Alone (Credit: sevenluck on DeviantArt)
Now Playing: Revenge – Danger Mouse and Sparkle Horse
Nothing says misery like a frigid late night walk home from work. The overnight crew is on the air now, entertaining the graveyard shift listeners. I’m glad. I don’t think I could have stayed on air any longer. I don’t think I want to speak to another person for a very long time. I’ll have a few hours before Allison and Martin come over to work on the Sherlock Holmes mystery at the center of my life, and I want to be dead silent for every single second of them. It’ll be hard enough to put on the happy face I’ll need to.
12 Siren Road might as well be on Mars right now. Coming home is the last thing I want to do right now, but it’s the only place I have an escape from the world. The world needs to fuck off. It will come, but the shakiness of my hands trying to fit the key into the lock reminds me just how hard I wish it would hold off for a few days.
The weight of my inadequacies turns my limbs to jelly, and the hardwood floors underneath me feel like they’re quicksand. I’m grateful for dad being out tonight. His social life has given me more scheming time. And brooding time.
The house is darkened to reflect its current occupancy and I frankly cannot see that changing very much. The door shuts with an overwhelming boom, as though my offhanded shutting it elicited a crack of thunder which shook my head, shook the house, and shook the world. I sigh, begging the deep breath which follows to draw some measure of life into my chest. After today, after the events of the last several weeks, after admitting what a fucking terrible boyfriend I’ve been to Jordan…I’m just done.
I can’t feel a damn thing.
The stairs creak and groan under my trudge to my room. I can’t be bothered to turn on the lights, and it’s not like anything has changed in this fucking house since mom left. I could navigate it blind, and in fact I have, on multiple occasions. My desk chair almost goes flying out from underneath me with the force I hit it with when I plop down, my limited reserves of energy having officially depleted themselves. A weak hand on my desk to steady myself is about all I can muster to stop from shooting across the room the way a perfectly hit pool ball rockets towards the pocket.
Bitter recriminations flash through my head, terse messages of hatred directed inward. I want to justify it. My search for mom became my sole purpose in life and it caused me to neglect my relationship. Things with Jordan were just a regrettable casualty of a noble quest I felt obligated to take up in the name of my sister’s impending nuptials.
It would be a tragically compelling story if I didn’t know it was bullshit. That me trying to lie to myself in preparation of lying to others didn’t threaten to unleash a primal scream or drive my fist through the thick, solid wood of my desk, which would inevitably break my hand worse than the desk. Maybe that’s the point. Since gangs don’t jump emotionally inept douchebags for toying with the emotions of others and beat them with metal pipes, I feel that I have to do the job myself.
The truth is that Jordan was a distraction from being lonely. And I am the lowest scum of the earth for not treating her as seriously as she deserved to be treated. For using her as a bandaid on my own inadequacies. I really should live the next fifty-some years without anyone to ever love me again. Fucking bang up job, Casey. Really batting a thousand here, shitheel.
My hair feels oily to the touch when I run my hands through it and grip tightly in the middle of my head. Every muscle in my body is tense, from my arms down to my heart. I should be crying but tears just refuse to fall. They always refuse to fall for me. It’s okay to cry, except I just…don’t. Actually, no, it’s not okay to cry this time, because it is all my own goddamn fault.
I’m an empty shell, a drone, a husk without a purpose. I shouldn’t feel this way. I should feel something. Yet every stone I turn over hits me with an insulting message on the bottom. No matter how tantalizingly close I get to some answers, life yanks them further away from me. Maybe this is the far side of fury, numb exhaustion and bitter disappointment.
On paper, life has given me blessings.
But deep down, being me feels like a giant curse. Too focused on a fool’s errand to recognize the good I have right now in front of me until I drive it away because I am just too hung up on old ghosts to live life in a remotely productive manner. Drive the sweetest girl in the world to make a dumb mistake because I ignored her.
In being so paranoid of my failures being on full display to the world, I practically gave them a Super Bowl ad slot. I don’t just fuck up; I fuck up in a big way. Every time. Maybe mom did something similar.
I used to ask myself how my mother could just up and leave without an actual explanation. Ask how she could reach out to everyone in the family except the members of her own household. Wonder how she can live with herself after being gone for so long. Maybe she was like me: just another fuckup running from one self-sabotaging disaster to the next, trying our best knowing we will always fail.
