-Empty and Broken-
Most people had childhoods filled with joy, excitement, love, sorrow, fear and guilt. Most people grew up with loving families, basking in the happy golden days of childhood before they put away childish things and moved on to raise their own happy, loving families and children.
For me, it was a little different.
My childhood was one of doctors, of masked, distant nurses, of daily needles and tests and sterile white rooms of fluorescent light. I didn't grow up in a family home. I grew up in the hospital, seeing medical staff more than my own family and making friends with the entourage of voices in my head.
I was born broken.
Empty and hollow, the space that was supposedly filled with emotions a gaping, dark void. I felt nothing. The joy of getting a present, the sadness of losing a pet and the guilt of lying to your parents were all things I had never felt, and never would feel.
Of course, the doctors, specialists and nurses had just told me I was a psychopath. Someone who felt no empathy and no remorse. However, that couldn't explain the absence of every other emotion as well. Maybe I didn't feel regret or empathy, but I should've been able to feel happy and sad.
All anybody could tell me was that I was broken. Different, they said.
Imagine, the globally revered, top specialists and medical experts doing years worth of tests, research, experimentation and investigation only to tell you that you were just different. Maybe it was just me, but I didn't think it was too demanding to ask for a more detailed diagnosis than that one haunting word.
But, regardless of how much I begged for an answer, nobody knew what was wrong with me. So, after years of research and toil were wasted upon me, I just carried on with life like everybody else did. What else could I do?
Aside from my tiny and yet all-consuming emotional deficit, I was a pretty normal kid. I played video games, snuck out at night and made up lame, see-through excuses for forgetting about homework and promises.
I put up my walls, never telling anybody about my condition. I began feigning emotions and feelings until I was faking and lying all the time. If I wanted to seem normal, I just couldn't catch a break. Normal was all that mattered.
I pretended to be happy when my parents bought me gifts to try and coax the non-existent emotions out of the stifling void within. I pretended to be sad when my family's cats died, when in reality I felt nothing, no attachment. I pretended to feel remorse when I got caught lying or breaking promises. But it was all fake. My family superficially swallowed my lies, but deep down, I was sure they knew I was faking and pretending.
Funnily enough, my emotional deficit had one chink in the armor. Anger, jealousy and rage. Absolutely fucking fantastic. The only emotions I could feel were the worst ones, the ones I despised but had to endure. I was emotionless, but I failed at being fully emotionless.
The saddest thing was that I didn't know if I could actually love until I'd met George. I'd never had school crushes, and I hated my family because they were openly scared of me, of my undiagnosable condition. They pretended to love me, trying to win me over by buying me things, giving me lavish presents and trying to bring me joy through materialistic means.
But, just like my emotions, their love was fake and in no way genuine. Sad, right? Woe is me. Oh, right. I can't feel self-pity or sadness. That sucks, huh.
Life goes on, though. So, I trudged through life, feigning normality and bearing the burden of the absence of emotion while putting up a happy face for the world to see. I put up a happy face for my audiences too.
They of all people couldn't know how broken as I was.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
The soft ticks of the clock eluded to the heavy lull of midnight, the tenebrosity, the slight drowsy ennui that weighed down. Midnight was cool and dark, and it was in such a stark juxtaposition with the piercing light of my screen. The light hurt my eyes a bit. Though it'd be better if I worked during the day, I preferred night. Yeah, it was unhealthy to stay up so late daily.
But midnight was also the best time to work.
Right now, I had to finish editing my newest video to stay on schedule with my YouTube uploads. I rubbed my eyes and turned back to my computer and the nearly-finished video open in my editing program.
Midnight was still considered early for me. My sleep schedule was totally fucked, but which university student's sleep schedule wasn't? Thank goodness my teachers posted all their lectures online and taught out of the textbook word by word, so I had an excuse to have a fucked sleep schedule.
Also, if I truly needed help, I'd just ask George.
He was such a suck-up and a teacher's pet, with a flawless grade and attendance record. George was never late, never unfocused, never confused. He handed in every assignment right on time, and his grades never dropped from an A plus.
It also helped that he was a ridiculously skilled self-taught coder and programmer before even starting the computer science major. I was decent at coding, but George was clearly a better developer than me. Maybe just by a little, but the difference was still there.
Come on, focus up, I mentally reprimanded myself. The audiences deserved a good video.
An hour or two later, I finished editing the video and decided to work on one of my many unfinished coding projects. I wasn't as much of a role-model student, after all. That was all George. I started tackling the project, utterly unmotivated. After getting confused and off-track about a million times, I saved the little progress I made and exited the project, utterly defeated by the supposedly easy computer science major.
The door to our apartment opened, followed by the jingling of keys. I wandered into the living room and sat on the couch, turning on the news channel for something to play in the background.
