Crooked Smiles (unedited)

Chapter 14

i laid still staring at the ceiling listening to my heart beat. my heart was aching and the ceiling started to spin. i hated the pain but being numb was definitely worst. mostly because once it was all over you feel everything all at once and its almost unbearable. normally i felt like i was trying to find my way through a dark tunnel, or like i was climbing my way out of a dark and scary hole. but this time it was like i couldn't even find my feet or hands to dog or search fr anything. i was stuck. and sad. not angry. not hurt. just sad. because i understood what carter wanted and i understood why he wanted it. i couldn't be angry at him because it was best for the both if us. especially me. i just wish it wasn't.

i squeezed my eyes shut and tried to drown my thoughts out in the music i had blasting in my ears. but my thoughts were so loud they drowned out the music instead. that's when i knew i was fucked. for the past 13 year of my life music has always been able to help me. there was music for every mood. music that made me feel less lonely. music that helped me get my anger out by yelling and breaking things. music that made me extra happy and jump around and dance and just music that helped me chill. there was even music to help me cry when i had been keeping things bottled up inside of me for too long.

i'm sure there was a song for this moment too but my mind was just screaming too loud for me to hear anything.

my mother wasn't home. she had went away with one of her boyfriends for 2 weeks so i was all alone.

for the first time i felt like having my mother here with me just so that i could tell her how i feel. i know she wouldn't hold me or tell me anything comforting but i just had the erg to hug her and talk to her and cry on her shoulders although shed just sit there staring at me like i was crazy.

suddenly the posters on my walls were mocking me and the lyrics were lying. the dark wasn't comforting anymore. i stood up abruptly and tore all of the pictures and words from my walls aggressively. i smashed my mirror with my foot. i guess that was anger.

i wasn't mad at carter though. i couldn't be because he was right and this time he wasn't selfish.

fucking carter. i plopped down against the door and thought about my life before i met him. my life was shit. my dad was dead. my mother was, well... my mother. school sucked and Jase was in the streets. Kenny moved and i felt as though was all alone. but then i met carter and i had someone else to worry about. he was a distraction and so interesting, so mysterious. he made all of my problems seem so small. and then i fell in love with his pain. i fell in love with his being and everything went downhill from there. he introduced me to another coping mechanism. to another world. to a world of drugs and alcohol. it didn't seem so bad because it wasn't like taking a razor blade to your own flesh. or so i thought. because it was addicting in a different way. it seemed like a good thing. like happiness almost. at least the closest we could get to it. and for carter it was survival. he couldn't live without a pill for breakfast and a shot of heroin for lunch. dinner was mostly weed and Hennessy. with a few pill popping and sometimes cocaine would be somewhere in the mix. he starved. carter was sick in every way but i loved him for everything he was and even more so for everything he could have been.

i thought i could fix carter and in time that would fix me. but boy was i wrong. because carter was beyond broken. it was like he was missing so many parts of him and he had just given up on looking. he as barely hanging on so it made it harder for me to pull him up. i didn't want to get better. he just wanted to give up. and i lost so many parts of myself trying to put him back together. and i felt stupid because he warned me but there was nothing that could have prepared me for loving him.

i felt as though i came out of it weaker than i went into it and i only had myself to blame. i don't know why i thought that carter could fix me in some twisted way. because loving him made it easy to forget about myself. but now without carter and with Jason locked away, there was only me too look after and worry about and work on and i had no idea where to start. i knew i wanted to start over but i had no idea how. because i couldn't erase carter from my memories. and i couldn't take back everything we've ever done together and everything I've ever done since i met him. i felt more broken than the shards of mirror scattered across my floor.