singing to him. There was no true sound to them, no melody except the occasional strained whine that escaped his throat before he closed it up and curled in on himself, but it was a relief. It didn't get rid of the lost feeling, but it wore him out enough to send him off. The was a security in in own tears. He'd wake up feeling like he was still sleeping and the mirror would mock his red eyes in the morning until the shower washed everything of the night away.

Then his mom seemed to get better, and she tried to sing him to sleep when she could, but it didn't work the same. Her voice wasn't the same as before, and her eyes always seemed haunted, even when she smiled that same smile that used to bring a semblance of warmth into Jungkook's heart. He tried to hear the singing and make it what was normal again, but his mom's lullabies didn't carry the same comfort anymore. He didn't know these songs, in this new voice. Jungkook only knew crying, so he'd pretend to be asleep until she left, then let the tears fall and that simple act of emotional relief was what carried him into dreams. Not very nice dreams, but he supposed that sleep with bad dreams was better than not sleeping at all.

He felt that way for what seemed like a long time, until he was ten. It was his tenth birthday when his hyung came home from college suddenly. Jungkook suspected it had something to do with his mom having trouble walking, but he didn't want to ask questions he didn't really want answers to, so he just rejoiced in his hyung's company while it lasted. He learned to smile even if he didn't feel like it, because light was light and he didn't like the dark. He had someone who could smile like he meant it now, so he treasured every one. It had to end eventually, right?

For a while, his hyung's voice sung him to sleep. For a while he took him to school and drove him home. For a while he bought him ice cream and watched movies with him. For a while, he didn't see his mom much. She wasn't in the house anymore, and he spent a lot of time doing homework and drawing on big pieces of paper, random scribbles with no meaning except that he was very lonely.

And lost.

But that's just how it was.

--

Jungkook was twelve when his hyung said goodbye again, taking all the temporary warmth and genuine smiles with him and he prepared for feeling empty again.

His mom came home from that scary place with too much white and where everything smelled dead, and she started smiling again. Jungkook had forgotten that she looked really pretty when she smiled. He started to smile a little bit too, because it made her smile and it made him feel a little less empty. Then he met some kids at school that took away the smile pretty quick. His mom would cry a little after, and kiss the cuts to make them better, but Jungkook just wanted her to smile. He needed her to smile. That was the only time he felt a little less lonely, when he felt just a little less lost.

He told the bullies not to hit him in the face. He said he needed his mom to smile because she was sick, so she needed to smile a lot to get better. The bullies had a weird sense of compassion and didn't hit his face. They still hit him, but he was old enough that his mom never saw his stomach anymore. She started smiling again, a weak sort of smile, but it was better than nothing. When she sang him to sleep, her voice was stronger and he didn't have the bad dreams. He still felt lost, but at least he didn't cry so much. The old bullies fazed out and new ones fazed in, but they didn't hit his face. Apparently his sick mom was a known thing, because everybody looked at him sadly and the new bullies never touched his face. He didn't have friends, but he did all his homework diligently.

He still drew large pictures of scribbling loneliness that he never showed his mom. She thought he was doing okay. She smiled. He needed her to smile, so he kept the drawings hidden and cried silently into his pillow on the hardest days. He washed away the red in the morning before she could see.

Jungkook got really good grades and by the time he started high school, he was a top student. It didn't do anything to stop the bullying. He said the same thing to them, but these bullies had no compassion. They his his face if they wanted to, and they wanted to a lot. His mom was having trouble walking again, and the bruises on "her baby's" face kept the smiles away and the tears coming. She sang to him less and less and he started crying himself to sleep again. He tried to tell himself he was too old to cry, but tears were his only friends. He couldn't chase them away. He got used to seeing red eyes in the morning again.

When he graduated high school, he was still the top student and got a scholarship to his first choice college. He didn't want to go, because his mom was back in the dead-smelling place. He refused to give it its proper name because that was too scary.

Jungkook was scared of a lot of things. He was scared of his bad dreams. He was scared of bullies. He was scared of the dark. He was scared of people, because most people these days only had bad things to tell him. He was scared that he was going to wake up one day and find that he worst nightmare had come true.

His hyung appeared one day, with a grim face devoid of any hint of a smile and they both looked down at their mom, lying very pale under her pale sheets. They took it in turns to watch her. For a while week, they took it in turns to sing to her, broken, mumbled singing that sounded more like a dirge than anything else. She woke up at the end of the week to smile at them. Jungkook tried to see his mom in her, but she was so different. She tried to sing one more time, but it came out like a whisper, the scratchy breath gasping out of breaking lungs.

Jungkook couldn't even cry.

His hyung only cried.

Jungkook watched her chest go up and down.

Until it stopped.

--

Jungkook had always felt a kinship to the color black, but he hated it more than he'd ever hated anything before. Still, it felt like he couldn't wear anything else. Yellow was too happy, red was too bright, blue was too warm. White was too pure, and he was anything but. No, he was going to wear the dark he hated, and he was going to wear it forever.

It was the brightest day he'd seen in a while. Jungkook stared at the gravestone for hours before his hyung found him and carried him home. He was too tired to do anything for a few days, too sad and too lost. His hyung told him to go to college, to move on. He'd take care of everything else.

"Just get out of this house, Jungkook. Forget the past. Just move on and start a new life. It's the only way."

"The only way to what?"

"To live."