The Brevity of Joy

one

(Dan's POV, some mentions of bullying in this chapter)

Song of the chapter: Atmosphere by Joy Division

I'm not going to lie; I didn't like it back in Berkshire. There wasn't anything to like about it. The land was bleak, and the people were just the same. It was a cabbage soup place, with cabbage soup people. Life was waiting for me. Or, maybe it wasn't, but I was waiting for it to reach out it's cold yet welcoming light through my window. To take that stark contrast of the deep darkness i was wading through and give me some light. Just a little bit of light, not unrequited blinding happiness.  For fifteen years I waited to get out, wondering when I'd waltz. I guess it was now.

Childhood was terrible. The past 15 years have been non-stop insults and beatings. I'd gotten used to it, actually. It didn't feel extraordinary, because it was routine. It happened to the best of us. I was tall, skinny, and I had a weird haircut. It's not like I was the only one, if you were even slightly odd, you would have a shit time. And no one else really cared. They were so dry and boring, all they thought about was football or shopping.

Sure, I had friends, but they may have well have been made out of paper. You could've crumpled them up and thrown them away, and you wouldn't have lost anything real, just the smell of grass on beat-up soccer shoes and white noise.

I'm not saying that to be a cynic; a mean, self-obsessed, angst-filled teen. I just don't want to give a false sense of normality in whatever this is. I know the incessant bullying was wrong. I'm not going to sit here and say my friends were "nice" and they helped me through it. I'm not going to say that it made me "feel bad" like some goddamn wimp. It sucked, period. That's it. When I describe what it "feels like" to wake up in the middle of the night and think Joe's going to kill me, it's to let you know that I am not in a Molly Ringwald movie.

We're getting out now. We're moving. Thank god. We've stuffed everything we own, other then all of the significant disgusting furniture my mother somehow likes, into the beige station wagon. I am crammed in the way back, laying vertically clutching my Walkman. My scuffed up Chuck Taylors are rested on my mother's favorite lamp and my precious record player in it's case, and my head is resting on a pile of tablecloths. There are miscellaneous plants, a side table jamming into my ribs, lamps, and stupidly fancy knickknacks of my mother's fancy, including a gold-edged clock, shot glass collection, the silver set jammed into a food cooler,  Chinese porcelain vases, an old fashioned sewing machine and gramophone, both of which do not work. 

But for now, I was just glad my mother was asleep. I could finally put in the Unknown Pleasures cassette, and actually relax.  She detested all the music I adored, and was insistent on changing it whenever I had it on. Now that my headphones weren't working, I had to play it out loud.  I can see it--- she'd shrivel up her mouth into a little "o", put her hands on her hips and say that it was "odd, darling, that you choose this sad music as your obsession. People will think." And then I'd look up at her through my brown fringe, cross my arms, and walk away.

I knew what that meant. Her thinly masked judgment was too obvious to ignore. She thought I was a faggot, cleanly and plainly. She didn't want people to think her son was a fag. All the little ladies at church would think she did something wrong. Perhaps, then, they wouldn't invite her to book club or bridge once a week. Gotta love her.

I'd love to think I didn't care. Of course I did.

My father, frankly, didn't care. He wasn't one to say much, in general. He was as bleak as the landscape I had left behind. And Adrian was 10, so he didn't have much to say. Actually, he's the best person to talk to in my family. A good, yet strikingly nerdy and very Dungeon and Dragons kind of kid. There's no harm in Adrian-- he wouldn't hurt a fly. I wish harm hadn't come to him like it had. His treatment was the same as mine. 

Joke's on her. We're moving to the exact city that Joy Division started, along with oodles of other bands that she would find "sad". It's a cultural hothouse. 

For now, I'll put on my Joy Division, let Ian Curtis's solemn voice emanate throughout the car, and reverberate on the windowpanes separating me from the blue manchester landscape, and I'll stare into the weeping clouds and the grey hills.

For now, and for most times, I will be parted from the sun.

I will console the crying clouds and tell her that her lover, the sun, will come back soon.

I'll watch the world pass by through foggy windows. I'll gaze at the hills that look like a sea, and see the waves and ripples across their grassy skin. I'll look at the streetlights from the other cars and see the light they paint on the wet highway. I'll see the world be painted blue, and then black, as the hours move on. I'll observe that rippling sea turn into a churning ocean ready to swallow me whole, and spit me out on the beach. I'll feel that tidal wave take me and crush me under its icy depths. But I will pass on, and the car will speed into the night, away from everything I've ever known. And I'll be glad, because it never loved me.

And I'll watch it pass me by, because it exists, and so do I.

I may be unlovable, but I do exist. For now, that's ok.

walk in silence

don't walk away, in silence

I'm away from there. That's all that matters.

see the danger

always danger

(Queue Existential Crisis)

Does anything matter?

Does doing anything, ever matter?

Won't we all just be dead in the end?

Won't all of our toils be for nothing, when there is no one left to remember us?

If nothing matters, why am I awake? Why not just drive into a tree? Why make coffee? Why get up in the morning? Why listen to music? If I'm going to die alone, why bother to fall in love?

And if everything is infinite, then those tiny bright holes in the sky are more significant then I am. I am but a simple creature, unable to create change in any circumstance, or area, so my tiny stupid problems mean nothing to the world. My star-filled and battered body is only here for a short time, and I will do nothing to change the universe. I CAN do nothing to change the universe. In this endless stream of consciousness, my mind is whirring like an old train. But all of a sudden, I don't feel anything anymore. 

I can feel myself falling now.

Towards nihilism.

Towards nothing.

Everything seems irrelevant now.

All I can do is slump further into the seat and close my eyes.

Why can't I shut my brain off?

Is there something wrong with me?

Probably.

(Hi! I didn't mean for it to be that dark, I promise the other chapters won't be that weird, and that shitty)