Demi Lovato Imagines

Unchained Melody

TW - suicide

It wasn't at all like I expected it to be like. There was not the arrival of anticipated relief. No moment when all my problems were lifted from my shoulders. There was just pain, a hard, heavy pain in my chest that lasted a lot longer than I would have liked. And when my head slipped under the water, I fought against the fluid filling my lungs even though I vowed not to. It hurt. A lot. And when everything began to turn to white, vision blurring from the inside out, I realised that I didn't want to own this anymore. I didn't want to keep sprinting towards the light when it meant running away from everything behind me that I didn't get to try, or read, or kiss. I didn't want it to be too late and I didn't want to die.

But I did.

Dumbest decision ever, right?

Without question when I next saw my parents. Mom had to sit on the chair next to my bed (which, of course, isn't my bed but one of the hundreds in that joint) with dad at her back, steady hands on her shoulders to conceal the shaking of the rest of his body. It could've been worse, I wanted to tell them from the corner of the room I was standing in. I could have gone for something like a shot to the head. Or jumping from a bridge. At least this way, my body isn't a misshapen lump that you have to try and identify on top of a coroner's table. If you think about it, I did you a favour.

The humour lasted all of five minutes before I admitted to myself what I had been refusing to admit for ages. I fucked up. And there was no going back.

And it made me really kick myself, looking at my mom and dad. Should I have been registered blind or something not to have seen their love for me? Was I living in some transient phenomenon where it was easy to assume that no one would bat an eye if it suddenly popped into oblivion taking me with it? Had I not been, would I have found hope after being dropped from the netball team, dumped by Connor, laughed at in front of the entire school when Jenna leaked my nudes to the academy's public website, and flunking pretty much every subject? Maybe. And maybe there's someone I could call about getting repercussions from all that shit, complain down the line how it cost me every ounce of dignity (and subsequently, my life) and if there was any way I could redeem it on some sort of benefits scheme. One small hitch though. I'd need to be able to use a phone, not have my hand slip through it like a hot knife through room-temp butter.

Really falling at the last hurdle over here.

There was only so much time I could spend in the house after my parents got back from the hospital. As cool as it may sound, it actually sucks being invisible, loitering around my room, the kitchen, the sitting room, listening to them both go on and on about what they should have done more, better, different. What things they believe they missed that would have prevented all of this.

So haunting the streets has become my primary hobby. Bit of a downgrade from state-level netball but that's fine. I do miss feeling the wind on my face and being able to kick the stones with the toes of my shoes. I miss being able to pull the leaves off the neighbours' bushes as I pass. I miss having the option of saying hello to passers-by even though it was never something I indulged in when I was alive. This is especially true now, coming to the end of the road and seeing her. I'd almost forgotten her face. Not accidentally, mind you. No, it took a very concerted effort to push Demi from my mind almost as if she was hanging on in there with her nails stuck in the soft, squishy part of my brain. Do ghosts even have brains? Ghost brains, maybe. Whatever I have, it required a lot of effort to shake the image of her from it. Effort which has now turned to waste considering she's now only a few metres away.

She's sitting on a bench that lines the perimeter of the school. I've never seen it before. Never even knew there were benches around here despite the fact I 'live' (get it?) just down the street from that hell-hole. Walking closer, I notice she's crying, her knees tucked up under her chin, arms wrapped around herself as if to stop from smashing into shards. Her face is red from trying to keep her crying inside and she closes her eyes as if trying to relieve a headache. I reach out, touching my hand against her cheek, causing her to jump slightly, shifting on the bench. She looks about, wide-eyed, but sees nothing. Inside, I feel my ghost-heart break. Demi and I only had biology together and she sat on the other side of the room from me. And although I never actually spoke to her, I could see myself in her. Silent, isolated, and with no motivation to change that. Maybe that's where I went wrong. Maybe I should have spoken to her and we could have been friends together. Two birds with one stone. But, being honest, it's not like that never crossed my mind. And it's not like I've forgotten the reason why I never did that. Because I knew what I wanted to do. I knew what I did was going to happen, date and everything. And so, as spiteful as I may have been at the world, I didn't want to make friends with Demi just to rip that friend away from her because I had other plans.