Alone [manxman]

sixteen:: when you try to say goodbye.

[Novacane by Frank Ocean]

I FEEL LIKE I TRIGGER WARNING EVERY CHAPTER NOW SO I'M SORRY ABOUT ALL OF THIS SADNESS BUT IT'LL GET BETTER SOON, PROMISE xx

TRIGGER WARNING: suicide contemplation.

SIXTEEN: when you try to say goodbye.

"Keep up Douglas!" Realizing, even through my depressive state, that if I wasn't going to tell my father about my failures... I had to at least make some sort of effort. If I didn't have the guts to kill myself, I'd have rather been doing anything else than laying in bed all day dreading it. I was such a piece of shit that doing the bare minimum of getting out of bed, took way too much energy. I was forcing myself to go to practice, to do the one thing that used to make me feel validated.

But maybe practicing with a sprained wrist and a bad temper was a bad idea because I'd been in a bad mood since stepping foot on the field and honestly, I expected to be sent home to cool off or something. In high school, they wouldn't let you play with a sprained finger let alone a sprained wrist, hell, I'd broken my arm and was benched for four weeks.

But in college, either they didn't care or my coach was lenient because he didn't even spare a glance, maybe that was against some protocols but I wasn't inclined on finding out. I just needed to clear my head, soccer normally did that.

Mid-practice, I realized I was lagging, whether it be the lack of working out these past few weeks or the fact that I just wasn't accustomed to an excruciating practice because I'd missed the last few but I wasn't keeping up.

My body was on fire, my calves burned and I could barely breathe as I pushed through drills.

I wasn't good enough, I wasn't fit for this team, everyone there was better than me.

And I wasn't the only one who noticed, Alvarez was on attacking mid-field that day and I was sure it had everything to do with my performance the last practice. He was placed there to show me that I wasn't good enough to miss practice-I could be replaced in a nanosecond.

He was good, fuck that, he was pretty great. Everyone there was, he was extremely strategic and methodical in seconds. Crucial seconds before he even got the ball, he knew exactly what he was going to do, where he would move, what his opponents would do.

I was supposed to defend him in a game and I wasn't good enough to do so. I wasn't as good as him and that was proved when every single time, he slipped me up, he faked me out, he dribbled past me. Alvarez was fast as hell and he was skilled, more skilled than I was.

Back to back, he'd gotten me on my toes just to pass to someone else, I was putting all of my A-game in and I was receiving nothing in return. I sucked, I absolutely sucked now. I sucked so bad that halfway through, sweat pouring down my face, Alvarez had taken his foot off the ball to offer it to me and once I'd gotten it, he was able to steal it back. He was giving me a pained look as he set up for the play and I could tell that I was supposed to be able to hold onto that.

He'd given me a win and I was so slow and so fucking stupid that he reluctantly took the ball back between his feet and I wanted to scream.

"Do you need a sub? Douglas, do you need a sub?" That was Coach yelling again as Alvarez ran past me honestly, I probably did. He'd been yelling at me all day.

"No." Because accepting a sub was basically saying you didn't want to play in the next game and there was no way I was screwing it up for myself more than I already had. I could see Coach staring at me and I was sure that at any point, he'd cut me from the team.