There's a Reason I Go to the Library & It's Not Cause I Like Reading

Chapter 2

Frankly, Phil Lester would do anything for a truck to zoom down the street at 60 miles per hour so he could jump in front of it. He was sick of being alone, sick of having to look at himself in the mirror and tell himself that each day was a new day. He was sick of being gay. Sick of being tall, sick of being lanky and an eyesore. Phil was sick of being Phil which was a shame because it wasn't too long ago that Phil loved being Phil.

But now he was 17 and it wasn't the nineties anymore, it was 2005 and he didn't know what to do with himself because even blinking hurt. For the longest time he didn't want to die, he was mind-set that his anxiety and depression didn't mean he was going to kill himself. Now? It was the only thing he wanted.

His house was on the side of a hill on a boring street a short walk from a big field he once filmed a movie in, and he could see into the valley from the balcony on the first floor by the telly his family watched each night. He spent a lot of the time he wasn't studying hopelessly listening to the sounds of the wind and cars echoing through the hills, with the occasional shout or car horn being distinguishable from the muffled mix of the sounds of the small town in the distance, panging in his head.

He pulled his sleeves down and walked back into his blue and green room, collapsing on the bed. He looked up at the ceiling at all the pictures and other miscellaneous shit he'd pinned up there at some point and studied it, trying to remember what it felt like when he'd pinned it up there. When he didn't feel so goddamn empty all the time.

Suddenly the portraits of Tom Cruise and Sarah Michelle Gellar he'd spent years admiring made his blood boil and with teary eyes he stood and clawed at the display, his ankles aching as the soft bed tried to compensate for his stiff, angry stomping. His nails tore through the sheets of paper as they swiped up and down without relent. Shreds of paper and pins fell to his feet and he let out choked sobs before a thumb tack sunk into his heel and he fell sideways off the bed, knocking a cold cup of coffee all over himself in the process. He groaned from the pain in his foot and tore out the pin with shaky hands. He could feel the familiar burn in his veins that rushed through his heart and clouded his head. He'd fallen in the most convenient place.

He reached to his side and pulled his razor from the drawer beside his bed. He pushed his sleeves back and etched new red lines into his wrists amongst the older, faded ones. When he first began cutting he'd hesitate, but now that had all gone. It was his way of letting out the fire he felt inside himself when he thought too long about his own life and how much he despised it. He felt in control when he tore through his own flesh, something he never felt otherwise.

It was several minutes before he became too tired to continue. He pulled his clothing back over the countless new etches in his pale skin, small red beads leaking through his jeans and sleeves.
"Oh, bollocks" he cursed at himself. He couldn't let his family know, he couldn't let anyone know that he wasn't okay.

That would be the worst thing he could imagine.