Chapter 4

     We listened to a lot of Boys Like Girls. Anything else I have a hard time remembering. It's really odd to me, the way my mind decides what to remember and what not to remember. For instance I can't really remember what Her and I used to listen to but I can remember the first time I read Pride and Prejudice which was two years prior to even meeting her. Going back again. When we did hang out, it was outside, on the steps, with a guitar and her perfect voice. She played to but I much preferred her voice to anything else. We wrote a couple of songs, Her and I, and when we played them together everything felt perfect. I remember how fast I walked to get to the band hall to see her - it wasn't fast enough. I would breathe fast and low when I saw her and when I hugged her it was never long enough. I stopped caring about anything else and even though I thought I cared for someone else, I was only ever in love with her. Then she introduced me to Ashly.

     Ashly was a sweet, pretty and tiny little thing. She was super Mexican and was part of drill team that performed with the band. I remember her as a girl whose love was perfect, but never enough for me. We met, thanks to her, in a bus on the way back from a competition in, if my memory serves, Ft. Worth. I was sitting by myself in a row of benches across the way from her and Vincent. She kept telling me to go sit next to her and all this jazz that I don't even remember because all I can remember was that I still couldn't believe that she was talking to me.

     At that point, after the remainder of the bus ride and the lingering goodbye we had that night as her parents picked her up, I now realize that I should have, then and there decided that I would not let her think we would be anything more than friends. I am soft, though, and my heart's desire is to make every single human being I know happy. So I didn't say anything, I just let her believe that not only did I sit next to her because I wanted to, but because I was still in awe of her.

     After that night we were together as often as we could help it and talked just the same. I don't remember where our friendship became something more, I'm not even sure we ever were just friends. That is one of the many curses I posses, that is to make a person, more specifically a girl, feel as if all I have inside me is so in love with that person that they want to marry me. What is unfortunate is that I never have the will to make that person see that, while I do indeed love them, and while I am as best I can, making them comfortable and feel good about themselves, I am not in a position to be depended on.

 My limited forms of communication (only a computer for about an hour a day) meant that I could not talk with Ashly very often while school was not in session. I remember Christmas break, I'm quite certain we did not talk for at least a week, mostly because any chance I got to talk to anyone outside of my family, I used it to talk to Briana. Therefor, as time went on, I lost interest in Ashly.

     She trusted me, though, unconditionally, and even when I bailed on her or obviously flirted and started at Briana, she still loved me. (She would later tell me that she was convinced beyond trust and love that I was her future.) At one point in time, Briana and Vincent broke up and I almost, immediately broke up with Ashly for Briana, but I thought better of that in order not to appear to be a huge asshole. Of course, though, as nature would have it, Vincent and Briana were back together before I could say, "Please, Please. Just one kiss is all I want." I was pathetic, really.

Black and White.

     My heart is beating fast and my hands are trembling as I pull you in closer. My eyes meet yours and I am lost in thought and beauty. I feel nothing but complete happiness as I share a quiet, relaxing moment with you. I am steady and I know where I am but I have misplaced my knowledge of breathing completely. I see you and I know you, my love. I'm right here with you and all I know is that within my arms I have my whole world. In this moment I ,unmistakably, want to leave this world for the meaning of it is unknown and fleeting quickly from my mind.

     Come with me and together we will find a new, more accurate meaning of everything we have once known. I have to be a ghost, a shadow of what I once was. I have to be a beacon to my former self of what I should become. I have to be what I want to be, or I will never be what I want to be. I have to develop a natural (or perhaps unnatural) acceptance for myself, because I am who I am, and whether or not I desire to accept that, I must. I truly believe that I will, in time, do so. It may take me a lot of time and I may require very large amounts of assistance, but I will get there.

     And I am writing this to remind myself of that! I am writing right now with positive intention in my heart and a definite understanding and knowledge of what I must do in these next few weeks. Months from now, I can't know what I'll be doing exactly, but I can assure that it will be good for me. These next couple of days will be no doubt spent working on myself, doing what I know I must do to make myself OK. OK at work, OK with my family and everywhere else I may venture off to.

I love you

    I love you. That much is certain. How much do I love you? I don't know. I'm still pretty unsure how I should go about measuring love. I'll just suffice it to say that I love you a lot. It's like I'm walking outside I look up and say, man, it's a beautiful day. You sigh and smile at me, look up at me and say, yes, yes it is. And this is the written narration of that perfect day and perfect moment in time.

     I'm waiting for an answer as to why your bright dreams can still penetrate the grey clouds above us all. Now the grey is just falling around you and we're all tongue-tied in awe. Now, I see your beauty and it is blinding. Thank you  for protecting me, now I won't let go. Every silence all around me, with me longing just beside you, is now screaming through the walls.

     If you give me your life, I swear you will never lose it. If you include me in your thoughts, I swear they won't control you. If you trust me with your love, I swear I will never let it go. You see, I need to be needed. I've never felt this way before, I was always just so empty. I didn't know it, but I need to be needed by you.

My head pounds.

Everything that I love is an art, yet even then all of my art is meaningless to me now. All of it, everything, everyone everything I know or once knew is death. I feel dead. nothing I have to do is worth doing. My brain makes the most ridiculous connections to make me think that all I am doing is OK  It's not, though, and I know that. I am worth. nothing. It is so apparent to me now that I am nothing. Mathematically I am equal to 0 an idea, not a number that is negative or positive, but an idea that there is nothing to be had at that current juncture in time and location. I am nothing in any current juncture in time and location that I choose to be in.

     Another thing occurred to me, recently. That is this even the concept of nothing or zero is still something because we still have a symbol for it, whether that symbol be a word or a number. This worlds nothings are still and will always be something. But I digress, as I always do and instead decide to tell you where exactly it is I've been. You see, hold on..

     That's better. Where was I, right. I've been busy. So so so very busy. If you have read everything that I have written on this channel of the internet, then you'll know what kind of unstable person I am and how I feel like I need to be heard even though there probably isn't anyone in the whole world that reads what I write here on a regular basis. I want you to read it, though, I want you to know what I'm thinking and I want you to read what I've written, because I need to be noticed.

     Again, though, I digress.

Say Something

     Good God, child, have you noticed that although she speaks beautiful words of love, she sure does leave you out to dry unbelievably often. what do I know, though, of true love and being in love? I know nothing, I feel for I am but a boy trapped inside of a man's body. Why would you leave me here in this state? How could you assume that I knew why you were leaving and why would you even leave in the first place? Just leave!?!?!?! I don't even feel like you want me anymore, do you understand that? Tomorrow? I'm just going to sleep and go to work and probably get high because for all I know and from what I can tell you don't want to see me tomorrow or ever if you can help it.

     Please say something. Because everyone thinks you're gone, but they're not right baby. Are they? If they are, let me tell you what I'll do. I walk the streets with a semi automatic gas powered assault rifle and pump round after round into my friends, colleagues and co-workers until someone comes and puts a bullet in my head.