Expedition Suicide

The Habit of Overthinking Everything

Gerard sat staring at the illuminated numbers on his bedside clock. The time 1:27 am glowed behind his eyelids in dull, red lines.

Memories of text messages from earlier played through his mind. His sleep-deprived brain maintained the energy to overthink everyone of them and create the worst possible scenarios for each one.

He probably didn't want to keep talking. I bore him. He probably hates me, and I'm just forcing him to keep this conversation. I'm not even a friend to him.

Gerard told himself this over and over again. He was head-over-heels for a boy named Frank, and Frank liked him back, but Gerard was in denial. A sort of heartache told him to believe that Frank actually liked him; although, his mind wouldn't allow it. He formed this judgmental hate for himself and believed in the impossibility of being loved.

Their conversations lasted for hours, but Gerard felt he was just a burden. The messages were nothing more than Frank's excuse to try to escape, but Gerard's texts wouldn't allow it. He felt clingy, and he hated himself for it.

Frank had stopped responding hours ago. This only worsened Gerard's guilt within his annoyance. He knew Frank didn't want to talk to him, but this seemed like the form of false proof Gerard needed, even if it was only because the younger man had drifted off.

The voices in his head clawed at the sanity lining his mind. They wouldn't mind the scars or the damage. Gerard's only savior was his younger brother, Mikey, but ever since Gerard had moved out, he hadn't had Mikey there to help.

He was stranded with his own dark mind.

His fingers craved the metal of the blade, and his skin tingled for the release of his angst. All of the anger and sadness that flowed through his veins needed to be released, but he put himself past it. The ignorance of Gerard's small ego holds him back.

His eyes are glossed over from sleep deprivation, but he's not tired. Heartache keeps him awake, refreshing his face with cold tears. Anger keeps him awake with grooves from digging in fingernails. Most of all, anxiety keeps him up with a busy brain full of bad ideas.

Nobody really cares how you feel; just as long as you act like everyone else, it's fine.

None of his friends really cared. His brother probably didn't actually care. Or, at least that's what he told himself.

He stared at the dark ceiling of his bedroom. No light radiated from anything. The only way he knew he was looking at the ceiling was because he was on his back.

The temperature of the room fluctuated, sending shivers throughout his body and cold sweats down his neck.

He couldn't escape himself no matter how much he wanted to. The loneliness of early morning rushed over him. He was disgusted by himself.

His sheets tangled as he tossed and turned beneath the comforter in a failure of an attempt to sleep. No matter what position he slept in, he was uncomfortable and restless. Although, he wanted nothing more than to burrow under the covers and sleep for hours on end.

Thoughts of Frank played through his mind. The love for the boy he could never have. Neither one had the guts to admit the lust and yearn they shared for each other.

Tears streamed down his face as he recalled how much he missed Frank. He'd do anything just to have the short one in his arms right now. All he could do was keep imagining it though, because there was no way Frank felt the same. His friend tried to tell him how Frank felt about him and how much Frank really did like him. Although, Gerard was just one of those people who wouldn't believe or trust anyone with this sort of information without some form of physical proof from either the man himself or Frank's friends. It was just some sort of trust issue that everyone always pushed off as a short phase but, deep down, Gerard knew it wasn't, because he'd felt this way for quite some time now. However, the severity of it all just kept increasing. The therapist couldn't do jack shit and Gerard knew that, but he didn't want to break it to his mother that he spent an entire hour bitching to some lady with an emotional health major about everything when all he got in return was some shitty sympathy from a human stone. No matter how much he tried, he couldn't come forward to his mother to tell her that the countless amounts of money were being spent on some shit wall decal within the office they entered every week.

He'd been failing everybody his entire life, but nobody has ever confronted the him on the subject besides himself. He'd been failing his mother by wasting her cash on his shit emotional strength. He'd been failing Frank by not coming forth with enough confidence to actually tell him how he felt. He'd been failing Mikey since the day he was born. But most importantly, he'd been failing himself.

Gerard lied to himself on a daily basis about how it will get better. About how, some day, Frank will show his love. Although, Gerard is only friend-zoning himself and, sooner or later, he'll get completely screwed over, and Frank will marry that Jamia chick who works at Frank's favorite coffee shop. Sure, that may sound outrageous to anyone else, but deep within Gerard's self-conscience, the idea lurked. And, sure, Jamia was a minimum-wage cashier working at a low-end coffee shop, who shared no connection to Frank up to this very moment, but somehow Frank would become part of her life. Gerard's feeling would be shadowed by Frank's beautiful children and his loving wife.

He had this gut feeling that he'd be left to rot in a pit of his own guilt. All he would ever amount to would be a self-loathing potato who stares at a Twitter screen for the rest of his life. And for some amount of time, he'll become so fed up with social-stalking Frank, he'll forget to feed himself and end up blacking out in his own king-sized bed. He'd sit alone for days to come with nobody to discover his under-fed corpse that lay rotting within the ocean of comforters.

And, bloody hell, the only thing keeping Gerard from buying 30 cats is the legal system and his own guilt. The guilt that if he forgot to feed himself, he'd certainly forget to feed the innocent kittens and the last thing Gerard wanted was 30 starving kittens meowing at his boney flesh.

And, sure, Gerard's mind would come up with some scenarios that are so far-fetched that not even Shakespeare could come up with them. Something about his self-pity made him feel somewhat narcissistic, but he knew it wasn't quite narcissism because of the way he felt towards himself.

Maybe Gerard was just a reversely-narcissistic, self-loathing, under-fed potato who was slightly masochistic, but he knew there was something about the adorably-short, ink-covered, punk-rock-af Frank Iero that set Gerard off and unleashed all forms of attraction to the other male.

So sure, maybe things could go wrong, but what if they manage to go right? Like, for once in Gerard's life, he didn't screw up everything. What if Jamia was just some random extra character in a background scene who only took Frank's cash because he wanted so many black coffees? What if Gerard's friends weren't actually lying to him? What if Gerard were to actually managed to open up to Frank about all of his feely-feels? Okay, let's not get too carried away here. But maybe one day, Gerard would be sat happily next to his wedded husband, Frank Iero-Way. Sure, one day was rather far-fetched, but it kept Gerard striving and wanting to be alive, even if just for a few more minutes every night. Even if it was just another day, it was another day well-spent on the thoughts of Frank Iero.