Shattered (Continuation of: The Chase) ▹ Ashton Irwin

Chapter Forty Six

The thing about pain, is that sometimes, you feel everything. I mean sure, you could fall and scrape your knees a little, but how could I ever imagine that as the only form of pain a person could have?

Literally, your world can come crashing down at any instant. It could take one thing, or a number of things to bring it down, but it takes one second. It takes no time at all to suddenly break off into someone that you're not, and it takes no time at all to break the people that you love along with you. Or, I guess I could say "person", considering there's only one person that I truely love at this point.

I think about my childhood a lot...and though I've been told to forget about it all, I know I'll never get myself to. I know there are things I could have done, but I also know that there are things that I couldn't have done. I guess every ounce of guilt and longing I felt from that surprisingly vivd time in my life, is just another way to interpret literal pain.

And the thing about fear, is that sometimes, it makes you do and say things you never thought you would ever do. You can get wrapped up in so many emotions, worries, and nightmares that you think you're going to lose everything. Whether everything to you is multiple people, or just one person...you feel the same amount of fear as everyone else. You start to change yourself, and you start to loose control of every aspect of your brain that tells you to stop.

But you can't stop. Only certain things become the only things you can control. And those certain things are just the things that break you.

I've had that fear. You know...that fear of losing everything again? It's happened to me many times, and if anyone ever asks me about it I'll tell them all the same thing: it eats away at you. It makes you do things, and say things, and think things that are totally out of proportion. You over think, you under sleep, you sit there for hours upon hours in total silence, wishing some sanity could be handed to you on a silver platter. Unfortunately, sanity isn't that easy to recieve.

You change. You change so much until the people (or person) that love you can't even look at you the same way. That one person who loves you more than anything will watch you change, until they don't know what to do anymore. They start to loose hope when you do...and when you're scared, all the hope you possess is drained from you. You feel like there's no way out, so you keep doing the things you never intended to do, until you're completely broken.

And that's when you feel the pain. You feel everything, and so does that person that loves you. They feel the pain along with you, but they don't know how to describe it to you, or their friends, or even themselves. They get worried about you, until they break with everything you do to hurt them.

The person you love, they love you right back. But you break them, just as much as you break yourself.

And you make that person wonder, 'does she even love me anymore? Did she ever love me?' Because they can't stand to see the one they love so much crack so many times until they're completely broken. They watch that one person they fell in love with break down into a million pieces of hopelessness and despair, until they're nothing more than just the scattered remains of what they used to be.

But, we didn't notice a thing. We didn't notice the pain we caused each other, and to everyone else around us.

The person I love...they thought they were fine, and that they shouldn't care. They were scared of losing everything, but they would never stop changing themselves. And we always change for the worst, don't we? As I always said...our lives become one big chase, running after the only things that can make us feel somewhat stable for a short period of time. The things we chase after shift from good and helpful things...to things that don't mean shit. Things that just make us worse.