When We're Both Thirty

Dissecting the Soul

"I know, but Frank's not the one who's yelling at me about it!" Gerard says, feeling hurt by Mikey's words even though he knows they're true. Really, what does he expect? What did he think would happen? He just completely ignored Frank and called him a bitch when he cut himself open for Gerard, and Gerard's the one behaving like a kid. Gerard's acting like a baby, and he knows that. He should just suck it up, pick himself up and be able to admit that he did something really wrong. Completely wrong. He should have gone after Frank, but he didn't and now Frank rightly hates Gerard's guts.

He did before of course, Frank's hated Gerard's guts for a really long time, but that doesn't mean he didn't like, or even love Gerard. He's just having trouble fathoming the concept of Frank being in love with him. He's having trouble understanding most concepts right now. He can't believe that Frank is actually in love with him, but he knows that Frank hates him too, and he doesn't know how those two things can correlate and yet they do. It's just too much to try to figure out while his brain feels oversensitive. It feels like learning one more new thing, anything at all, will make his brain give in on itself.

"Gerard, I don't know how to say this any other way, because you look too winded to even reply, but you may have ruined any chance you had. He's so angry, you might have completely blown your shot altogether," Mikey says.

"I know."

"That's it?" Mikey asks, "No witty response? No insulting me or denying that you like Frank? Nothing?"

"No. I just don't have it in me to pretend anymore," Gerard says, "I mean, I've made my whole life about dissing Frank, like every second of high school I spent planning new mean things to say to him, call him new names, or planning new demises, but right now, I just don't care about any of that."

"You don't care? So that's it, you're giving up."

"I don't think you understand," Gerard says, shaking his head.

"Then explain it to me."

"I wouldn't do that to you," Gerard sighs.

"You've already done a fantastic job at fucking up your life, Gerard, why would I be at all surprised that you've ruined something else? That's all you seem to do these days, is make your life harder than it had to be. All you have to do is get a job, and keep it, but you can't do that. All you have to do is admit to yourself that you like Frank, and maybe he'd be human enough to tell you that he likes you back, but you can't do that either. You can't seem to do anything right, and I don't think you understand how stupid it is that you've completely lost you're interest in even trying to make your life something livable," Mikey says.

Gerard takes a deep breath before saying, "I feel like all I am is a waste of space. I feel like I'm incapable of making friends, and the one's that I keep are only there because I put too much effort into keeping them there. I'm always the one who has to make the first move if I want people to talk to me. No one wants to talk to me, no one wants to hang out with me, and no one cares about me. They don't. They don't care about me, and when they do care about me it's only because I pushed myself into their life. And it feels like someone's filled my internal organs with boiling water. It feels so hot that it's cold, and every single one of my nerves is just overreacting to this feeling of worthlessness, and it's starting to get to be too much. It's like... you ever get heartburn but it's, like, throughout your whole body? Like it feels like your bones have been tied with rubber bands and they're just burning and they're so tight that you can't even move your arm anymore and it's just, like, that's what it feels like right now. That's how I feel. I feel like my bones are being burnt and squeezed and broken like twigs.

"I'm so lonely, and no one sees that. I'm so lonely that it physically pains me to have to remember that this is all I am. This is all I have ever been and all I will ever be and no one will ever care as much about me as I care about them, as much as I care about keeping them in my life. No one can or will ever think of me in that way, and knowing that is like being stabbed in the chest a million times over with a blunt object. It's hard to let me breathe through this agony of hating who I am, and who I've become and sometimes I just wish I didn't feel at all. I just wish that no one was there so that I wouldn't have that hope. Because hoping is the worst feeling in the world, and it allows me to just pity myself even more than I already do, because when I hope, then I'm letting myself imagine what it would be like if people really did care. If they weren't disappointed in me, I can picture it, and I can see a world where people actually want to talk to me, where they actually hang out with me because they want to, not because they feel guilty about the fact that I don't have anyone to talk to which is my fault anyway. It's because of this seclusion I've built around myself, and it's starting to weigh me down more than usual. But hoping keeps me wishing. It keeps me thinking that maybe people will start to like me. It keeps me at the edge of my seat, but in doing so, it distracts me from my life. It makes me work harder for the things I don't need and not hard enough for the things that keep me alive. But I keep hoping, still not letting myself convince the rest of me that I'll always be the guy who has no friends, and it's been hurting a lot more lately. It's starting to feel like the whole world is out to get me. It's starting to feel like I can't do this anymore."