broken bikes

of happy little pills

“In the crowd, alone,

With every second passing, reminds me I’m not home,

Bright lights and city sounds

Are ringing like a drum, unknown,

Unknown.”

. . .

He was staring straight ahead, without seeing.

The band onstage was loud. And that was all. He could hear them; their haphazard guitar chords, their broken-up drumbeats, their jumbled and nonsensical lyrics. But he wasn’t listening.

His little sister was there beside him, jumping up and down, her pretty face scrunched in concentration, a cigarette dangling from her lips, unlit and unused. She put it there as some sort of metaphoric symbol, something that she’d seen in a movie. Her hands were lifted up above her head, balled into fists and pumping along to the music. Every time the lead singer wailed the chorus into his microphone, she echoed the words, her airy voice getting lost in the noise.

She was next to him, but she wasn’t with him. No one ever seemed to be. Even now, while he was trying to blend in with the crowd and copy his sister’s dance moves, he felt alone. She had invited him to the show, and every few seconds, she would glance over at him as if to make sure he hadn’t somehow disappeared. The only reason he had agreed to go was so that he’d be able to get away from their parents—he didn’t want to be in front of them, under their scrutiny, constantly being questioned about silly things like his therapy sessions and his deteriorating grades.

So he had come with his sister to the park, accepted one of the tickets she had bought for the show. But he was uncomfortable here; squeezed in the thickness of the crowd, suffocated by the cheering, choked by the level of excitement.

The lights arranged around them blinded him; the garbled music blasting from the speakers, the shouting of voices, the distant blaring of car horns and traffic, all deafened him; the undying uncertainty inside him numbed him.

He was just an entity, a placeholder. He was there, but he didn’t feel like he belonged. Everything was a blur of colors and sounds and vague emotions. He existed, but he wasn’t living.

. . .

“Blazed eyes, empty hearts,

Buying happy from shopping carts.

Nothing but time to kill,

Sipping life from bottles.”

. . .

The reflection in the mirror seemed detached from him somehow. He recognized the face—it was his, after all—but there was something very unrecognizable about it, too. The skin was too pale, like it hadn’t seen sunlight in days; the eyes were large and emotionless, rimmed with bluish circles; the lips were worn, chewed out, like his teeth never gave them a break.

He stood there, in the bathroom of the gas station, examining the empty expression he seemed to wear all the time now. He could hear his sister just outside of the door, talking to someone on the phone—their parents, he was sure. That had become her job lately, to provide him with social situations and then inform their mother when things went downhill.

Fishing in the pocket of his jeans, he curled his fingers around the credit card stowed there. It was his father’s; a Visa, with plenty of money for him to spend. Usually, he would buy stupid things with it; candy bars and cigarettes and matches—but tonight felt different.

Without another glance at the person staring back at him in the reflective glass, he threw open the door, stomping swiftly past his sister. She stumbled after him immediately, tucking her cellphone into the back pocket of her shorts, her eyes wide with worry. She asked him for an explanation, but he didn’t respond with even a single syllable.

Instead, he crossed straight to the shelf stacked with bottles of liquor, the concert music reverberating around his head. His sister was clutching at his arm by the time he reached out to choose between vodka and rum, but he ignored her, his muscles clenching in protest as she tried to pull him toward the door. When he didn’t listen to her, she dialed their parents again, frantic and pleading as she told them where they were, and what he was doing.

He didn’t care.

He stalked to the cashier, who was observing their scene with interest, a handle of rum in his grip. The bottle clanked when he set it on the counter, his fingers still tight around the neck. The man at the till didn’t ask for his I.D., but eyed the credit card suspiciously before scanning it.

His sister was crying by the time he strolled out into the street, the bottle firm in his grasp.

. . .

“Tight skin, bodyguards,

Gucci down the boulevard,

Cocaine, dollar bills, and

My happy little pill…”

. . .

The streets were always busy in New York City. Even now, at half past midnight, people hurried up and down, their shoes slapping the pavement, all of them with somewhere to go. Everyone was in a rush; women with Gucci purses strapped to their shoulders, men with expensive watches and designer suits, teenagers with guitar cases.

His sister had quietened the farther they walked, and by the time he stopped just outside a deserted alleyway, she was completely silent. She didn’t protest when he snapped the cap off of the rum he had bought, and she only frowned when he took a gulp of it. Her brows were scrunched on her forehead, calculating. He didn’t keep her gaze on her for long, though—it was too hard to stare at disappointment right in the face.

He could feel the medication his sister had slipped into his other fist. It was a single pill; long and thin, with rounded edges, the color of dying grass. He knew what it would do, how much it would help him, how much better it would make everything seem—but he didn't take it. He didn't want to. He didn't feel the need to.

That pill was just a mental curtain for him. Something the doctors prescribed to keep the tears at bay, to keep him vaguely sane. 

To keep him from doing things like he was doing now.

He was sick of it. Sick of the therapy sessions, sick of the mental tests, sick of the psychologists who told him there was something wrong with him. He already knew there was something wrong with him. That was a fact. 

He didn't need to hear that there was something wrong with him. He needed to hear that there was something right. That somewhere inside of him, in the depths of his insides, hidden in his veins or in his blood vessels or in his brain cells, there was a shred of something worthwhile. 

But he couldn't find that. He couldn't find that shred of something worthwhile no matter how hard he tried. And that was what broke him. That was what turned him from person to word, from individual to definition. He was what the doctors made of him, what his parents made of him. He wasn't who he wanted to be, or who he wished to be. He was what they told him.

He was depressed. And that was all there was to him. 

And when he took that pill, it made it seem like there was much more to him. But that, he thought, was a lie. He was depressed—no, he was his depression. And no pill was going to fix that.

The rum that slid down his throat felt like fire as these thoughts flooded his mind. 

>> (inspired by troye sivan's song, happy little pill.)