To Learn to Let Go | ✔

Chapter 1

"This is what happens to boys who don't do what they're told"

"NO!" I shout as I sit up straight in my bed. I'm drenched in sweat and struggling to breathe, but I realize that it was just a dream. He wasn't actually here, it wasn't actually happening again, I was safe, and I was alone.

"Grayson, honey are you okay?" My mom asked as she ran into my bedroom, my dad right on her heels. They were used to this by now, it was almost a nightly routine.

"Y-yeah Mom, bad dream." I smiled to reassure them that I was, in fact, totally fine and they could go back to bed. I can tell they're not convinced, but Mom nods and begins to shut the door.

"I love you," she whispers.

"Love you too," I say as I settle back down into bed. I look over at the clock on my nightstand and the blue LED light informed me that it was just after three a.m., as it always was when I had these nightmares. Superstitious people would try to tell me some bullshit about the witching hour or whatever, but more practical minds would just say it's how sleep cycles work.

I tried to push the nightmare out of my mind, to think about something, anything else but the horror I was just forced to relive. No matter what I tried, the thoughts got worse, and I could feel my chest tighten and breath catch in my throat. I got up from my bed and made my way to my bathroom, quickly finding what I was looking for. I added new marks to the ones that were already healing on my wrist, breathing a sigh of relief when I felt the familiar stinging sensation. This was the only thing that worked to calm my panic attacks, to silence my thoughts. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get rid of my demons. They always came back to haunt me in the middle of the night, while I was peacefully dreaming of a life where I'm actually happy. Once I felt more calm, I cleaned up, got back into bed and tried to fall asleep again for another few hours.

Sometimes I'm not even sure if it really happened. Like, I just think that it's something I've made up in my dreams, and it scared me enough that I keep dreaming about it night after night. That's totally something that happens right? Kids just convince themselves that something happened to them that didn't all the time. That really must be it, because nothing like that could have ever happened to me. My parents wouldn't have let that happen to me.

After hours of staring at my ceiling, trying desperately to clear my thoughts and go back to sleep, my alarm rang. That meant it was six a.m. and time for me to get up for school, or as I liked to call it, hell on Earth. I forced myself out of bed and to my bathroom to shower and get ready for the day. I put on a pair of skinny jeans and an oversized chunky sweater and put some gel in the longer sections of my dirty blonde hair, so they fell in a messy on purpose kind of way. Leaving my bathroom, I found my Mickey Mouse Vans and put them on before grabbing my backpack and running down the stairs to leave for school.

"Grayson, can we talk to you for a moment?" I heard my dad call from the kitchen as I was about to head out the door. I sighed dramatically and dragged my feet into the kitchen.

"What's up?" I asked, though I knew exactly what they were going to talk about.

"Honey, we're worried," Mom said as she clutched at the heart necklace she always wore around her neck.

"Mom, I'm fine," I tried to convince her.

"You have nightmares every night that you wake up screaming from. How can you tell me that you're okay?"

"Because they're just bad dreams! People have bad dreams all the time."

"Not every night, son. Not like the ones you have, this is really disturbing," Dad chimed in.