I’ve held a healthy amount of anger towards my mother for the last five years. It alternates between depression and fury, but it’s always there: a flame tended to with varying degrees of focus, but always enough to never go out. I don’t want it to go out. If it goes out, I lose my edge in all life’s matters. I can’t write songs. I don’t have anything to hide from behind my radio voice. I lose the motivation to find her.
Maybe it’s unhealthy to constantly poke and prod at a wound so it never heals to source my motivation. My father bore his pain since she left without breaking or faltering. As far as I’m concerned, that man should be canonized a saint right now. Certainly more deserving of the title than I am.
Maybe I’m so angry at mom because I’m angry at myself.
A hot shower provides the right pain to distract from the more overwhelming agony. Scorching my skin keeps my mind from ruminating on all the ghosts sprinting around my head. I’m a shadow, drifting aimlessly through this existence, viewing all but never interacting with anything. I can’t stand it. I’m just feeling blank.
I’m not certain that I actually washed myself, but the remnants of soap on my legs and shampoo in my hair tell me I did. I finish my shower and throw some pajamas on. My comforter cushions the blow of my flop back onto my bed. The air begins to chill me through the thin fabric of my pajama pants, but the effort of crawling under the covers feels like just too much.
The ceiling provides a canvas for the questions thundering around my head to be written out in imagined glow-in-the-dark ink.
Where is my mother? Why can’t I enjoy the life I have? What do I actually want? Why do I feel so disconnected? What can I do to help myself? How the hell could I treat a good girl like Jordan so terribly? Why am I more frustrated at myself for not doing this sooner than waiting this long to break the poor girl’s heart?
The desire to talk it all through with Allison intrudes, casting a shadow over my illusory scribblings and drowns out the little voices in my head positing all those inquiries. Despite how angry I am at her over all of this shit, it’d do us both good to talk the way we used to. But you’re here for each other. That’s how these things work, Casey.
I call her.
“Case?” She asks softly. She’s the only person allowed to call me that. It always felt unnatural whenever Jordan said it, but it suits Allison’s lips just right. We’ve always been the only two who can use nicknames with each other. Does that mean more than it does?
“I need you. You have the key. I need you.” I’m choked up, on the verge of tears. The security of having my best friend back is just too much. The fact that I have a hand to reach for while I drown is cathartic in ways I couldn’t imagine. As much as I want to wring her neck, I need to hold her. Even if it’s just to convince myself she’s real and the last several weeks haven’t been a cruel dream.
“What’s the matter?” She asks me as I hear her putting on clothes over top of her pajamas and grabbing her coat.
“Allie, I’m not feeling anything,” I answer her, “I’m back to feeling just blank.” I have not used that nickname for her since we were children. Tonight, it feels just as natural as breathing. Just the two of us, alone.
“I’m on my way over.” Her voice is warm, determined, and filled with reassurance. The seconds tick away into agonizing eternities until I hear the door open and the floorboards creak as she traces my path from earlier in the evening with much more purpose and energy than I did.
She stands in my doorway, illuminated by the moonlight streaming in from my window, and sighs a deep sigh. It’s the most beautiful sight I could have imagined. My knight in shining armor.
“Talk to me, Casey. It’s been rough lately for me too.”
Her bag gets dropped into the middle of the room and her sweatpants and jacket are tossed over the back of my desk chair before she sits down on my bed next to me. I make a feeble attempt to sit up but cannot even muster the energy to do so. She reaches her hand out and gently strokes my shoulder, and it’s the most kindness anyone has shown me in ages, it feels.
“I’ve been at a fucking funeral since we got back.” There’s more venom in my voice that I intended, and I find that boost of strength to sit myself up. Allison is pale in the light of the moon, and our little adventure has taken its toll on her too if the bags under her eyes are any indication.
“Are you drunk?”
“Lil bit,” I admit bashfully. “It’s why I didn’t drive to the station. Raided Dan’s secret emergency stash.”
“You idiot,” she sighs in disapproval. She takes a long look out the window. “What’s going on?”
“Jordan and I broke up.”
“Casey, I am so sorry. What happened?”
