A Way Back Home | Adopted by Gerard Way (Book Two)

Lyrical Ballads (20)

The buzzing in my head of a thousand thoughts makes concentrating on completing assignments more difficult than it already is. The temptation to swipe all the papers off my desk and collapse onto my bed has never been so strong, and I need to hold my hands in tight fists to stop myself from doing just that.

"Why do I even need to know the quadratic formula?" I mumble to myself as I stare down at the math questions in front of me. I rub my eyes tiredly. My palms have tiny, stinging half-moon shapes from where my nails dig into them. "It's not like I'll have a future career in math."

Or any future at all, for that matter.

I peel my eyes away from my math homework and instead search on my shelves for my black notebook. The leather bound book in my hands, I flip through the pages, poems from even a couple years ago catching my eye.

The feelings behind the hopeless words I wrote, often late at night (or way too early in the morning), went away for a while. When they were gone, I rarely wrote in this notebook. Now they're back and so are the gloomy thoughts that I only know how to express through metaphors and worrying stanzas.

I finally stop rifling the pages when I land on the last entry from not long ago.

It's like a sudden switch is flipped, draining all colour without trigger, without warning.
All emotions are stripped, how to smile is a memory from another day's morning.
She'd like nothing better than to cry, break down, tears running down her face as she's gasping for air.
But her eyes are left dry; she's left in silent despair.
Maybe she just needs sleep? Not with so many thoughts occupying her mind.
Thoughts that are worrying and deep, where happy ones are hard to find.
It's like she's slowly drowning, but everyone else around she sees breathe.
As the slow ticking time passes, she's counting down the moments until her demons might finally leave.

-E.M.W.

I slide the notebook back in its place on my shelf, the distracted thoughts buzzing in my head only having grown worse. I won't be able to do any math tonight.

The prevailing thought circling my head is one that makes me want to lie with my face down on the floor: What do I even want to do with my life?

Sure, I've considered it before, and what I really want to do is be a writer. I know I'll have Gerard's full support, but what do I do but write depressing poems? They all go forgotten in the pages of notebooks that I'll never share because they're not that good, and I've never been that motivated to get any better. That's not enough.

I'm not enough.

I'm not enough, I'm not enough, I'm not enough. How many times can I think it before something comes along and proves me wrong, or stops me from succumbing to the nagging in my brain? The one that's drawing me to the satisfaction of self destruction like a magnetic force I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to withstand.

"Eve?"

I don't know how many minutes I've been laying, willing my body to melt into the cold floor, but not even Frank's voice compels me to move.

"Huh?" I speak without moving my mouth to let him know I'm alive, at the very least.

"Quick question," he says, stepping over me, and looking down at me sideways. "What are you doing on the floor?"

"I'm having an existential crisis." My speech is muffled because my face is pressed up against the floor. "Don't worry about it, it happens all the time."

"Gee!" He calls out.

"No, Frankie," I groan. "I'm fine, don't—"

Frank cuts off my protest and goes on. "Eve is having an existential crisis and I'm not mature enough to handle it!"