It took me a week or so, from recovering from the pure exhaustion of simply moving in and organizing my things around the way I liked it, and to get over the slight homesickness, for me to simply get to the point where I could fee more than just awkward or tired. I quickly acclimated, being shoved into the academics of an Ivy League school, the meetings and struggles of suddenly being ineligible for a large sum of money, and yet still needing it to get through it all and be successful. There was the stress of classes I didn’t understand, the stress of needing money, the stress of being alone and needing to make friends once more…and the stress of having no one I could really call to whimper about and ask for sympathy from.
I didn’t like sympathy, or pity, even though that’s kind of what I wanted. I just wanted someone to support me. Someone who gave a damn, and someone who I could feel comfortable talking to about my worries. I could call Sam, I could call Jason, but there was something horribly different about complaining to a guy who didn’t worry about telling you to smarten the fuck up, or tell you the same thing you’ve been hearing since late June.
And frankly I was becoming sick of hearing those things, because they only made me feel stupid, clingy and childish. I didn’t need to feel those things when my chest felt full. It was never that good way it used to feel, when your heart swelled and you felt awesome, invincible. It felt like my heart and lungs had shrunk and in the negative space someone had filled my chest with balled up newspaper and lighter fluid. I was filled with the possibility of a brilliant bonfire.
Some days, most days, I just wanted to take a lighter and let it go, and see how brightly I’d burn.
A drop of wetness appeared on the derivatives and tangents beneath my hand, and I watched the lines of text and graphs slowly fray and feather in the moisture. I rubbed my eyes, my fingers splashing in a small puddle of wetness formed at the corners. I wish I could have considered this a rare occurrence, but I couldn’t. By now it was almost routine that I would start crying without even the slightest knowledge, since everything felt like a deep pit of sadness…there was no differenciation between crying-sadness and just sad-sadness.
I sucked in a breath through my nose, feeling the unmistakable resistance and sputter of crying as I tried to breath. I sighed and sniffed again, rubbing under my nose with the back of my hand to clean myself up before climbing from my desk, leaving my calculus 101 work to be finished at a later date.
I slowly crawled onto my bed and slid my hands under my head, looking up at my ceiling. I could feel the ever-growing layer of fuzz that was my hair slowly coming back. I was known for having a short-but-messy mop that had the potential to hang in my eyes when I was sweaty after a run. Having no hair made me look like an alien, and made me considerably colder than usual.
I scratched at the fuzz, it was a little itchy and uncomfortable, but usually when I wore a hat, the scraping of the hat covered any pain that the growth made. I sighed and looked at the ceiling, feeling the tears slide down my cheeks as I stared up. I realized then I was feeling an emotion I’d been unable to name, because for so long…I didn’t really know what it felt like.
Loneliness.
I sat up and grabbed my iPod, plugging the earbuds into my ears and turning the music up to drown out even the sound of my heartbeat, which I was wishing I didn’t have. Music started blaring in my ears to the point where it almost hurt to have it so loud. And then I turned it up a little louder; happy Jake wasn’t in the room and wouldn’t have to hear it.
I stared up at the ceiling and took a slow breath, feeling my chest expand with the deep intake of air. I felt the paper in my chest crinkle and compress as my shriveled lungs expand to try and fill the void. The paper threatened to ignite with every breath, the friction sparking and heating up. I wished I would burst into flames.
I took another slow breath and closed my eyes, blocking out the ceiling of the room. It was hard however, because everything came back. I could see her face, smiling behind my eyes, still with that smile she used to give me, maybe just a twinkle in her eye. I could see images of her, running around, moving through the history of our world together…the world that didn’t exist…the world that was no more.
And I realized the unfairness of it all. I realized how unfair it was that I could sit here and miss her while she was off at Marshall, enjoying her life, probably meeting guys, and…enjoying her life…without even a thought of me.
The unfairness of missing someone who didn’t miss you back. The unfairness of feeling the void, feeling a part of you missing and there was no way you could get it back.
And it was the hardest thing to learn, but the void just hurt. But the idea ticked in my head that made it all seem silly. I’d read it earlier on a facebook status, and now, it almost seemed real.
“You can love someone so much…But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.”
Maybe that was it. Maybe I was thinking foggy because I thought I had something I didn’t. Maybe I was remembering a girl who I didn’t really have a relationship with. Maybe I was remembering a girl who was gone a long time before the best and worse night of my life. Maybe I missed her more than I ever could have loved her.
I covered my face as I listened to the music that blared loudly in my ears. I took a slow shuddering breath. And now, I truly felt alone, without my girl to trust, and without my mind to tell me what was real and what was not.
I sighed and sat up, prepared to go for a run. It would make my leg hurt like hell, but I needed help, I needed something to take my mind off of it. Maybe I would end up shaking some of the cancer free on accident, I didn’t know if that was possible. But whatever the cancer would do…the run would do so much better for me…I truly needed it.
I pulled the headphones out of my ears and moved to the closet, pulling my running shorts out of a drawer and started getting changed.
“Brayden? You there?” came with a loud knock at the door. I blinked and leaned over, peeking through the eyepiece and seeing a huge dark eye staring back at me. I blinked, pulling open the door and seeing the tiny little Michelle smiling at me.
“Oh…Uh…hey Mel” I smiled, still holding the shorts in my hand.
“Hi Bray. I just got back from class, was wondering if you wanted to catch dinner?” Her teeth pulled at her lip and her eyes were aimed right at me. Those eyes killed me, so round, so blue and hopeful. I sighed, unable to say no to them. I chucked the shorts back onto my dresser and grabbed my wallet.
“Alright.” I smiled, sliding into the hall, watching her bounce with excitement. She was always so happy…I couldn’t help but smirk. She did that to me.
