ONE DIRECTION ONE-SHOTS

Stumbling by hesinstripes

I spent most of my life without a home, as in a concrete foundation where I spent the majority of my time. Having left the brick and mortar of my mother's house at 16, home developed a new meaning. It became wherever I found comfort and escape from the outside world. Sometimes I found it in a tour bus. Sometimes it was in the corner booth of diner where the only familiar thing was the laughter of friends and a stale cup of coffee. Sometimes it was the warmth of a women, and I'll admit it, sometimes it was in a drink- or a bottle. I hated that I had become just as cliché as the "You Booze You Lose" tattoo inside my elbow. The teen pop sensation that became a drunk once sales and fans faded. Drinking to let go of who I had become and feel alive. To chase that high I had always gotten from being on stage.

When One Direction took a hiatus, we thought it was the perfect opportunity to recharge and rebrand. We would come back revitalized with a more mature sound to a more mature audience. Well, that was the plan. Instead we came back to find a fanbase that had moved on, critics that couldn't get past our boyband roots, and no direction as a band at all. No pun intended, I assure you. Our comeback album fell flat and the label had found a new cash cow, so we were dropped.

That's not when the drinking started though, that happened later. When I couldn't pinpoint. I can only remember the moment I realized things had fallen apart. Alone in an empty bed with the fitted sheet that had abandoned the mattress corner on her side. Abandoned. To some it may look like Corinne abandoned me when I needed her most. The truth is, as I recounted memories as cloudy as the ice in my whiskey and pieced together moments between drunken blackouts like the shattered picture frame on my nightstand from a stumble into bed, I saw I had abandoned Corinne years ago. She had only just now realized she deserved better than me. Better than the me I had become.

It's a strange thing when you fall in love. When it finally happens you realize everything you felt before wasn't love at all, but just something to help your heart grow and get stronger. To prepare that beating muscle in your chest to handle what love is about to put it through. In all my years as a songwriter and lover of poetry, I have yet to find words that accurately describe love. Words alone aren't enough. Love is seeing the same things in a new way, a new appreciation for life. Seeing them how your lover sees them. I think the closest I ever came to putting it into words was:

The summertime, the butterflies, all belong to your creation.

Funny how you can take new meaning to old words. Likening love to a season seems so fitting now. Changing so slowly over time, almost unnoticed. Then one day you wake up in the cold of winter wondering how you've gotten so far away from the fragrant bloom of spring that held so many promises. And Corinne was such a fragrant flower. The moment I breathed her in I was hooked. Her jasmine and lavender filling my lungs, my chest, my being, until I didn't know how to breath without her.

And that's just how it all went wrong. She became my oxygen, which we take for granted. No one thinks about breathing, we just do it. We trust that our body will continue a steady pace of inhales and exhales until one day we find we've taken in our final breath. Then it's too late. There is nothing more final than death. Any and all promises made are null and void in death. Though I had broken my promises to Corinne long before our love died.

She held onto the good times and the happy years we had behind us. She always saw the good in people, that was something I loved about her. She said she always loved my charm. Ironic how it was both those things that kept her in an abusive situation. I'd never lay a hand on her, and she knew that. Sometimes I think that made it worse. There was no defining moment where she knew she had to walk away. Instead I slowly chipped away at the strength and independence that made me fall for her in the first place.