Dealing With Absence » h. styles au

2ᴺᴰ CHAPTER

And he could see her. That’s the thing. Whenever he tried to paint something he’d sell later, Chrissie came up and ruined everything; surged as perfect as always in his memory, ruined whichever the inspiration he had had before. It was a constant reminder that she’d chosen Matt over him and probably didn’t even think of him anymore.

And, okay, he’d tried to drunk-y paint a couple of times, because, why not? Thinking his work was pretty good, actually, and then staring at it the next day, seeing nothing but a mix of colours he’d splashed there angrily; something any kid would do. Once he even got to smudge his hands with paint and press them against the canvas, literally throwing it away – not without breaking it into a thousand pieces first – the next morning, setting it on fire inside the trashcan. He watched it burn with a glass of whisky in one hand, and a pack of cigarettes in the other.

Harry was drowning in misery.

The full breakdown came when literally, all he had left of money, was spent in drugs. He hadn’t tried before; had always known it was the road to perdition. And he wasn’t addicted to it. Wasn’t trying to kill himself, either, for God’s sake. He was only trying to forget about her, for longer than the alcohol allowed him. Everything else had just become useless, honestly. And if you ask him, he was not proud of himself. Had never thought he would get to that alarming point.

But then the last thing he remembers is having no other blank canvas in his studio, nothing but empty pots of paint scattered around the floor, photographs of Chrissie – hundreds of them – hidden in the back of his drawer (the one he constantly checked against his will and felt like punching himself later), and he needed help. To get rid of that sour feeling that was killing him slowly and painfully from inside out.

And then he woke up at the hospital. Couldn’t really pay much attention to whatever the doctor was saying, but he made out the words ‘nearly’, ‘died’ and ‘overdose’ and he didn’t need further scientific explanations because he was no doctor, needed no details about the whole process; but he was no idiot, either. He could understand what had nearly taken his life away.

He was screwed.

Somehow his family in Cheshire found out about the whole thing, even though the emergency number he’d always given people was his roommate’s, and stopping to think about it, it was probably him the responsible one for letting his family know about the whole incident. After that, Harry was forced into a rehab clinic.

But then again, he wasn’t addicted to drugs.

Had only tried to forget about Chrissie, and still, did it wrong. He was so useless he couldn’t even properly use drugs without almost dying of overdose. He was an idiot, really. Harry is aware he was the biggest idiot three years ago, probably still is, but the difference is that now, he has a bit of control over himself.

It took him a while, though, to get to the point he is now. The first month in rehab was pure hell for him, if he may say so himself. Once he arrived, everything was so tidy, and organized, and quiet. People were polite, they had a schedule to follow, the right time to do everything, barely had free time for themselves. And when they did, they were still observed; cigarettes were not allowed, if anyone had managed to find alcohol they had to throw it away as well, obviously, no drugs, but Harry couldn’t even use his scented candles, and that infuriated him. His candles were one of the things that calmed him down the most, and he had to live without them.

All in all, everything was so restrained he felt like breaking a window, throwing tables in the air and kicking chairs just for the sake of making people mad. He wanted controlled people to lose their minds a bit, maybe have fun with his own adventures, feel thrilled to the idea of doing so. So he did it. He broke a few things, tried to escape, tempted people who’d been in rehab for years to go back to their addiction.