Demons |¤| Lashton

01: Falling Star

Ashton

July // Winter

It started a few months after I joined the band. March, maybe. I wanted to be around him more; seeing him made me feel better. His happiness was contagious. I noticed little things about him, like the way he scratched his nose, or the voice crack he always tried to fight in this one song he loved to play. Everyone would laugh whenever it would happen, but it made my face turn red.

No. I remember. It was raining. I couldn't stop looking at him. Michael and Calum were late for practice, and I couldn't stop looking at him. He was standing in front of the window, the grey backdrop washing out all of his colors.

He is made of darkness and silver linings, I thought to myself as he dug through his school bag. A dumb little romantic thought. Was it romantic then? Or was he just the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen? When he tossed his bag onto the couch, my eyes stayed on him.

His eyes shone just the slightest when he turned to see me staring.

"What do you want?" Luke grumbled. The storm outside echoed him.

"It's dark."

"Turn the light on then."

----

I used to be afraid of a lot of things, real things grounded in reason. I'm scared of him.

I'm scared of the way he looks at me, and the way he doesn't. I watch him withdraw into himself day by day, and I'm scared he hasn't even noticed--terrified that he doesn't care.

What had I seen? I can't remember that day anymore. I can't recall the moment and the way he was then. It replays in my sleep sometimes but I can't see properly. There's too much rain outside and it's too dark. I've started to become semi-conscious halfway through the dream and move to turn the light on, but most of the time I fail because the water makes me panic. (The rain breaks through the window and floods in, and then I wake up.) 

I can't want anything else for myself or anyone else. In my head I'm asking him a million questions in a million different universes. I haven't really asked him a single one.

We don't go to the same school; by the grace of Michael did I even get to know him. Whenever I make it to band practice, it feels like we're too restless and distracted to be productive. We're all in the same place but pretend we aren't.

Winter has set in, bleak and utterly pathetic. We're out on school break. I've managed to hide my growing list of issues from my mum so far, but it'll come back to kick me in the ass eventually. I'll slip up somewhere and I'll face some shit then. I'm worried about seemingly everything these days. I don't know why I did this to myself. A piece of me hopes I can fix it and desperately wants to, but I find myself wasting day after day, paralyzed by the thought that I'll make it worse. Did I really do all of this?

I just want to be good enough so that he will want me back.

Holy fucking shit!

If I can't get this little monumental happiness, then the only thing I can do is come to terms with that fact. I'm not incomplete without him, I've just let myself think that. I-I-I. This is all about me, huh. Sorry for the narcissism or grandiose delusions or whatever. I'm not that great. He doesn't want or need me, and I don't want him. I just think I do.

I don't want him, I just think I do.

I'll make a mantra of that.

---- 

October // Spring

My attempts at developing this neutral, apathetic state are all falling though. I'm fucking it up. I keep panicking. I can't. I don't know why I can't control myself. I know what I think I want and I know what I truly want. Why can't my dumb fucking brain separate this shit?

It's gotten worse. Instead of confronting everything, I just keep trying to escape. I went to two band practices, and it physically pained me to even think about him seeing me. If I don't see him at all, that would be the most comfortable, but I don't think that would help me get used to us being friends again. I don't want to lose friends, I just want them back. It honestly sounds like I'm bullshitting myself right now because that's not what the trajectory of this unmitigated disaster looks like in the slightest.

Because I like him more now.

I KNOW--I'm DISGUSTED WITH MYSELF a MILLION times more than anyone could ever be. He's always in my mind, whether I'm trying to work on pushing him away. I'm obsessed with how he sees me, if he can see me. It's all about if I'm in his presence. I thought that visually blocking him by angling myself so that someone was in between us would help. But then I worry he picks up on that. That he can see a fragment of me, if my hands are fidgeting. My hair. I'm analyzing myself at every angle. And yet there's nothing more that I want than to catch his eye when the person in between us moves. I want to watch him. I know he can see parts of me because I can see parts of him. I can see his hands, and how they move, how they grab the neck of his acoustic guitar, how they flick dirt away. How he pushes others away, how he pulls the hair out of his eyes. Everything he is and does is so pretty.

There's so much more I could talk about forever. He's just here with me in my mind forever. Not on it, in it. He built a hell of a house in there. Fuck. I want to see his eyes and his smile. He seems so quiet recently, and I'm scared of that, but that just makes me want to be closer to him. I want to be loved by him and I want to hold him; I want to have that absolute and I want it to be him. I'm just at an absolute loss. I've let myself hyper-focus on him this whole fucking time. Everything is intensifying. Including how I feel.

So. I missed this week's band practice. I fretted so much over whether I should have made an excuse that I forgot whether or not I actually told anyone if I was skipping.

Fuck. I keep saying I want. 

L*** I am so, horribly sorry. I wish I could mean it. I wish I could take this all away and stop but I guess I just don't want it bad enough. I'm sorry for that too and for everything. If I have to let go for your sake, I will do it. I'm sorry.

Always.