Reaction || Malum ||

6

Calum's POV

It's in our weak moments where we begin to really question how strong we truly are. I mean if we crack and crumble to the point of pitiful dust, were we even strong in the first place? Was our toughness a cheap facade we threw on to convince everyone around us we are put together or is it to convince ourselves? It's easy to stand in front of the mirror and convince your reflection that you are able to fight another day but the other side of the glass holds the real truth.

Breaking down in front of Michael last night was the last thing I wanted to do, but what's done is done. I let my emotions get the best of me and I cracked my porcelain illusion that I'm a strong person. I mean for gods sake I lost it over a fictional characters demise! Maybe it was the underlying factor that the fictional character, to me, represented my parents. Just like Gus, they were good people that did good things and never deserved to die. I should've been the one to die.

When Michael came in my room last night, I couldn't hold anything back. He was comforting to me and in my weak state I begged him to stay and comfort me. It felt good to release some bottled up things I'd been dying to say but it also scared me shitless. What if I let Michael in and he just used my sadness against me?

It's Michael. I don't even know him except for the fact he talks so much and he's not a bad looking lad. I refuse to ruin things for him by becoming a part of his life, so I will stay away. It just kinda sucks that we are going to this music camp together and we will have to spend more time together. I would love to get to know him but that's not fair to Michael.

I'm a mess. A walking disaster and Michael is not a person I want to destroy.

We leave tomorrow and I'm trying to get at least two hours of sleep. Sleeping has become nearly impossible for me since the accident. One of the millions of therapists I saw in the hospital and have still been going to, gave me some pills but I don't want to take them. It's a nasty handful of prescription dilution of my everyday life and I don't want to be a drugged up zombie floating through my life. So I suffer. I suffer on lack of sleep or minimal sleep laced with nightmares. The nightmares are mostly a reoccurring dream that takes me back to the night of the accident.

That's just not somewhere I really want to go to again. Unluckily for me the amnesia from the crash didn't last long enough to keep me from remembering all the details. I missed my mum and my dad too but mostly my mum.

It's so terrifying how one second can turn your life completely upside down and change you into a shell of yourself. Am I even me anymore? Calum Hood from Sydney who loves to laugh and make music, is that even who I am now? I feel like this is a dysfunctional dream I need to wake up from but I can't.

Michael is probably asleep in the next room dreaming of beautiful things while I lie here unable to even cry myself to exhaustion. I've stopped crying myself to sleep as of the last few nights. I thought up until last night I had run out of tears but when I broke into sobs over a book I was proved wrong.

To be honest with you, Michael's arms were comforting. Safe, warm and without any judgement. It was out of impulse that I wrapped myself around him and craved some sort of human comfort. I can't believe he stayed with me until I finally fell asleep, only for me to wake up and watch him leave me. Maybe I could like Michael without hurting him.

Maybe.

My eyes are heavy but I refuse to let them stare anywhere but the blank ceiling. This room is too unfamiliar, I long for my old room. The one I grew up in, the one I called mine for 18 years. It was gone now. Our house was an empty reminder that my family had disintegrated to ashes, never to be exhumed. What I had thrown into a small duffle bag was all I could bear to bring with me. I guess we mustn't carry our painful pasts with us forever.