Bonded by the Blues | A Sander Sides Book

Chapter 40 - A Party Plays the Blues: Part 3

Phew. Picking up where I left off was hard. Anyways, hope you remembered what happened in Chapter 39, because we're diving in with both feet.

I would like to put a trigger warning to be one the safe side. 

Want to play a game?

Imagine a light bulb.

How about a simple one? A glowing orb of glass filled with inert gas, rounded at the top, tapering down to a metal screw. A thin sizzling filament twisted inside, glowing bright with orange luminescence.

Now, imagine a dark room.

Let's say a ten-foot by ten-foot empty space closed in by four walls, a ceiling and a floor. Bare, besides for the darkness filling every corner. Then, the light bulb flickers to life. The room jumps out before your eyes in glorious detail. Maybe there are colourful swirling paintings on the walls of pretty flowers and birds and knives or the floor may be adorned with flowing tiles of shimmering glass and ceramic and tar. You begin to notice a million things your eyes could not before, the good the bad the ugly.

You take the light bulb for granted don't you? Just flick on the switch and the bulb comes on and you can see everything with refreshing clarity.

What if the light bulb flickers off just as easily as it came on?

What if no electricity passes through the wires running through the walls? You flick the switch desperately, feeling the darkness leaning closer, running its nails up your spine. The little knob of plastic is sweaty and slippery and unresponsive in your fingertips. A velvet hand clamps over your mouth, and the room turns to choking dark liquid as you drown.

At least, that is what it always felt like for me whenever I shut myself in the little room I called my mind. The only room I can truthfully call my own, I think. It's my own little space I can crawl away whenever I want to, and may be I'll curl up there for good one day when it becomes my final world where I can be free.

But I can never spark my own light.

What if someone came into your life and carelessly threw the curtains aside and let the sunlight stream in through windows you never saw before on the walls. Turn the knives on the walls to gallant swords that save your day and turn the tar to fountains of glitter to make you smile? And the light bulb, it will burn strong as long as you let this person in your life, long as you let his light in your life.

But why do I live in this room alone?

It's simple. I can't let my happiness depend on someone else. Because what can I do when they decide to leave you? Of course, he is going to leave you. That's just the way it is. The bulb won't last longer than a firefly's butt. The acute sadness I would feel if – no, when – he leaves will be a million scorching nuclear fissions worse than the temporary jolt of electric happiness I feel when he is around. So why bother? Isn't it better to not a light a candle only to watch it burn out?

Why not unscrew the light bulb and bury it six feet under the floor, until the darkness is all you remember. It is all there ever was, is and will be.

I was not happy alone in my room. But it was a darkness I knew. My refuge, my tormentor, but it was mine. And holding on to what is mine and here and familiar is better than reaching out to something his and far and foreign. So I let go before I can latch on too strong. I mean, I am doing okay. I'm at university, aren't I? I've kinda made friends who don't want anything back from me for being friends. Life's just beginning. And it is better if he isn't in it, right? It's easy, less complicated. I'm not about living, I'm about survival. How dare he come and show me I can dream of more. Why was today all kinds of amazing, coz that only means that tonight will find new creative ways of sucking. I make sure happiness cannot last, as I am too fond of the opposite end. At least I'm not dead.