Save Myself // Larry Stylinson

Chapter 10

Louis wasn't used to this. He wasn't used to his life revolving around anything other than bad decisions and Harry never felt like a bad decision. He was surrounded by so many things that were different than they had been weeks ago and he didn't get any of it. It was overwhelming, honestly, and he wanted badly to be better at it because while upsetting Harry had quickly become something he excelled at, he wanted anything but that.

When he got back to his house, he snuck quietly through the back door, knowing that his family was probably having dinner. He walked quietly up the stairs, listening to his mother and Fizzy laughing loudly and he felt something sink inside of him. Despite the fact that he'd spent quite literally the perfect day with Harry, there was a nagging loneliness when he entered his house that was hard to ignore. He'd gone so long without addressing any of his feelings that it was overwhelming to feel them all at once. Terri wanted him to talk about them, to sort through them and give them all of their power, but Louis just wanted them to go away. He wanted to be back in the safety of his numbness.

He made it to the safety of his room before the feelings overwhelmed him. It was as if just the few words he'd said to Harry had opened the floodgates, because he was feeling everything all at once. Suddenly, all he could think about, sitting in the middle of that house, was his relationship with his family.

Aside from Lottie, he couldn't even remember the last thing he'd said to any of his siblings. Fizzy and their mum were close enough to laugh at the dinner table and Louis had never had that. He couldn't remember ever laughing with his mother. He couldn't even remember the last time they'd spent a moment alone together.

Louis' memories of his childhood mostly revolved around his grandmother and various nannies. There had always been someone around, but it had never been her. He had spent his life trying not to think about it. He'd prided himself on his ability to survive without her approval. But it wasn't really fair, was it?

He didn't like it. He didn't like any of the things going on in his head. This exact thing that was happening to him now was the original reason he'd started using drugs to escape. He'd felt so small as he stood back and watched his mother parent his siblings like he'd never happened. As she threw things at him to make up for the fact that she couldn't even look at him. It was around that time that instead of shrinking small against her that he'd started to question it to himself. He'd started to wonder what on earth a small child could have done to her that made him so unworthy of her time.

And now, with the drugs gone, the sadness he'd hid behind until it numbed him gone, he just felt small and worthless. Louis had been numb to his pain for years and years and he hadn't even noticed as it mounted into something he could no longer handle. He'd let something so small as feelings of abandonment build and build into a million different things until they'd choked and suffocated him to the point where he felt like he had no other option but to let it all go. He hadn't tried to kill himself because because his mum didn't love him. He'd tried because he was sick of letting people abuse him, sick of the whispers about him. He'd been sick of being in a constant state of both desiring the drugs that numbed him and wanting to be nothing like Matt. He was sick of being an alien in the middle of his family and of shrinking against everyone else, sick of being small and insignificant. He'd been so tired of being so utterly fucked up and unlovable.

And now, he'd been thrust back into life without any of the things that had made it so much easier to deal with his inadequacy. It was a lot. It was overwhelming to suddenly, after 20 years of conditioning and an honest belief that he was worthless, have not even just one, but three people telling him otherwise.

The last two days had been exhausting and for some reason he didn't understand, he was seething with jealousy. It wasn't something he'd really ever allowed himself to feel before then. But he felt wronged. He wanted to have whatever his sisters and the babies had that made them worthy of their mother's love. Sure, it hadn't always been as bad as Louis had made it, but there was always something missing. It had started with neglect, with her forgetting to acknowledge that she had a son. It had made Louis into the insecure basket case he'd entered his teenaged years as, and it had made him an easy victim for anyone he came into contact with. It had given him the insatiable desire for validation from anywhere he could find it. And lastly, when he'd never truly found that validation, it had made him the sort of person who needed to escape. It had given him the constant desire to break everything first, since it had become the only power he had. He'd kept making stupid decisions, getting arrested because he needed to give his mother a reason to hate him.