SOBER FEELINGS - Joonas Porko

25 - not the one to blame

Nothing had felt the same since the day everything escalated. The moment that I had perceived Joonas' heartbreaking sobs through the walls was the moment I had decided that all of this had to come to an end, at least for the time being.

I needed to get clarity, I needed time for myself to detach from these past actions, to see this deep mess from an outside perspective so I could pinpoint exactly where it had all gone so horribly wrong.

But no matter how many days I took to sit down and replay recent events over and over in my head, the answer still never came to me.

I asked myself so many times what exactly Joonas' thoughts were when he decided that making me believe in such a horrendous lie would be a good idea.

He could have cut me off, he should have cut me off right then and there, right after the night the two of us had met each other for the first time. By pretending that his memory had been wiped from his mind by drinking himself into a coma-near state, the foundation for a time full of hurt had been layed. The guitarist made me fall in love with the mission of somehow bringing back his memory so mindlessly, not even caring about how looking into his big blue eyes and thinking that he had absolutely no recollection of our time together was destroying me.

I knew I didn't have a clean slate either. But how could it be clean when I had been dragged through the mud like that?

Kissing Niko was wrong. It's something I didn't intend for to happen. I used him only to try to escape for a moment from what I couldn't escape from. I used him, wanting to feel something other than deep disappointment and an aching pain in my heart that just didn't want to go away and honestly, I felt ashamed.

Who did I think I was playing with him like that? I wasn't any better than Joonas. I was a pathetic and selfish piece of shit that may or may not had destroyed a deep friendship simply for the purpose of a few minutes of distraction.

Days went by in a tormenting silence. Not because no one reached out to me but because I chose to isolate myself and cut everyone off.

Amelia had started to text me frequently again and as much as I loved the quirky girl and her lively nature, she was way behind with all the drama that went down and right now I really didn't have the energy to tell her about it.

Joel texted me too. He really texted me a lot.

He wrote me stuff about his everyday life, about the process at the studio and about how happy he was with the numbers their newly released song was making. The vocalist didn't even care that I didn't reply to a single one of his texts, he kept messaging me totally unbothered. It was almost draining and I thought about blocking him for it, not only once.

"God Joel I don't understand what these numbers mean. What on earth." I said to myself once again ignoring his most recent text completely as was laying there on my couch in the same leggings and the same hoodie I had worn for two days in a row. Life didn't feel real anymore, time didn't feel real anymore and slowly but surely my mind accepted the deafening silence and loneliness and began to sink deeper into it, completely mindlessly.

I was staring into emptiness as my phone started to buzz.

1 missed call from Amelia

Then it buzzed again.

2 missed calls from Amelia

And again.

"Fucking hell." I groaned as I picked up the phone and reluctantly accepted the call. "What?" I sighed and closed my eyes, hoping Amelia would just end the call immediately for some miraculous reason. "Wow you're alive, how come?" Amelia spoke. "Haha very funny." I was sure I sounded downright mean and annoyed right now but I really couldn't bother to fix my attitude towards her right now. "Just wanted to let you know that I am coming over. Seeing you in five. Alright?" She happily announced and I perceived the honking of a car in the background from the other end of the line. "What you're... No Amelia you ca-." Then I heard a steady beeping noise.