Supernovas & Escapism

Chapter Thirty-One

      Everything is fucked up. Everything feels so distorted. Everything is different from before and I don't know why.

     Well, that's a partial lie.

     Truthfully, I know how things have changed, but I do not know why they've changed. It feels like there's a tear, eating up every sense of right inside of me. My mind wants me to push on with my life, but everything from my past shackles me down, making me feel like I might never escape this. There's a lot of people in this world who spend their whole life wondering why they ended up the places they did.

     I feel the same when I've stopped running.

     My lungs are aching, and I feel like I may collapse at any given moment. When I had run out of my own home, I'd done so with no foresight to where I was going. The pounding of my feet against the pavement was the only thing that I was focused on. Well that and the necessary need to not throw up; despite my athletic upbringing, it'd been a while since I'd ran so fast and so hard.

     When I do finally catch my breath again, and when my eyes stop seeing black spots all over the place, I take in my surroundings. It's a familiar place that I've been so many times before, but not one of my comfort spots. The street here might as well have been paved with gold. Houses here seemed to tower over the ones in other parts of town. At the same time, there was some level of modesty about them. It wasn't as if they were trying to stand out from anyone else—just showing how the other side lived.

     My brain needed a lie-down, some rest from the storm that was brewing. I had so many thoughts up there that it was becoming impossible to think. A break from life was the only thing I wanted. Somewhere where I could stop the clock and think for just five minutes.

     People were worried about me, and they had every right to be. But couldn't they see that by worrying about me, I was becoming more of a reckless, arrogant cock?

      Why couldn't I just be like other people? Why couldn't I live up to their expectations?

     It was unfair to meet myself to high standards, but these standards were far from being high. Everything I'd been berated for seemed to come out of the same handbook; how to be a decent fucking human being. I was exuding pain everywhere I went, and people let that be my excuse, the reason that I was such an ass. People had put up with it for so long and now they were starting to see it. Just because you're hurting does not give you the right to hurt other people, or dismiss their hurt.

     I wish I could get over this. But I was stuck. This constant loop of seeking out people who understand, and then trying to solve their problems to ease my own pain.

     The Kübler-Ross model—also known as the five stages of grief—states that there's a pattern of behavior in those who have lost. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. For the past nine months, I've been trying to move on in my own way, but I can never get past Anger. It makes me feel like less of a person, it really does. Not because I can't cope properly with my emotions, but rather the thought that I'm lashing out at these people who are also still grieving in some way.

     It's not fair to them to be like this. It's not fair to me to try and bottle everything up. No matter what I think, it's clear that I can't really win.

     As soon as my head stops spinning, I look at the closest house to confirm my suspicions. Of all the places, why had my feet pulled me here? Deep down I knew why I was here, and it had its own footing in why I freaked out the way I did.

     Regardless of what gets said I want to make a few things clear. I didn't run because I was ashamed of what the scene might have looked like to Glory. Under a different setting, I might have explained it better, but the fuse was lit long before the door opened. The meeting of their eyes just seemed to be the catalyst needed to trigger the explosion in my head.

     I ran because there was just too much going on; the confession to Garth, the argument with Glory, the impending thought of another fight with my dad, the sheer process of trying to explain why Garth was in my room. In the end, it all just added up.

     So I came to the only place where I'd be met with someone who didn't make me feel like an idiot for all the spinning that was going on inside my head.

     "You alright?" came the soft sound of a voice that was too sweet for me to bear.

     It took me a few more moments just to register her presence, as the raging storm became somewhat of a quiet lull. I was sitting on the curb outside of her house, still not trying to heave my guts everywhere. It was taking everything just to hold back the flood, and this mixed with heavy breathing, and latent exhaustion was pushing my mind to its absolute limits.

     I wanted to be like I always was; stoically reserved. To tell her that I was fine would have been a lie, but it would have been the closest thing to truth that she'd heard from me in over a year. She didn't need my trauma.

     "Xavier," she said. "What happened to your feet?"

     A better question would have been why I wasn't wearing shoes. I wouldn't have been able to answer that question. Not without saying that I'd run out the house without the thought of putting on some sneakers, or even a pair of socks.

     They were scuffed up badly, but I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel much of anything at the moment save for this haunting numb feeling.

     "I... I'm not okay Sabrina," I managed weakly. "I think I'm the furthest thing from okay."