Anxiety • part 2

Epilogue 2 • in the back of the room

When I lost her, my world crashed down and I felt so lost for so long. But it's been a year and the band had decided to go on without me for a while. Everyone was grieving over the loss of Sam but I couldn't do it anymore.

For a year, all I did was sit behind the piano and stare at the keys. I haven't played much and moved a lot of things that reminded me of her to a spare room which stayed closed most of the time.

But the last month, things have been changing. And I have started to recover. That's mostly thanks to Olivia as she's pushing me to get better but it hasn't been easy.

But after being absent in the band for a year after I forced them to just go on, I was going to get on stage again tonight during their LA show. We've been talking about it for a while and I finally felt like the moment was right to do this.

Jackie has permanently moved to LA now and she's been a great help too. She gives me some room to breath, to do my own thing for the night and not having to worry about being home too late for the babysitter. Because I got a kid now and a lot changes when you get a kid. Everything changes when you become a single parent.

But tonight I felt ready, ready to go on stage again and to say something to the fans that have been begging for my return. The past year was spend rather far away from social media and the public eye. I didn't need them to know how much of a mess I was and still am. But I'm ready now to let that part of my life come back.

So I sat backstage and watched the crowd wait for Luke, Michael, Calum and temporary drummer Jack. But it was going to be me stepping on that stage tonight instead of Jack. He was hanging out backstage incase I would back out but I was determined to get up there. Determined to do this for her because she would have killed me if I stopped with my music. If she knew how distant I became to it the past year, she would have yelled at me and been so mad because she knows there's nothing more that I love doing but it was so hard to do when everything reminded me of her.

"Are you ready?" Calum asked as he came up to me. I nodded before getting up and all three of them quickly came over to hug me tightly while I gathered the courage.

"We are going to rock tonight and no matter how this goes, we are so insanely proud of you Ashton. This is what she would have wanted you to do." Luke said and that last sentence was all I needed to hear to stand up straight and head back to where I could go on stage. I would get a longer drum solo as usual to start, in a pitch black arena while I get my moment to make my come back. They guided me with a flashlight and the screams of the crowd were insane but nobody knew that I wasn't Jack. I sat down on the small chair and looked out at the crowd but it was too dark to make out faces. And I took in a deep breath before I took the drumsticks that were waiting for me and started out with the song everyone knew by now.

The screaming was so loud that I couldn't even hear my own thoughts anymore. But I kept on going, finding my energy in the screams and trying not to show how broken I was. But in all honesty, I was ready for them to see that I was broken.

When I heard the guitars starting to play, the lights went on slowly and the screaming became even louder if that was still possible.

"Ashton Irwin everybody." Luke said through the microphone before he started singing the song. But the screams were so much louder than they used to be and I could barely hear the sound from the in ears I was wearing.

We did the first two songs like always and all of them regularly looked back at me to check up on me but I was doing alright.

"LA make some noise" Calum said when it was time for us to talk but I looked down at my drums, trying to get myself together but I was strugling and everyone could see that. The crowd wasn't as loud anymore and Michael just kept his eyes on me but I was pushing through slowly.