"You're still awake?" I heard George's voice ask.
"Almost as if you don't know I have a fucked sleep schedule." I chuckled, humorlessly, of course.
"Oh, I know. I was just being polite." He cracked a smile and set his bag down on the coffee table. He shrugged off his jacket and hung it on the coattrack by the door.
"Always a gentleman." I said drily, my eyes finding George's.
"Of course. At least I'm polite, unlike somebody I know..." George looked at me, an eyebrow raised suggestively.
"Shut up, at least I'm not a suck-up." I rolled my eyes. George sighed and flipped on the lights in the kitchen, opening the fridge. He surveyed the contents of the fridge and exhaled. Fuck, I was supposed to buy groceries, wasn't I. Damn it.
"Maybe I'm a suck-up, but at least I don't forget to buy groceries." He glowered at me, the corner of his mouth turned down.
"Most people are fine with takeout." I said pointedly, a hollow smile on my face. I watched George sigh with disappointment and defeatedly pick up his phone to order food, most likely. The look on his face could've made the devil cry and beg for forgiveness. Funny how such a cute person could look so terrifying.
"I'm sorry, okay? I forgot." I blurted out, out of instinct rather than remorse or guilt. George sighed, gave me a small smile and shook his head, sighing.
"Whatever. Just buy them tomorrow or I will end you." He threatened, his voice too cute and innocent to sound threatening or menacing. I laughed and banged my fist on the kitchen counter.
"How, shorty?"
"5'9 isn't even that short!" George's voice peaked at the end, rising at least an octave or two higher. His voice never really got as deep as an average male voice, and it was something Sapnap and I teased him about, his high-pitched voice.
"I can't hear you from up here." I joked, an empty smile on my face.
"I'm average height! Not everyone's a literal giraffe like you!" George's voice cracked at the end, causing a trained laugh reflex to trigger and force more fake laughter.
"Everybody's a giraffe compared to you, midget." I rebutted. George sighed in defeat and gave up, his hands up in surrender. Banter was not his strong suit.
"Sure, daddy longlegs." He chortled, immediate regret dawning on him after he realized what he said. Maybe I was empty, but I had picked up how to use and recognize humour when I needed to. Life was too much of an analyzing project for me.
"WHAT?" I exclaimed loudly, probably waking the neighbours.
"You heard me." George bit his lip, eyes cast downwards.
"Did you just call me daddy?" I laughed; my tone accusatory in a way. George rolled his eyes, but I could see the blush rising in his face.
"If that's how you want to interpret it, sure." George was supressing laughter at this point. I struggled for breath, my fake laughter so real even my own body thought it was genuine. I had somehow trained my faux laughter to the point where it was nearly real.
"I can't with you anymore." I sighed. George was flushed pink, his eyes cast down.
"ANYWAY, what are you going to do now? Be productive, maybe?" He suggested hopefully, always a hopeless optimist. His efforts were lost on me. I was a hopeless case.
"Don't really know, what about you, Georgie?" I yawned.
"Finish the plugin, maybe? I just have to troubleshoot a few things and we can record the video on the weekend, edit it and release it next week. Our upload schedule seems to be working." George sounded happy and satisfied. He liked order, structure and organization.
"I'm going to bed now." I had nothing better to do anyway. Well, except for work, which was off the table. Work was boring and tiring, and I didn't want to do it. George eyed me with a look that put all disappointed mothers to shame.
"Dream. Stop being lazy, you have about a million unfinished assignments." He was right, as usual. He was on everybody's case about homework and school all the time, but it was kind of cute and endearing.
"I'll do them tomorrow. Good night, George." George sighed with disgust and gave up trying to force me to be a decent student.
"Fine. You better get things done tomorrow, okay?" He raised an eyebrow. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. George was so adorable. Like a little bunny trying to threaten a tiger.
"Okay. Good night then."
"Good night, Dream." I smiled and closed my bedroom door quietly, the subtle click of the mechanism loud and resounding in the still, now-silent apartment. I heard George enter his bedroom and start up his computer, most likely coding the plugin.
As soon as I heard the clicking of George furiously coding away, I picked up my phone and opened my calendar app. One date was in bright red. December 28. To most people, the date was just another winter day, or maybe a birthday or something. For me, it was a date I loathed. Why?
It was one set day a year my tiny black heart got stomped all over. A day where the universe made it brutally clear that I couldn't have George. That the only reason I continued living this empty, hollow life was out of reach.
Even the empty and broken have a breaking point.
And the 28th of December was George and Lia's anniversary.
-----------------------------------------------------Author here ;) there's the first chapter. I'm not a good writer by any means, so I understand nothing's well structured or decently written, but hey, this is fun. If you've read any of my awful fanfic, thank you so much.
Anyway, I love you all and bye! See you again next chapter :)