WHEN BEAUTY NO LONGER EXISTS

11

a/n: people tend to ask why, when people say that they were raped, why they didn't "fight back". and what most of them don't understand is that most of us spend the rest of our lives fighting back. give us a fucking break, my dudes.

unedited.

***

I was going to tell them.

And for the first time in four long months, I woke myself up in the morning, and I wanted to leave the confines of bedroom.

Usually, from the moment my eyes were opened long enough to process what was around me, and, more importantly,who, my day was always run, and ruled, by everything and everyone except for who it should've been ruled by. Me. 

Dakota told me what he wanted, most of the time, and expected me to be able to do it. But, it always came accompanied with good intentions. He thought every suggestion and every time he told me to eat and drink water and maybe go outside, would help me get better, but the point, honestly, is that you can't help anyone recover from anything at all if you're not sure where the hurt, where the pain is blossoming from, in the first place. Maybe it was my fault, you know, for not telling him earlier. It definitely wasn't his fault for not knowing.

Still, though.

Josh never told me what he wanted from me, but he glanced at me with that weird sense of hope drenching his eyes and slipping down his face. It formed a home in him, helplessness and bitter hope. Pitched tents over his heart and threw umbrellas down in his ribs, working to make themselves comfortable inside of something they shouldn't have owned. It hurt to watch something gradually take over the love of your life, but I could hardly imagine how Josh felt, looking at me. I could see his heart breaking in his eyes every time the brown of them caught mine. Not that it made a difference. They just re-pitched their tents whenever another piece of him was shaken up.

The one who had the most control over me, though, for four fucking months, was Theo. Even though I hadn't seen him at all, even though I hadn't spoken to him (despite him calling), even though I hated him with everything I could think of. It didn't matter, because to hate something means you're concerned with it, and to be concerned with it is to give them partial control. And to give them partial control is to surrender the rest of you.

And I was sick of it.

I was sick of being alive, but missing out on my life. It was as if I was walking through a museum of my own body, of my own mind, of my own existence, with my eyes covered. I should've known every piece of myself, but I didn't . I missed out on that. For four months.

I was sick of seeing the world turn without me outside of my window. Sick of the looks Waffle gave me, when he was here and not at the vet's. Sick of the fear on Josh's face. Sick of thinking about death. Sick of reliving the same day, the same re-run of the same show, when I've got the rest of my life laid out in front of me like one huge blanket that was mapping my present and crafting my future.

What a waste it was, to live through something over and over when the rest of the universe is trying to drag you back to what you're actually living through. And I didn't get it until then. Until I woke up and still smelled a bit like weed, and smelled like my tears and like the words Josh confessed to me. I didn't get it.

"Tyler!" A voice shouted, though it was no cause for alarm, considering I'd heard the voice everyday for over a year. "It's Dakota."

At that, I stood up. And it felt like I'd just risen from the fucking dead. My bones cracked, my heart rattled, my eyes watered, but it was hard to say that I'd ever felt any better than I did right then. Besides Josh's first love confession, obviously.