Do I Wanna Know? || Ashton Irwin

1

Circa January 2019 - New York City

I sat in the couch that I had become all too familiar with these last few years. I felt as if the couch was molding to the shape of my bottom because I was here so often. I took a look at the man sitting across from me and then I took a look outside the large window behind him and stared at the skyscraper just across from here. I wondered what the people in that building were doing. I locked my eyes on a specific window, then started to wonder what was going on in that room. Were they happy? Were they stressed? Were they just as sad as I was? I wondered all of that while the man across from me was talking. In this very moment, the person in that room could be happy or could be packing their things because they lost their job or having risky affair with a co-worker. The possibilities with us humans were never-ending.

"How are you doing on things that pertain that situation?" The man, my therapist, asked as I came back to reality. We visited at least twice a week since 2015 and it was really paying off to say the least. The situation he was referring to was Ashton. He knew every detail about my relationship and he knew every feeling I had towards Ashton. No one knew if the subject was still something too sensitive for me to handle, or if I could hear his name without feeling like someone was twisting my stomach and trying to force it through my esophagus, frankly, I wasn't sure either.

"Everyday there's something that reminds me of him, but I've dealt with it better now. I know we had talked about me not listening to the album, but I had six months of curiosity built up and I caved." I gently shrugged my shoulders, thinking about the songs on Youngblood. I wasn't supposed to listen to it since I had reacted so badly to Sounds Good Feels Good. My therapist wanted me to protect myself. He was always so helpful and very concerned about my well-being, rarely pushing me to speak if he felt I didn't want to touch on a certain subject. I had always been afraid of therapy because I thought I would be forced to talk about things I wasn't ready to talk about, but really, it felt lovely to be in an environment where I couldn't be judged. "Before I listened I thought I could move on from it - from him, but I think this set me back five million steps."

He jotted something down in his notebook, smiling to himself which was something he did when he was pleased I admitted a fault to him. He looked up at me and studied me for a moment. People like the man sitting across from me, noting every failure and every success, were hard to read by people like myself. Therapists were scary in that sense, you never knew what they were thinking or what they were feeling because it basically came with the degree to hide any and all emotions.

"Your eyes are telling me that you want to talk about it." He nodded. "Go on."

"I know a lot of the album is Luke's story because he went through so much shit, but as soon as I heard Want You Back, I just knew it was aimed towards me. I feel so guilty for everything that I did to him in 2014. That song has been everywhere and it's a constant reminder of him and those fucked up things that happened." I ripped through the tissues because my grip was so tight, but I didn't care. I still gripped them and I could feel my nails digging in my palm, creating half-crescent indents. "I listened to Woke Up In Japan and I knew that was for me too. And then I got to Ghost of You, my heart just broke even more. When I thought the second album really fucked me up, the third one came and fucked me dry." I chuckled sadly at my own joke. I took a deep breath, tucking my hair behind my ears and concentrating on the skyscraper ahead, concentrating on that one window where happiness could be at the moment. I tried to not hold back in my therapy sessions, my therapist knew everything and expected me to tell him everything, so I did just that. I could be as candid as I pleased and he would not judge me. He knew things that I could not tell anyone else. "I still love him." I whispered the last part.