WHEN BEAUTY NO LONGER EXISTS

9

a/n: tell me if this is fucked but this is the last damn time im gonna try to publish this because im getting too angry

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Another month crawled over us all, and I felt it like an ice cube slipping down the center of my spine. Slow and frigid and small, like it shouldn't have had nearly as large as an impact as it did. Time was always important, you know, especially when you had nothing to look forward to. Nothing to actually reach when you get past all the damn time the world made you suffer through.

Sometimes, the sadness feels like drugs.

Waffle sat on my bed the next morning and woke me up with his tongue on my face, and I almost felt a smile work to peak through, break the barrier of my face. Destroy the layers it was shoved under. I didn't know what it felt like to smile, anymore, which is due to the fact that when something big happens in your life, your life is forever split into, at least, two separate sections: BEFORE and AFTER. What part was I in? Was something about to become of me? Was I going to be born again? Or, was this it? Maybe it was the end and maybe it wasn't. Either way, at the time, I couldn't have given less of a shit.

"Hey, buddy," I whispered to the dog. My body felt like it didn't belong to me, again, and like it did, at the same time. But way too much. It belonged to me too much. "How'd you sleep?" He just looked at me with drooped eyes, as if he's spent centuries keeping them pried open. "Good? Alright." I took a deep breath with lungs that felt fake and breathed in air that didn't belong in the lungs and felt the earth that I hadn't seen in four months, which was a third of an entire year, and then I realized I wasted so much time indoors, feeling sorry for myself and also for Theo, because he did that, and feeling sorry for Josh and, wow, there's nothing anyone can do to make this better because a bomb has been set off in the center of my life, its only purpose to cause damage to what I needed, what I came to expect--

But, what did it matter, anyway?

"Tyler!" I heard a voice call, and I grabbed at the corner of my blanket, annoyance and guilt spreading through me much quicker than I ever really liked. Yanking the fabric over my head, I screwed my eyes shut and willed Dakota away, willed the world away. It wasn't difficult to imagine everything I was really missing outside of my apartment, and outside of the fucking blanket. But it made no difference. A pile of shit was still a pile of shit, regardless of where it is. "You awake?"

For the past month, my life was this. Wake up with Waffle, hate myself as if I'd caused every wrong thing ever bred in the entirety of the universe, and then listen to Dakota tell me that I'm here if he needed me. The only real difference is that he got a boyfriend. His name's Steven and I know he popped pills and stared at the wall when he assumed no one was paying him any real attention. But I was always watching everything. That's what you're supposed to do when you hardly speak.

"Yeah," I croaked back. "I'll be there in a second."

Stumbling to my feet, I made my way to something reflective, knowing I needed to look somewhat lively when I saw him. As luck would have it, my face was still sullen and blank, like I never knew what I was supposed to think or feel or be. Accurate, really. But, my hair was growing long and I tried to make it scoop into something tall and exaggerated, before realizing how little shit I actually truly gave. It didn't matter. I could emerge from my bedroom with the appearance of a male model, and Dakota would still treat me like an expensive plate in a china cabinet that was hardly sturdy.

Steven was with him, a box of donuts in his pale hands, and he held it out to me as I approached. He was tall, with hair the color of a dried lemon and a voice that was rarely heard. He worked as a mechanic and had scars on his hands and dreamed of becoming an architect. That was all I really knew. I liked him well enough.