Seeking Solace

6- Don't Just Kill Me. Murder Me.

Somehow, I manage to get away with a whole week of peace- peace, perforated by the ever present rage that exists at home and pulls me back down to stark reality after an hour or two with Gerard. He tells me a lot of things; about art, things he's seen, read, drawn...but never things about him. He remains a secret, hidden behind a wall that he won't let me through. But it doesn't really feel like he's keeping something from me, like I would think it would feel. It's as if we just never get around to it, as if my time to ask is gone after we've spent the whole time just surrounded by something we both love.

So I just don't ask.

The next week, I realize at some point on Monday, is only a few days closer to my funeral.

It scares me that even though I've felt so good lately, I'm still teetering on the edge of indecision.

My mother beats my brother almost every day this week. It was especially bad on one day, when I heard him trying not to cry as he passed my bedroom to get to his. When he tried to close the door, I heard her storming up the stairs to ask why he was closing it.

She screamed at him some more. He held in tears as long as he could. I tried concentrating on my homework, but that's hard to do when you've got your own tears to see through, your own cowardice to try and reason with. I know that I couldn't go out there. She'd say I was goading him on, teaching him that going to comfort him after he was punished, that it would only make him do worse things.

I wonder if it's wrong of me to want to comfort him even if whatever he did was wrong. I wonder if it's wrong of me to be too afraid to go to him, because of my mother's fists. I wonder if it's wrong of me to cry now, useless tears, "crocodile tears" my mother called them, wasteful tears that won't help anybody.

I just wish I had the courage to stand up to her. I just wish every time I hear him cry, I'm not reminded of the times when I hated myself because I couldn't be perfect for her, couldn't see where I was making the mistakes that made her raise her hand against me.

Somehow, I manage to push myself through the rest of my homework before I just collapse, unable to hold it together long enough to do much else.

After a while, the only thing I can hold onto is seeing Gerard every day. It's nothing like the emails, the occasional text messages. It's nothing like being there with him, being able to touch him, even though now it seems like I want those touches to mean more than they ever did...

I've never been one to care much about sexuality. But my uncertainty still worried me. Not only would Luke murder me and drag my bloodied carcass around town as warning to others, but I didn't really know I felt about it. It was stupid, but it was true. I knew that I cared about Gerard.

But to say that I want to be with him that way? No. I couldn't let myself get there. I'm too broken for him. I want him to be happy. Somehow, thinking about him leaving and finding someone else, that special someone who really understands how incredible he is, under all the pain he tries to hide, makes me happy.

But it hurts too. Deep down, my heart aches.

No matter how hard I try to ignore things, they just get steadily worse. This is why my happiness is cursed. The simple acknowledgement of 'happiness' almost guarantees that something will happen to take it away again.

Then again, I've become incredibly attached to my misery and self-hatred. I can't go so long without it. To accept myself would mean tearing away from myself. My hatred makes me. If I am nothing with it, then I don't exist without it.

So of course, soon enough, my parents find out about my dropping grades and class ditching.

My father corners me after he comes home from work, and makes me sit on one side of the kitchen table while he sits on the other. He spends a few minutes letting me stew in my guilt and terror while he reads the printed e-mail from the school.