I tell her the whole story. That she had been feeling the distance for a while now, and the last few weeks have been worse. That she went out on Friday and when she heard that Allison and I were traveling together she lost it, and feared the worst, and had a very human moment. How I did not hold it against her because it really was wrong to keep that fact from her. Allison agrees with that, and admits she feels bad. I know it was bound to come, but I still feel that tightness of every muscle pulling like sailors in a gale when she asks me how I’m feeling.
“Nothing! That’s the fucking problem,” I reply, “I should be feeling something and I’m not! I just don’t give a damn anymore! And it’s ridiculous that I’m not feeling shit, but I can’t!”
“Hey, hey,” she says and she squeezes my shoulder tightly, “It’s all going to be okay. It happens to me too, where I feel numb. I understand exactly how you feel. Talk to me, Casey, I’m here for you, okay?”
“There’s just nothing to talk about.” I choke on my words while tears well up in my eyes. The dam has broken tonight, and I just have to hope she doesn’t think of me as too pathetic when morning rolls around. “I want to stop being this weak.”
“You are not weak. One bad day does not equate to weakness.” Her kindness isn’t something I’ve earned. In my heart, I know she’s right. But this wasn’t one bad day, this was the culmination of months wherein I made nothing but poor decisions.
“But I keep falling into these days,” I protest, “I should be better, I need to be better.”
“Casey, you need to stop being hard on yourself. You hate it when I say those kinds of things.” She pulls my face to look at her, and she looks in my eyes. “We both have things we need to work on. We both have to get our minds in the ideal place. But we’re going to do it together, okay?”
“Okay,” I reply, “Together. Like we always did.” My voice comes out cracked and sorrowful. I cannot help but think back to all of the times we stood together in high school to figure things out. Allison knew me better than anyone. She was often right back then, and I know she’s right now.
But the anger lashes back out again. I shouldn’t be sad. I caused all of this. Jordan is in her dorm room, crying her eyes out because of me. So no, I don’t get to be fucking sad. Allison looks less than enthused when I say that aloud though.
“You’re being ridiculous.” She narrows her gaze and purses her lips. “You made your choices, and yeah, they were pretty fucking stupid. She made hers too. You are human.”
“You’re right,” I sigh, letting my head roll back and bang against my headboard.
“There’s the Casey Adams I know and love,” she laughs softly and runs her hand through my hair softly.
“I’m sorry.”
“You have absolutely nothing to apologize for, I promise,” she assures me, “You did nothing wrong. Not to me, at least.”
“I did. I hurt Jordan, and I’ve been pissed at mom and pissed at myself and taking it out on you.”
Allison shrugs and offers me a soft smile. “What are you going to do? I’ve known who you are for along time, Casey. Since we were learning basic addition and subtraction, actually. I wouldn’t have shown up tonight if I didn’t accept that. I haven’t exactly been person of the year the last several weeks either. I wasn’t fair to you, and I didn’t behave in the way I should have with you having a girlfriend.”
“You’re too good for me,” I state softly, holding her hand as if it’s the only thing keeping me from falling into the abyss.
“Honey, I’ve been hating myself for how long because of my own messed up head? I definitely have my faults,” she retorts, “I’ve been bothering Jess with most of my problems, but let’s just say you’re not the only one dealing with parental storm clouds.”
“Well, you’re handling it a hell of a lot better than I’m handling mine.” I grit my teeth and bite my tongue. It’s emotionally manipulative at worst, and annoying at best to rant about how awful I think I am.
“Cut yourself some slack.” She looks at me with a warm sadness and strokes my cheek again. “We’re both human, but the good thing about humans is that they’re bound to make mistakes. Why is that good? Because when one of us screws up, the other is there for unconditional love and support. And when the dust settles, we’ll do what you and I have always done, and figure things out as a team. We’ll tease each other about the times we were low, and laugh about it because the shadows can’t hurt us. They only have the power we give them, and we both know how to keep them weak. Because we lay our ghosts to rest. We, Casey Adams and Allison Graves, do not let the past define us. We make our own future.”
“Together,” I whisper as I give in and pull her towards me. Her lips press softly into mine, and the weight crushing my chest all night long drops away. Buried in her speech may have been a confession of sorts, maybe it’s a mistake, maybe it’s long awaited resolution to a problem I never knew we had. She pulls me tighter, as if she’s been waiting for this too.
Consequences can wait until tomorrow. Tonight, I’m willing to make a mess of things.
Ark of the Lost Angels 
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