youngblood | a.i.

sixty six || colorblind

Wednesday, November 11th- 6:19 p.m.

It took until Saturday night when Luke returned that Ashton finally left me alone. He was too scared to leave me alone again, so he stayed the whole day against my protests.

I'd banned him to the outside of my room in hopes of giving myself space and time to process- more so in hopes he'd leave- but he stayed the whole day outside waiting for me to feel comfortable with him again.

He brought me food he got delivered for us, refusing to leave long enough to get it himself or cook anything on his own. He left it at my door, knowing I still didn't want to deal with everything yet.

I spent most of that day just trying to process, not knowing what to feel as my shock turned to numbness. I ended up reading the note I'd wrote to him that night before, trying to decide if I had known what I was doing when I was taking those pills.

I didn't want to die- I just couldn't bear the idea of living anymore. I'd completely destroyed myself to make everyone around me happy, and finally, that destruction broke the last piece of my soul.

I hadn't written the letter as my suicide note, it was more of a final goodbye to Ashton. He wasn't intended to ever read it, but I needed to get every last emotion out onto paper before it ate me alive- even though it did in the end.

I'd started drinking as soon as I got home, stumbling across the pill bottle from almost a year ago. I almost left them be, but my drunken state took me back there just moments after.

I'd already been crying, and all I wanted was for my pain to go away. The pills used to do that- take away the pain I mean. They made me feel happy, even if it just changed the chemical makeup in my brain. I'd stopped taking them and just accepted I was always sad a long time ago- I had a chemical imbalance in my brain that would never change.

Those pills used to balance it out though, so I started taking some, praying maybe it would help eventually. Before I knew it, I'd taken practically the whole bottle, and I was starting to blackout.

The next thing I remembered was his voice calling me back to earth, our nickname falling from his lips. I thought I'd died, that I was in a different universe and imagining him in front of me.

I called him Angel back because I thought I had died, and maybe he would respond if he was an angel too- but who am I kidding... He's the devil who killed the Angel. He wouldn't have been in heaven with me had it worked... but maybe I had ended up in hell with him.

I didn't- and still don't- know how to feel about him and everything he did. I know he still loves me. He wouldn't have shown up if he didn't. He wouldn't have made me throw up the pills if he didn't. He wouldn't have left me alone like I asked if he didn't. He wouldn't have locked himself out of my room to stop my anxiety if he didn't. He wouldn't have sat outside the door, working me through my panic attack if he didn't. He would have just let me die if he didn't love me.

It was a hard line I was dancing on- forgive him and forget, or pretend we never happened and let us fall back to just strangers who had once loved each other.

Even all the time I'd spent alone hadn't been enough for me to get my head on straight. I was numb to everything again- how I was before him.

I'd done good at keeping my distance as school rolled around. I drove myself to and from school to avoid Luke. I wore clothes I could practice in so I wouldn't have to deal with the locker room before or after.

He seemed to respect my need for distance, seeming like he needed some of his own too. I watched him from afar, seeing how more on edge he seemed and how he pushed away from the people he'd admitted to me he didn't like long ago. I tried not to watch him for too long, knowing he was probably watching me too.