Madness ➮ Harry Styles AU

C6

Christopher

I came to realize something that day.

And maybe it's waking up in a puddle of your own blood, that sparks epiphanies; the substance was leaking out from the temple of my forehead due to fainting and hitting it on the sink counter the night before. Which, granted, I probably should have gotten checked out, but assuming fainting was a symptom of depression was easier. I had a first-aid kit in the medicine cabinet in the hallway anyways, and to be frank, death wasn't something I would mind obtaining.

Or maybe, realizations don't rest upon anything. It is just a thought anyways. But that's beside the point.

The point was this: that I was in the front seat of my car; friendless, fianceeless, depressed, bored, and driving to the nearest hardware store. 

It was 4:47, according to the clock in my car, which may have been a couple minutes fast, but not fast enough to matter, and I had come straight from work; a perfect environment for me to decide one thing, and one thing only.

I needed paint.

So, I pulled the car into the lot, then removed the keys from the ignition. Standard protocol. Get out the car. Into the store. Avoid people. Find paint. It was honestly extremely simple, but the very essence of living had become exhausting for me.

Buying paint was stressing me out. Being in public was making me nervous. Thinking about getting nervous made me nervous. Life was scaring me, and I was scaring myself, and I didn't know how everyone goes about so unafraid of things like these.

But I made my way into the store anyways, because that's just what normal people do. However, I probably didn't look like a normal person at all, with those rings like coffee-cup-prints around my eyes, and how I was dressed in a full-on suit. I could not stress the fact that I had just come back from work anymore than I had that particular day, and the court room didn't call for socks and sandals, unfortunately.

Eventually though, there were two chrome buckets of plain white paint in my hands, and some feeling I couldn't quite define between guilt and anger and regret and depression, residing in just about everywhere else.

"Next customer please!"

I then walked up to the counter and proceeded to purchase the cans from an employee who looked vaguely like Ed. And that kind of sucked. I didn't need to be reminded.

Anyways, some fifty or so quid was thrown onto the counter and that was that. See Chris? Simple. It was all just about pretending that you're not cracking under the pressure of social expectations and newfound realizations.

That was that. My paint-buying experience was less than exciting but all the more torturous with my mind to narrate. Just about the same for everything, I guess.

The drive back, however, was far worse. You see, paint was only the beginning; like the first step on the road you'd rather not be taking. And my mind was a wasteland, giving life to every idea that should have never been reborn.

Though, if we're really going to debate about this, then let me tell you something about realizations: they only ever matter if something is done about them. Or else, it's just digging out information to dig it in somewhere else.

And I was trying, God I was trying. I was trying to make my thoughts worth something. But ideas are easier announced than executed. Which, unfortunately explains precisely why every element of myself was so conflicted, and why all I wanted to do was anything than what I was about to.

But I got to our house, eventually and dreadfully, then proceeded to drag in the paint cans through the front door, and up those marble steps that were always so terribly cold.