31 Days of Amelia

Day 7 [redo]: Feeling Empty

That’s my trigger. All of those feelings. Not happy, not inspirational. All of the sad ones, all of the depressing emotions. Depressing. 

Most of my friends, recently, have been calling me cute or adorable. “Oh, Amelia, you’re just so cute!” It’s something completely new. I don’t know why they think what they think or why they say what they say. All I know is that I’ve been quiet and have been obsessing over winter sweaters a lot recently, so that might be it. But I’m quiet; I’m known as the loud and obnoxious one in the group. Maybe it’s because I’ve been listening to Cough Syrup all too much recently. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been online more, just prowling through the pages upon pages on the internet. 

But tomorrow, it’ll be because of another reason.

Did you know, that it’s raining outside? I didn’t. My weather app tells me that’s it’s been raining for almost two days straight. I love the rain, but I didn’t notice this sudden storm. I wonder why. I haven’t left the house, then, for at least three days. Because when I came home, it was grey outside, and it was dark, but it wasn’t raining. 

Sometimes I just want to curl up and watch the world kill itself. 

The past two weeks have been filled with Cough Syrup, and tumblr photography, and dear blank, please blanks, and my continued silence. And more and more people keep calling me cute and adorable, and, “Little lovely Amelia,” and, “darling Amelia,” and I don’t know if I like it or not. Before, I was just Amelia, and now I’m something special. But I’m not sure if I want to be addicted to my drug or not. I’m not sure if I want to have to go through more tears and more little claws tearing at my insides.

Do you know what it’s like? Listening to Cough Syrup? It’s like the worst thing you can put yourself through. It is the epitome of beauty and of everything that will ever or possibly in the existence of the world. It is perfection. But I do not know one person who has not cried at least once while listening to it. 

Except for Mishi. She never cried. She screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed until you couldn’t take it and wanted to through yourself out the window. Just like her. She was the loud one; I would cry quietly, and shake and shake, but you wouldn’t hear a sound out of me. I think that we should judge people by the way they cry. They’re at their weakest, but also their most human, or, possibly, least human. But it’s who they are. Who they were, and who they will always be. 

But listening to Couch Syrup should be the basis, the standard for the judgment. That song is gut wrenching. 

It’s like you are being emptied out. Like something is sucking, prying, tearing your soul, what makes you, from you and making you watch it shrivel up and die right in front of you. Listening to Cough Syrup is like watching the love of your life die in front of you. Listening to Cough Syrup is like reading the ending to the saddest book over and over again, watching the ending to the saddest movie over and over again. It’s torture, but it’s so goddamn beautiful that you don’t want to stop. 

This is a trigger, isn’t it? For someone. But I don’t want that. So after I finish this, it’s going in the Endless Folder.

I lied. Someone did look in the Endless Folder. 

The past two weeks have been filled with my silence. Lily told me that my silence was so loud that it was equivalent to how I am normally. I didn’t know whether to ignore her or to hug her. She was the first person to acknowledge that I was, am, the loud one. But she was talking about my silence. Which’ll have a whole new connotation tomorrow. 

I remember things in the number of times I’ve listened to Cough Syrup lately. Not in days or hours; in the number of renditions of that song, the number of times I had to look up and see myself crying in the window. 

3, 303 renditions ago something was wrong. Something was very wrong. I woke up, and I noticed the rain. For the first time in two days, I noticed the rain. 

My phone had lit up like a firefly on the nightstand next to me. Seventy three messages, it read, and all of them were from my friends. Half of them were from Kally. 

I’m done. I’m done with everything, and I can’t take it anymore. I’m sorry, but I don’t think that I can keep going. I hope that you won’t miss me for long. 

Kally tried to down a gallon of bleach, even after I spent hours with her on the phone, trying to convince her not to. I barely heard anything that she was saying, as Cough Syrup was still playing on my iPod, and I could tell that she could hear the music leaking from my ear buds because she kept trying to sing along even as she was crying. She was in the hospital for a week. She almost died.

575 renditions ago it was almost too late. Again, my phone lit up in the middle of the night with a status update. From Sydney, it read: I'm sorry, but at the same time I'm not. Don't try and talk to me. I'm sick of everything. I called her, and she answered. The first time. But five minutes into our conversation, she hung up, and I remember that Cough Syrup was still playing and I sat down and cried like Lily, big, gasping breaths that sound like you cannot breathe. Hearing Lily cry is worse than Mishi because it's all sobs and hurt and pain and she starts choking sometimes because it hurts so much inside. 

Sydney had thirty one pills lined up when her younger brother walked in. She joked about how he screamed louder than she did when he saw her. I didn't think that it was funny.

Even after all of this, my group, my chosen family still didn't understand my silence. My obsession with what had been named "the Amelia fix" so long ago. They didn't understand why I was suddenly hiding in my sweaters, wearing my big sunglasses, always listening to music. What they were doing, their little game, was just that, a game to see who would be the one to go first.

We have a winner, now, though.

340 renditions ago, my phone lit up. A message from Mishi was waiting, and I almost pulled out my ear buds. Almost.

Lovely Amelia. Darling Amelia. I’m so sorry that our little girl has had to deal with this. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that you’ve been on the Amelia fix for so long. I’m so sorry that you have to wake up with puffy eyes and that the Endless Folder has gained some more victims. I’m so sorry. I want my loud, rude, obnoxious Amelia back. But I can’t stand knowing that she might never come back, and you’ll be on the fix for ages more. My Mels. My rock. I hope you miss me. I hope that you take everything out of the Endless Folder.

Mels. I hope that you eat.

I tried to call her. I really did. But then I saw that the message had been sent two renditions ago, and I cried, and turned the music up louder.

Listening to Cough Syrup is like having that feeling you get when your best friend dies.

Sometimes I just want to curl up and watch the world kill itself.